‘It’s a no-brainer to go where the progress is,’ Fortune editor-in-chief tells Arab News ahead of Riyadh summit on women in business

For Alyson Shontell, editor-in-chief and chief content officer of Fortune, there’s no more exciting place for her team to be right now to covering the world of business and women’s progress than Saudi Arabia. (AFP/File)
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Updated 19 May 2025
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‘It’s a no-brainer to go where the progress is,’ Fortune editor-in-chief tells Arab News ahead of Riyadh summit on women in business

  • Alyson Shontell finds Kingdom’ Vision 2030 transformation “remarkable,” so the magazine wants to see it for itself and show it to the world
  • The CCO says aim is to build a global network through which women in the Middle East feel connected to women in other parts of the world

RIYADH: The Fortune Most Powerful Women franchise, which includes an annual list of the 100 Most Powerful Women, began in 1998. Now, nearly three decades on, the publication is entering the Middle East region with the Fortune Most Powerful Women International conference in Riyadh on May 20 and 21.

“More and more women were getting into the upper ranks of business,” and “we wanted to be on the ground covering it,” said Alyson Shontell, editor-in-chief and chief content officer of Fortune.

“There’s no more exciting place for us to be right now (than Saudi Arabia) covering the world of business and women’s progress,” she added.

Despite reforms and transformation in the region, some still view it as a place with restricted freedom for women and media. However, Shontell is “excited to go in judgment-free,” and connect with women in the region and “show what they’re doing to the world,” she said.

The transformation in the Kingdom since Vision 2030 has been “remarkable” and, she added, “we want to see it for ourselves and show it to the world.

“It’s a no-brainer to go where the progress is: the Middle East.”


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Fortune’s ambition is “to connect global power and the biggest businesses in the world,” and so “we would love to build the most powerful women’s network into a global network,” through which women in the Middle East feel connected to women in other parts of the world, she explained.

This year, 11 percent of Fortune 500 companies are run by women, which is the highest number it has ever been, Shontell said.

There is still a long way ahead before gender equality is reached in businesses, but “that’s a big reason why we think it’s still important to show the changing evolution of power,” she said.

Last year, Fortune also published a Most Powerful People list — “to recognize powerful people as powerful people” — and that list was dominated by men.

“That’s how the world is, and we’re not going to pretend that it’s otherwise,” Shontell said, adding that it is part of Fortune’s mission to track progress, present the world as it is, and when there are changes, to showcase them as well.




For Alyson Shontell, editor-in-chief and chief content officer of Fortune, there’s no more exciting place for her team to be right now to covering the world of business and women’s progress than Saudi Arabia. (AFP/File)

At the beginning of this year, US President Donald Trump issued an executive order on his second day in office calling titled “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity.”

He has issued multiple orders since then aimed at rolling back the diversity, inclusion and equity (DEI) policies of major corporations, foundations, non-profits, educational institutions and even the government.

One order, which deems DEI policies “illegal,” suggests that these policies are a “guise” for “dangerous, demeaning, and immoral race- and sex-based preferences.”

The directives have raised several concerns, some around women’s participation in the workforce.

Shontell, however, remains optimistic. “There’s a pretty strong commitment from women in the United States,” she said.

“We have made a lot of progress over the last 50 years here, and I don’t think many people would like to see that backslide.”




Alyson Shontell says that despite US President Donald Trump's policies aimed at rolling back the diversity, inclusion and equity (DEI) policies of major corporations, foundations, non-profits, educational institutions and even the government, women have made a lot of progress in the United States and there is no sign of sliding back. (AFP/File photo)

Shontell herself has been part of that commitment. She joined Business Insider in 2008, as the company’s sixth employee going on to become editor-in-chief in 2016.

When she was appointed as editor-in-chief at Fortune in 2021, she became the youngest and only woman to serve in that role in the company’s 95 years.

“When you think of who the editor-in-chief of Fortune, or even Business Insider, is, you don’t think of a young woman,” Shontell said.

To illustrate her point, she said that even if one asked AI what it thought the editor of a business magazine looks like, it would draw up someone like JPMorgan Chase chairman and CEO, Jamie Dimon.

And she was right. We asked Meta AI and ChatGPT: “Can you generate an image of the editor-in-chief of a major global business publication?” The former gave us four images: one of a woman and three of men, while the latter gave a single image featuring a man




There is still a long way ahead before gender equality is reached in businesses, but “that’s a big reason why we think it’s still important to show the changing evolution of power,” says Alyson Shontell. (AFP/File)

The most common reaction Shontell receives is surprise. But she doesn’t mind. Rather, she likes surprising people and the feeling that “no one sees you coming.”

It “kind of gives you something to work toward something to be extra proud of when you achieve it,” she said.

For Shontell, the industry has been nothing but change since she stepped into it, which was well after the days of leisurely business lunches and thick magazines, she says.

“A lot of the trends that we’re seeing now are just completely different than they were before,” and much of the conversation in the newsroom is around future-proofing the company, she said.

 

 

The key, according to her, is a flexible team and the knack to recognize trends and understand which ones are here to stay.

When she was at Business Insider, her goal was to get everyone to read it. Fortune, on the other hand, is not about scale.

“My goal is to continue to up our relevance and to broaden the audience just a little bit, but to keep it very much thought leadership,” she said.

Shontell explained that it is hard to run a company in a fast-changing and unpredictable world, and so, the question is: “How can we be the best asset for this global leadership reader?”

The aim is to “give them the information they need to do their jobs through the best of their abilities, so that the rest of us can all benefit from them making better decisions.”




Alyson Shontell says she doesn’t mind the still prevailing common perception about gender in the business world. She likes surprising people and the feeling that “no one sees you coming.” (Instagram: fortunempw)

Fortune was relatively slow to embrace digital media with its website only launching in 2014.

By the end of 2024, it had 24 million global users, and its social channels have a total of 7 million followers.

Still, not many younger audiences are aware of the brand or consume its content. Shontell admits that while Fortune has been very good at reaching C-suite audiences, “we have increasingly been bad at reaching the next generation and pulling them up through their career path.”

But now, with social media, she says “we have permission to show up differently on different platforms” to reach a potential reader.

That means speaking in a different tone of voice perhaps to reach GenZs and millennials on platforms like TikTok, which would be “their first experience with us,” she said.

It is a “delicate balance” of “how do you get that next gen reader so that Fortune will continue to exist and be read and widely known in 20 years, and how do you maintain that thought leadership at the same time?”

As part of this effort, Fortune is reinventing its video offering this year and launching podcasts.

Artificial intelligence is at the core of technology and any conversation about it, and undoubtedly is an “incredibly powerful tool,” said Shontell.

Despite the dangers of AI — fake news, misinformation, deepfakes — and concerns about potential job losses, Shontell believes AI will bring journalism back to its roots.

Any news or information that can be rounded up and aggregated does not need humans and will be done by AI, but that is an “exciting opportunity, because it will bring journalism back to its core roots of seeking original information and facts and bringing it to readers first with the best analysis (and) the best new information that you can get,” she said.

Shontell says that in the last decade or so, the news media industry has almost lost its way, partly because the business model is predicated on cutting through noise and grabbing attention, instead of delivering news in a way that is aligned with the news company’s specific approach.

There will be “hard change,” and news firms can either be a big publication with scale and a “solid” business model like The New York Times or Bloomberg, or a smaller, niche publication; anything in the “messy middle” will have a difficult time, she said.
 

 


BBC shelves Gaza documentary over impartiality concerns, sparking online outrage

Updated 22 June 2025
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BBC shelves Gaza documentary over impartiality concerns, sparking online outrage

  • The film, titled “Gaza: Doctors Under Attack” had been under editorial consideration by the broadcaster for several months.

LONDON: The BBC has decided not to air a highly anticipated documentary about medics in Gaza, citing concerns over maintaining its standards of impartiality amid the ongoing Israel-Gaza conflict.

The film, titled “Gaza: Doctors Under Attack” (also known as “Gaza: Medics Under Fire”), was produced by independent company Basement Films and had been under editorial consideration by the broadcaster for several months.

In a statement issued on June 20, the BBC said it had concluded that broadcasting the documentary “risked creating a perception of partiality that would not meet the BBC’s editorial standards.” The rights have since been returned to the filmmakers, allowing them to seek distribution elsewhere.

The decision comes in the wake of growing scrutiny over how the BBC is covering the Israel-Gaza war. Earlier this year, the broadcaster faced backlash after airing “Gaza: How to Survive a War Zone,” a short film narrated by a 13-year-old boy later revealed to be the son of a Hamas official. The segment triggered nearly 500 complaints, prompting an internal review and raising questions about vetting, translation accuracy, and the use of sources in conflict zones.

BBC insiders report that portions of “Gaza: Doctors Under Attack” had been considered for integration into existing news programming. However, concerns reportedly emerged during internal reviews that even limited broadcast could undermine the BBC’s reputation for neutrality, particularly given the politically charged context of the ongoing war.

Filmmaker Ben de Pear and journalist Ramita Navai, who worked on the documentary, have expressed disappointment at the decision. They argue that the film provided a necessary and unfiltered look at the conditions medical workers face in Gaza. “This is a documentary about doctors — about the reality of trying to save lives under bombardment,” said Navai. “To shelve this is to silence those voices.”

Critics of the BBC’s decision have been vocal on social media and online forums, accusing the broadcaster of yielding to political pressure and censoring Palestinian perspectives. One commenter wrote, “Sorry, supporters of the Israeli government would get very offended if we demonstrated the consequences … so we shelved it.” Others, however, defended the move, citing the importance of neutrality in public service broadcasting.

A BBC spokesperson said the decision was made independently of political influence and reflected long-standing editorial guidelines. “We are committed to reporting the Israel-Gaza conflict with accuracy and fairness. In this case, we concluded the content, in its current form, could compromise audience trust.”

With the rights now returned, Basement Films is expected to seek other avenues for release. Whether the documentary will reach the public via another broadcaster or platform remains to be seen.


Iran’s Internet blackout leaves public in dark, creates uneven picture of war with Israel

Updated 20 June 2025
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Iran’s Internet blackout leaves public in dark, creates uneven picture of war with Israel

  • Civilians are left unaware of when and where Israel will strike next, despite Israeli forces issuing warnings
  • Activists see it as a form of psychological warfare

DUBAI: As the war between Israel and Iran hits the one-week mark, Iranians have spent nearly half of the conflict in a near-communication blackout, unable to connect not only with the outside world but also with their neighbors and loved ones across the country.
Civilians are left unaware of when and where Israel will strike next, despite Israeli forces issuing warnings through their Persian-language online channels. When the missiles land, disconnected phone and web services mean not knowing for hours or days if their family or friends are among the victims. That’s left many scrambling on various social media apps to see what’s happening — again, only a glimpse of life able to reach the Internet in a nation of over 80 million people.
Activists see it as a form of psychological warfare for a nation all-too familiar with state information controls and targeted Internet shutdowns during protests and unrest.
“The Iranian regime controls the information sphere really, really tightly,” Marwa Fatafta, the Berlin-based policy and advocacy director for digital rights group Access Now, said in an interview with The Associated Press. “We know why the Iranian regime shuts down. It wants to control information. So their goal is quite clear.”
War with Israel tightens information space
But this time, it’s happening during a deadly conflict that erupted on June 13 with Israeli airstrikes targeting nuclear and military sites, top generals and nuclear scientists. At least 657 people, including 263 civilians, have been killed in Iran and more than 2,000 wounded, according to a Washington-based group called Human Rights Activists.
Iran has retaliated by firing 450 missiles and 1,000 drones at Israel, according to Israeli military estimates. Most have been shot down by Israel’s multitiered air defenses, but at least 24 people in Israel have been killed and hundreds others wounded. Guidance from Israeli authorities, as well as round-the-clock news broadcasts, flows freely and consistently to Israeli citizens, creating in the last seven days an uneven picture of the death and destruction brought by the war.
The Iranian government contended Friday that it was Israel who was “waging a war on truth and human conscience.” In a post on X, a social media platform blocked for many of its citizens, Iran’s Foreign Ministry asserted Israel banned foreign media from covering missile strikes.
The statement added that Iran would organize “global press tours to expose Israel’s war crimes” in the country. Iran is one of the world’s top jailer of journalists, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, and in the best of times, reporters face strict restrictions.
Internet-access advocacy group NetBlocks.org reported on Friday that Iran had been disconnected from the global Internet for 36 hours, with its live metrics showing that national connectivity remained at only a few percentage points of normal levels. The group said a handful of users have been able to maintain connectivity through virtual private networks.
Few avenues exist to get information
Those lucky few have become lifelines for Iranians left in the dark. In recent days, those who have gained access to mobile Internet for a limited time describe using that fleeting opportunity to make calls on behalf of others, checking in on elderly parents and grandparents, and locating those who have fled Tehran.
The only access to information Iranians do have is limited to websites in the Islamic Republic. Meanwhile, Iran’s state-run television and radio stations offer irregular updates on what’s happening inside the country, instead focusing their time on the damage wrought by their strikes on Israel.
The lack of information going in or out of Iran is stunning, considering that the advancement of technology in recent decades has only brought far-flung conflicts in Ukraine, the Gaza Strip and elsewhere directly to a person’s phone anywhere in the world.
That direct line has been seen by experts as a powerful tool to shift public opinion about any ongoing conflict and potentially force the international community to take a side. It has also turned into real action from world leaders under public and online pressure to act or use their power to bring an end to the fighting.
But Mehdi Yahyanejad, a key figure in promoting Internet freedom in Iran, said that the Islamic Republic is seeking to “purport an image” of strength, one that depicts only the narrative that Israel is being destroyed by sophisticated Iranian weapons that include ballistic missiles with multiple warheads.
“I think most likely they’re just afraid of the Internet getting used to cause mass unrest in the next phase of whatever is happening,” Yahayanejad said. “I mean, some of it could be, of course, planned by the Israelis through their agents on the ground, and some of this could be just a spontaneous unrest by the population once they figure out that the Iranian government is badly weakened.


BBC threatens legal action against AI startup Perplexity over content scraping

Updated 20 June 2025
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BBC threatens legal action against AI startup Perplexity over content scraping

  • Perplexity has faced accusations from media organizations, including Forbes and Wired, for plagiarizing their content

LONDON: The BBC has threatened legal action against Perplexity, accusing the AI startup of training its “default AI model” using BBC content, the Financial Times reported on Friday, making the British broadcaster the latest news organisation to accuse the AI firm of content scraping.

The BBC may seek an injunction unless Perplexity stops scraping its content, deletes existing copies used to train its AI systems, and submits “a proposal for financial compensation” for the alleged misuse of its intellectual property, FT said, citing a letter sent to Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas.

The broadcaster confirmed the FT report on Friday.

Perplexity has faced accusations from media organizations, including Forbes and Wired, for plagiarizing their content but has since launched a revenue-sharing program to address publisher concerns.

Last October, the New York Times sent it a “cease and desist” notice, demanding the firm stop using the newspaper’s content for generative AI purposes.

Since the introduction of ChatGPT, publishers have raised alarms about chatbots that comb the internet to find information and create paragraph summaries for users.

The BBC said that parts of its content had been reproduced verbatim by Perplexity and that links to the BBC website have appeared in search results, according to the FT report.

Perplexity called the BBC’s claims “manipulative and opportunistic” in a statement to Reuters, adding that the broadcaster had “a fundamental misunderstanding of technology, the internet and intellectual property law.”

Perplexity provides information by searching the internet, similar to ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini, and is backed by Amazon.com (AMZN.O) founder Jeff Bezos, AI giant Nvidia (NVDA.O), and Japan’s SoftBank Group (9984.T).

The startup is in advanced talks to raise $500 million in a funding round that would value it at $14 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported last month.


Streaming platform Deezer starts flagging AI-generated music

Updated 20 June 2025
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Streaming platform Deezer starts flagging AI-generated music

  • French streaming service Deezer is now alerting users when they come across music identified as completely generated by artificial intelligence, the company told AFP on Friday

PARIS: French streaming service Deezer is now alerting users when they come across music identified as completely generated by artificial intelligence, the company told AFP on Friday in what it called a global first.
The announcement by chief executive Alexis Lanternier follows repeated statements from the platform that a torrent of AI-generated tracks is being uploaded daily — a challenge Deezer shares with other streaming services including Swedish heavyweight Spotify.
Deezer said in January that it was receiving uploads of 10,000 AI tracks a day, doubling to over 20,000 in an April statement — or around 18 percent of all music added to the platform.
The company “wants to make sure that royalties supposed to go to artists aren’t being taken away” by tracks generated from a brief text prompt typed into a music generator like Suno or Udio, Lanternier said.
AI tracks are not being removed from Deezer’s library, but instead are demonetised to avoid unfairly reducing human musicians’ royalties.
Albums containing tracks suspected of being created in this way are now flagged with a notice reading “content generated by AI,” a move Deezer says is a global first for a streaming service.
Lanternier said Deezer’s home-grown detection tool was able to spot markers of AI provenance with 98 percent accuracy.
“An audio signal is an extremely complex bundle of information. When AI algorithms generate a new song, there are little sounds that only they make which give them away... that we’re able to spot,” he said.
“It’s not audible to the human ear, but it’s visible in the audio signal.”
With 9.7 million subscribers worldwide, most of them in France, Deezer is a relative minnow compared to Spotify, which has 268 million.
The Swedish firm in January signed a deal supposed to better remunerate artists and other rights holders with the world’s biggest label, Universal Music Group.
But Spotify has not taken the same path as Deezer of demonetising AI content.
It has pointed to the lack of a clear definition for completely AI-generated audio, as well as any legal framework setting it apart from human-created works.


Israeli police prevent media from reporting at scene of Soroka hospital strike

Updated 19 June 2025
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Israeli police prevent media from reporting at scene of Soroka hospital strike

  • Officers block journalists from filming at medical center hit by Iranian missile on Thursday, and demand they hand over equipment
  • The move is said to the result of directives issued by Israel’s minister of national security, Itamar Ben-Gvir
  • Amid growing concerns about restrictions on reporting, advocates for freedom of the press accuse Israeli authorities of censorship

LONDON: Israeli police reportedly prevented journalists from filming at Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba, which suffered “extensive damage” from an Iranian missile strike on Thursday.

Officers were said to have cited security concerns as the reason, on the grounds that footage from the scene revealed “precise locations” and had been broadcast by Al Jazeera, a media outlet banned in Israel since May 2024 over its coverage of the war in Gaza.

The Times of Israel said police confronted one cameraman at the hospital site and demanded he hand over his equipment. The journalist reportedly refused and told officers: “They are seeing you on CNN, seeing you on BBC, seeing you all over the world, so calm down for a second.”

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps claimed responsibility for the attack in which the hospital was damaged, saying it had targeted nearby Israeli military and intelligence sites. The Israeli military denied having any facilities in the area. Footage authenticated by BBC Verify suggested the medical complex was hit by a direct strike.

Israeli police confirmed on Thursday that they ordered a halt to foreign media coverage at Soroka and other affected locations for reasons of national security. They added that they were actively looking for media workers filming at the sites.

“Israel Police units were dispatched to halt the broadcasts, including those of news agencies through which Al Jazeera was airing illegal transmissions,” the force said.

During a visit to the hospital site on Thursday, Israel’s minister of national security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, said: “This morning in Tel Aviv, there was an incident where equipment was confiscated. There is a clear policy: Al Jazeera endangers state security.”

The crackdown on the media comes amid growing concerns among advocates for freedom of the press. Several journalists and other industry professionals have reported obstruction by authorities, including confiscation of equipment. Many accuse Israeli officials of censorship. It follows policy directives from far-right minister Ben-Gvir, in coordination with Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi, to “maintain the safety and security of citizens.”

Sources close to Ben-Gvir said he has instructed Israel’s Shin Bet security agency and the police to step up action against any foreign media outlets or civilians suspected of celebrating the Iranian missile attacks.

“There will be zero tolerance for expressions of joy over attacks on Israel,” Ben-Gvir said this week.

Tensions in the region have risen sharply since coordinated strikes by Israeli authorities against Iranian military and nuclear sites began on June 13. Tehran has retaliated with missile strikes on Israeli targets, some of which have hit civilian buildings.

After a visit to the Soroka hospital site on Thursday, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz escalated the rhetoric further, declaring that Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei “can no longer be allowed to exist.”

Iranian authorities say at least 639 people have been killed and 1,329 wounded since the fighting began a week ago. The death toll in Israel stands at 24, according to officials in the country.