03 April 2011 By Tariq Alhomayed There are many incidents that made up the January
25th Revolution, some of which will be forgotten, some
of which will remain in our memories, so we can draw
lessons from them. One such incident relates to the
media perhaps more than anything else, and this
relates to the truth concerning the wealth of former
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. On the 15th of February I wrote an article entitled
"How much is Mubarak worth?", in which I said that the
British "The Guardian" newspaper had made a mistake
when it estimated the wealth of the former Egyptian
President to be around US$ 70 billion, the mistake
being that the Guardian had based its story on an
article published in the Algerian newspaper "al-Khabr"
in late 2009, against the backdrop of a football
dispute between Egypt and Algeria at the time. In the
article, I concluded that: "The intention here is not
to defend Mubarak, but rather to defend our
intelligence, which is not being respected by some in
the Arab media, when they distort the news. After this
scandal there must be another revolution in our
region, this time within our own media, because it is
an intrinsic part of our crisis." Following the article, some of my media colleagues
launched attacks from all sides. Some did so without
thinking, or going to check the facts, whilst a few
recognized the issue, and were fair, most notably the
esteemed writer Samir Atallah, and Soliman Gouda in
'al-Masry al-Yaom'. Here the reader might say: well
what is the story? The story, in all simplicity, is that the Egyptian
newspaper "al-Masry al-Yaom" published a news piece on
the 28th of March, entitled "The Guardian confesses to
mistake in article on Mubarak's wealth". Here, al-Masry
al-Yaom states that the Guardian readers' editor,
during a visit to the headquarters of al-Masry al-Yaom
in Cairo, admitted that the problem with the article
on the wealth of Mubarak was that its sources were
unreliable. Of course, the aim here is not to
challenge the intentions of the Guardian, or its
professionalism, because to the credit of its readers'
editor, he admitted the error, and told al-Masry al-Yaom
that he was worried that the news would be considered
propaganda to promote the revolution. Thus the British
newspaper showed courage, through one of its
employees, because it admitted it was wrong. But the most important question here is: what about
those who promoted the news without knowledge of the
facts, and when their attention was drawn to the
possibility of a mistake, they did not go back and
check, but instead launched an attack, with the
objective of tarnishing the reputation of anyone who
refuses to see the media become a tool for political
campaigns, or a carrier of lies? It is true that no
one possesses the absolute truth, but the media
strives to, and recognizes if it has committed a
mistake, and then corrects the error. Here lies the
difference between responsible media, and media with
ulterior motives. Much of what has been published in
some of our Arab media is what I always call the
process of "news laundering". This is no less serious
than the crime of money laundering, for the former
provokes society and misleads it, whilst the latter
damages the economy and encourages the spread of
crime, so both are dangerous. Here, my intention is not revenge, but a renewed
call for the need to have a genuine revolution in much
of our Arab media, so it can be reliable, and build
knowledge in the days to come, rather than being a
destructive element.
Tariq Alhomayed is the Editor-in-Chief of Asharq Al-Awsat, the youngest
person to be appointed that position. He holds a BA degree in Media studies from
King Abdul Aziz University in Jeddah, and has also completed his Introductory
courses towards a Master's degree from George Washington University in
Washington D.C. He is based in London. Comments 💬 التعليقات |