Protesters use their slippers to hit portraits of famous Egyptian talk show hosts during a rally in front of Cairo's University in support of Egypt's Mohamed Mursi on December 1, 2012. KHALED DESOUKI/AFP/Getty Images[/caption]
“For journalists to operate in a professional manner, they need professional institutions to protect them,” said Mohamed Baio, former head of the General Press Corporation, the body that controlled newspaper publications under Gaddafi. Baio’s statement is reflective of the plight that many Libyan journalists and their colleagues face in transitional Arab countries. Yes, former taboos that used to restrict traditional media coverage have been eroded, but journalists are not yet free. Many continue to face intimidation, with the same oppressive regulatory framework still in place. Most importantly, they are not sure how to translate their new-found freedom into quality journalism. This is most keenly expressed in an explosion of unfounded statements and biases, a situation exacerbated by the lack of editorial policies and ethical codes, as well as weak professional institutions. Post-Arab Spring, the ideal of Western professional journalism is also questioned by journalists in the region.
In the post-revolution media landscape in countries where the regime was toppled, traditional media regained its vitality after having been co-opted for decades as a messenger of government policies. National traditional media, long mistrusted by audiences, allowed dissident voices a platform. However, there are on-going attempts by state actors to manipulate the media, continuing the practices of their predecessors. After interviewing journalists in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya about their media practices and values post-revolution, it became clear that the media scene is far from rosy. Journalists who were used to publishing the government’s messages—particularly in Libya and Tunisia—are now facing a crucial challenge: the rebuilding of their reputation in order to regain the trust of their audiences. This important shift cannot occur without the revision of their practices and the adoption of professional standards.
The transitional media landscape is exhibiting the same symptoms witnessed in previous transitional media experiences: an eruption of views, unfounded accusations and libel accompanied by an alignment of media outlets along ideologically and politically polarized lines. The fierce political battle fought between Islamist governments and their liberal opponents is turning the media landscape into a public battleground; the Western model of neutral and objective reporting is rejected by journalists in transitional Arab countries as unrealistic under these tense political circumstances.
In Egypt and Tunisia, the enormous political and ideological divisions are transforming the media into a political actor in itself. The pro-liberal media is accused of fueling anger against the Islamist governments. Calls for the “purification” of the media of those considered to be the remnant of old regimes—“liars,” or even “infidels”—has converted the media into both an actor and a target. The media production city in Cairo has twice been under siege by Salafi activists. On the other side of the spectrum, religious media have been flourishing with the fall of the Mubarak and Ben Ali regimes—bar the recent clampdown on Islamist TV channels immediately after the removal of Mursi—offering platforms for hate speech where defamation, attacks and even calls for killing are becoming standard practice.
Unable to evolve towards newsy, investigative reporting, the transitional media scene is copying Hyde Park’s Speakers’ Corner, as rightly described by the first secretary of the influential Egyptian Journalists’ Syndicate, Gamal Fahmy: you can say whatever you want without any responsibility. The national media missed the opportunity to act as a watchdog of political power, while its weak structures and internal problems are also hindering the development of this role.
Hani Shukrallah, the former editor-in-chief of Al-Ahram Online who said he was forced out of his job by the Muslim Brotherhood administration, speaks of this missed opportunity: “This should have been a golden time for investigative genres. Before, you could not investigate Mubarak’s fortune or corruption cases; the media could have been a leader in exposing all these cases. We don’t have the skills or the orientation of media organizations to send their best reporters to investigate these topics.”
The explosion of talk shows as the most popular media production, characterized by their hosts taking the lead in casting public opinion, is consolidating an editorial model whereby a journalist is by definition a defender of a cause, much like the orators at Speakers’ Corner. In transitional Egypt, where the arm wrestle between the Islamists and their liberal opponents continues to rage, these talk shows are de facto political clubs. A person’s political alignment can be ascertained from their preferred talk show. According to host Tamer Amin, a proponent for activist journalism, a talk show gains prominence by demonstrating a “vision.”
“I am talking here about a vision for the country’s problems, and not a political role,” he said. Amin claims he even receives phone calls from the audience asking him to give them an answer on how they should understand the political events occurring around them.
Mohmood Saad, whose talk show was considered one of the most anti-Muslim Brotherhood media platforms (prior to the Egyptian military's July 3 ouster of President Mursi), strongly refutes the “neutral moderator” model for talk shows. “We have a real problem here. There are some presenters who say we have no opinion, we have to be neutral. I am primarily not a presenter; I am a journalist and, from a young age, I have been used to having my own opinions. I am a journalist who is producing a report for the TV, instead of writing it for the press, so I have to have an opinion.”
The personalization of the media discourse around the talk show host, a matter that is fueling the appetite of both the audience and the advertisers, is not a unique recipe for success, according to prime-time talk show host Sharif Amer. “I never cry on air as others do; I try as much as I can not to demonstrate my opinions,” he said, noting his ability to distance himself from events by way of managing his guests. However, the model presented by Amer is the exception and not the rule. It is also not clear to what extent this model would be attractive to Egyptian audiences eager to watch heated political debates.
If national media are still far from operating as a watchdog, given the lack of such traditions, local media are now facing new challenges and restrictions. For instance, Libyan journalists are far from being free. After the fall of the oppressive Gaddafi propaganda machine, they now face the threats of militias who are reining in the new Libya and whose authority represents the major challenge to the transitional government. Reporting on the abuses of these armed groups is as risky as it was to challenge the authority of the former regime.
The experience of Zainab Al-Habbas, in her quest for investigative reporting speaks volumes of this reoccurring intimidation. After having worked as a language editor within the former state media, Habbas managed to find employment as a reporter in Febrayer (February) newspaper, one of the few print publications launched after the fall of the regime and considered to be the new state newspaper. However, Habbas’s enthusiasm for investigative reporting—a field that she knew nothing about and was not prepared to enter into—managed to put her in hot water. When she produced a report about the bombing of religious shrines by extremist factions, her editor’s reaction was, ‘Who asked you to write on this topic?’ The report was ultimately stayed and never saw the light of day.
The hegemony of the armed groups in Libya is hindering the reconstruction of the media sector post-Gaddafi. For instance, Mariyam Hajaji, who was appointed head of the FM station and program director of Al-Libiyya TV and radio group, was not able to function properly within her role. “The real bosses are our guards, militias who protected the place and later imposed their control over it. The interference was to the extent that some of them went into the studio and asked the presenter to leave. The state should take responsibility. They often said, ‘We don’t want confrontation,’” she explained.
But for the national media to regain its main function as provider of accurate and up-to-date information, it has to first regain its legitimacy in the eyes of its audiences. Mistrusted for their bias toward regimes for decades, journalists, especially those who used to work for the former state media, had to convince their audiences that they could be trusted once again.
After the fall of the regime, Tunisian state media reporters faced a hostile environment where people refused to talk to them in the streets and even attacked them. For Hanene Zbais, the reporter for Réalités magazine, the problem is that Tunisian media did not recognize its previous mistakes. Journalists and their editors, she says, are still hiding behind the belief that they could not have done anything differently.
She describes a feeling of guilt that she and her fellow journalists had to grapple with immediately after the fall of Ben Ali’s regime: “We had to react rapidly to erase this impression and to redress our image. While the country was burning, we published a paid article praising the achievements of one of the family members of Ben Ali. This was a major setback for us. After the revolution, we had meetings with the editor-in-chief and the owner asking to publish a letter of apology. Their answer was a complete denial: ‘What did we do?’ We had to assume that under the pressure of the regime, such as others, we did nothing wrong.”
However Amira Arfawi, who works for state television in Tunisia, refuses to be apologetic. To the people who accused her of being a regime trumpet, Arfawi simply responds: “When I interviewed you, you used to start praising the regime even if I am not asking you for it. So, you were also a tool of the regime. You were not forced to praise the regime. I was obliged to do so; I had to save my job.”
National media post-revolution are a divided landscape rife with struggle between those who are accused of serving former regimes and the newcomers, mostly young and inexperienced journalists. In Libya, staff of the old media regime, called “Tahaleb” (algae), are mostly sitting at home because they are not able to re-integrate into the new media institutions. In Tunisia, calls for blacklisting journalists who accumulated wealth through their bias for the former regime has contributed to further division in the media community.
Furthermore, the long-standing internal structural problems in state media are making the reconstruction process a near-impossible task. For instance, the state broadcast sector in Egypt employs more than 43,000 staff, most of them redundant and with no real professional training. The restructuring of this sector requires a review of its ownership system, along with staff training and editorial guidelines that define professional standards beyond the intervention of the government and the entrenched habits of self-censorship.
The rebirth of national Arab media post-dictatorship will be a long and thorny process—one that journalists should take in to their own hands and prioritize over political and ideological divisions. The inability of traditional journalists in post-Arab Spring countries to lobby for their professional rights as a community is hindering the process of empowerment within the media sector. The competition with bloggers and citizen journalists has exacerbated these difficulties. So is there any real future for the national media industries in these countries? With the importance granted to national content provided by national media, the industry is enjoying a golden opportunity to shine again. But that opportunity could quickly pass if the national media community does not seriously tackle the core of the problem: defining the professional standards for journalists working in these evolving media environments.
