A year and a half after CNN announced its plans to launch a network hub in Qatar, the media company is deepening its ties to the Gulf state with a Middle East speaker series in the capital of Doha that is slated for late October.

CNN said this week it was kicking off its inaugural “Global Perspectives” event in Doha on Oct. 29 with a newly unveiled lineup featuring government officials, business leaders and cultural figures, among others.

The upcoming forum will be hosted in partnership with Media City Qatar, where CNN inked a deal last year to open a new broadcasting studio as part of an ongoing effort to build the network’s presence in the Middle East. 

That agreement — which entailed an annual fee of several million dollars that Qatar would pay to CNN, according to sources — raised some concerns among critics who had questioned if it would jeopardize the network’s ability to produce objective journalism on the Gulf state. 

CNN is among several media companies, including The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg, that have expanded their business relationships with Qatar — even as the emirate has faced scrutiny for its lack of press freedoms, record of human rights abuses and sponsorship of Hamas. 

Late last year, CNN also served as a co-sponsor of Qatar’s Doha Forum, whose panels elevated several prominent figures who have embraced hostile views on Israel or espoused antisemic tropes — including far-right media commentator Tucker Carlson; Trita Parsi, the founder of a pro-Iran lobbying group; and Nika Soon-Shiong, the publisher of Drop Site News and the daughter of Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong.

In a statement, Ellana Lee, CNN’s global head of productions, said next month’s series will explore “the ways in which power, influence, technology, business and culture intersect in today’s constantly shifting world,” while “looking to the future through the prism of this unique and increasingly important region.”

The tentative early roster for the Doha conference features Tareq Amin, CEO of Humain, a Saudi AI company; Vitali Klitschko, the mayor of Kyiv; and Mohammed Saif Al-Sowaidi, the CEO of the Qatar Investment Authority, the state’s sovereign wealth fund — which is among several Gulf investors that are backing the pending merger of David Ellison’s Paramount Skydance and CNN’s parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery.

Multiple CNN anchors and correspondents — including Wolf Blitzer, Christiane Amanpour and Becky Anderson — will lead the discussions in Doha, which will later be highlighted on a dedicated show, according to an announcement.

Anderson, an international anchor for CNN based in Abu Dhabi, on Monday interviewed Majed Al Ansari, the spokesperson for Qatar’s Foreign Ministry, where he argued that “the nucleus” of tensions with Iran stem from “what happened in Gaza” during Israel’s war against Hamas.

Speaking at a conference in Abu Dhabi on Monday, Al Ansari gave Anderson a shoutout while discussing efforts to advance Qatar’s narrative around the globe. “I look in front of me now and I see a lot of the media people that represent the best and the brightest,” the Qatari advisor said from the stage of the Hili Forum, “including Becky from CNN and others.”

“But is our narrative getting through?” he asked, adding that “we need to speak with one voice in the Gulf.”