In my office, I keep files on the most important news stories. Before the recent revolutions of rage, these included a dossier on Egypt, the ‘Mother of the World', the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia because of the world's affinity to its oil, and the Palestinian cause along with news on Israel because the latter is the ‘cause'. Then following the technological onslaught on the world of journalism, I also now have folders in my email inbox dedicated for a limited number of news stories on other countries. Before the eruption of the Arab revolutions of rage, I added an electronic folder on Iran because of its many problems and issues, and Turkey, which became a major regional power under the Justice and Development Party. I also added a dossier on Syria and Lebanon, following the assassination of Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, as the news on both countries often overlaps. In addition to all this, I had always kept a dossier on Libya, not because of its political importance or its pan-Arab or even pan-African role, but because of the bizarreness of the Colonel and his family. The dossier was thus a collection of odd and strange stories about Africa's King of Kings, much more than it was about political news. Then Mohammed Bouazizi set himself on fire, and the rest is history. I thus started a file on Tunisia, and another on Morocco, and also Yemen, Bahrain, Jordan, and Syria, and even the United States. Each of these files became many times over bigger in size, in the course of two months only, than anything I had collected in the past on any issue in one or two years. In fact, ever since I entered the world of journalism (the English-language press first), I have been hearing the expression ‘no news, good news'. What is meant by it is that the news must be bad news to merit publication. If our countries were democratic and their peoples were content with them, they would not have protested, and the authorities would not have fired at them for their disloyalty, and no heads of states would have been ousted and others saw their seats of power shaken. Nor would have the world press published our news, including Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya. Bad news sells newspapers, and it is for this reason that newspapers are full of it. We have an example about this from Egypt: When a wealthy man from the ruling party murdered an actress, or ordered her killing, the newspapers covered this and the ensuing trial for days and weeks. The issue even returned to the limelight and to publication, following the collapse of Hosni Mubarak's regime. This is while bearing in mind that when the relationship between the wealthy man and the actress was good, we did not hear anything about him or her. Even if he had given her an expensive ring at the time, for instance, no one would have thought anything of it…except his wife perhaps. There is a point about news that the reader must understand. Whether it is good news or bad news, the news must be accurate, even when not necessarily representing the truth. What I mean here is that I constantly convey what I hear from officials, and quote what they say as I heard it and recorded it, to the extent that I have not retracted or apologized for a single news story in 40 continuous years of working in journalism. And yet, an interlocutor may tell me that the economy of a given country is prosperous, that the per capita income is higher than that of Switzerland, and that bribe has been eliminated completely (probably because there is nothing left in the country to steal), and also that it is a wonderful world and that everything is perfect. This is all beside the truth, however, if not the opposite of the truth. The only thing correct about it is that it has been accurately quoted. As I looked at the dossier on Egypt's news, which almost reaches up to the ceiling, I remembered a time when the news on Egypt was mostly on tourism, or archaeological finds in a country that alone houses a third of the ancient world's antiquities. This is while the other news that I had gathered pertained to the Palestinian cause and the Gaza Strip in particular. Today there is a real freedom of the press in Egypt, and without freedom, there can be no real journalism. However, this does not mean that freedom makes all newspapers good, but instead ensures that good journalism and bad journalism can both exist. This is without forgetting that even the good press will still continue to publish bad news, because good news does not sell newspapers. I thus compare between the news of this and that country, and find that, despite the crackdown on the protests and the deaths, there is still hope for a better future, and the blood of the martyrs would thus not have been shed in vain. Perhaps the only exception here is the news about the ‘Cause': You have Israel and its advocates in the Congress, and you have the Likudniks who are everywhere, and the fascist racist government in Israel. And as if all this is not enough, there are disputes among the Palestinians themselves, which recently ended with a reconciliation that we hope will endure, and not meet the same fate as the previous reconciliations. And as I was looking for the origin of the expression ‘no news, good news', I stumbled upon a report issued this month by Human Rights Watch, with its full title being “No news is good news: Abuses against journalists by Palestinian security forces”. The 35-page report details the abuses perpetrated by the Palestinian National Authority and Hamas against journalists, where the latter were intimidated, threatened and sometimes detained. Tomorrow, I shall continue with the news on Colonel Muammar, which is rather stranger than fiction. May God help the people of Libya. [email protected]
