Kota Kinabalu: More than 100 speakers, industry leaders, policy makers and innovators will debate on who funds, owns and verifies the world’s stories in Abu Dhabi from Dec. 8-10.
Dubbed the Bridge Summit 2025, Daily Express Sabah is among selected global media invited to cover the mega event.
It would explore the defining challenges facing global journalism of our time, such as the evolution and future of journalism, news broadcasting and the content economy, such as the economics of digital story telling.
It would also explore ways and means to confront the global credibility crisis like economic influence in themes like “Money Talks”.
Key discussions will centre on challenges like the global credibility crisis, the economic realities of funding journalism, explore how technology and new models are reshaping the media landscape and the ethical implications of AI-generated content.
More than 100 editors, founders, policy makers and investors would attend 50 plus sessions, as part of the Summit’s wider 400+ speaker programme to examine how collaboration across sectors can enable more resilient, credible and inclusive global media ecosystem.
The event’s Media Track programme aims to further Bridge Summit’s ambitions to serve as global platform for industry leaders and stakeholders to connect, exchange knowledge and forge partnerships that will create a greater resilience and interconnected media ecosystem sought.
The Summit reinforces the UAE’s role as global hub for dialogue, collaboration, media diplomacy, and access to the content economy.
The UAE’s initiative shines a spotlight on changes in the past decade which have redrawn the boundaries of media and information, where streaming has eclipsed broadcast, social platforms have overtaken newsrooms, and artificial intelligence is rewriting how truth is created , verified and consumed.
As audiences fragment and trust erodes, questions of ownership, influence and accountability have become defining challenges for the global information order- challenges that will take centre stage in Abu Dhabi’s impending Bridge Summit.
The line-up of speakers include Gary Vaynerchuk, Chairman of VaynerX; Moira Forbes, Executive Vice President of Forbes, Joanna Coles, Chief Creative & Content Officer, The Daily Beast , Pooja Bagga, Chief Information Officer, Guardian Media Group;
Jessica Sibley Chief Executive Officer of Time, Justin Smith, Co-Founder & CEO of Semafor, Nancy Gibbs, Director, Shorenstein Center at Harvard Kennedy School & former Editor –in-Chief of Time ; Andrew Zimmern, Emmy & James Beard Award –winning host and storyteller; Anthony Scaramucci, Founder and Managing Partner of SkyBridge & Founder of SALT, and Shekhar Gupta, Founder & Editor-in-Chief of ThePrint.
Themes of global interest and concerns are as follows: Panels on “Money Talks: Who’s Funding the News you Read?”. “Media’s New Centre of Gravity”, “Who Pays When Journalism Goes Broke” , and “The End of Media’s Philanthropy Whiplash” will explore how capital, technology, and philanthropy are redefining independence, and whether new ownership models can coexist with the mission of free and independent journalism;
“The Threshold of Truth”, “When Everyone’s Verified”, “Who Can You Trust?”, “Stories with an Agenda” , and “Setting Standards for Responsible Storytelling” unpack the evolving ethics of credibility and transparency in an age of synthetic content, algorithmic distribution , and advocacy-driven reporting;
Sessions such as “Memes as a Media Business”, “Winning Back Gen Z One Swipe at a Time”, and “Fighting for Depth in a Shallow Media World” will investigate how audience behaviour subcultures and generational values are defining what authenticity and attention mean to modern media;
The “Comfort Crisis in Media”, “The New Priorities of News Media”, and “Media Moneyball” will explore how publishers and creators are rebuilding sustainability through direct audience ownership, first-party intelligence, and new data-driven investment logic;
As information becomes a geological instrument, ‘How Media Shapes the Course of Modern Conflict and Leaks’ and “Whistleblowers and the New Information Battlefield” will analyse the complex interplay between journalism, security and global stability.
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