I don’t know how we insist on having a free press but at the same time try to thwart the right of newspapers to spread baseless rumors right left and center.
Officials bodies concerned with the press – the Higher Press Council, national television and state run newspapers – were enraged over a foolish rumor which was debunked before the following editions of the weekly newspapers that created it were even released.
The outrage of these bodies is quite understandable, but what we cannot understand is why it took them so long before taking action. Our press has been dealing in rumors for decades. Not merely did it spread rumors, but it sometimes even created them.
For coming up with a rumor is effortless while true news that adds to the reader’s knowledge is exclusive to serious and respectable quality papers. But in order to avoid this extra effort that requires real journalistic skill, many of our start-up papers would publish rumors only to retract them the next day.
As a result many innocent people have been stung by concerted character assassination campaigns of our newspapers. A look at our national newspapers, for instance, shows that those who fell out with the regime have been victims of smear campaigns, which are not based on the careful analysis of the actions and stances of those victims, but on the creation of malicious rumors around them.
The situation has reached such lows as to deal with people’s personal lives, which not only taints the writer who came up with the rumor and the newspaper which published it, but also taints the regime more than it does the victims of this character assassination.
I recall, for instance, the cases of Mostafa El Nahhas, Fouad Serag Eldin, Khaled Mohi Eldin and Mohamed Hassanein Heikal.
During the Nasser Era, Al Wafd party leader Mostafa El Nahhas and politician Fouad Serag Eldin were subjected to smear campaigns that vigorously backfired as proven by the sheer size of the funeral of the former, and the victorious return to political life in the 70s of the latter.
During the Sadat era, such character assassinations based on false information were the order of the day, targeting those who disagreed with the regime. One of the foremost journalists at the time, Moussa Sabry, even went as far as claiming that Khaled Mohi Eldin – one of he Free Officers who staged the 1952 revolution – lived only to indulge in the pleasures of the flesh to the extent that his bedroom was paneled with mirrors all the way up to the ceiling!
And the rumors about journalist and former editor-in-chief of Al Ahram Mohamed Hassanein Heikal, were endless, equally replete with lies including accusations of working for the CIA.
A look at the national press in the current era shows that it too stands accused of using the same strategy against those who oppose the regime.
Resorting to this rumor-mongering as opposed to publishing correct information is thus endemic to our press, whether national or opposition. The difference is that in the past when all the press was state-owned, the only victims were opposition figures. But now, because of the wider margin of freedom, the opposition and independent press can retaliate by indulging in the same character assassination schemes which was previously – and for the span of more than half a century – the exclusive right of our national papers, that still practice it to this day.
One leading member of the ruling National Democratic Party once complained to me about how the press had him married to a cinema actress he had never met before. He related sadly how he read the “headlines as he was with his wife and daughters.
“Is this journalism? Is this freedom of the press? he asked me.
And just as I was about to tell him that this was the pinnacle of press freedom, my personal and professional conscience prevented me, so I gave no answer.
The latest rumor, that moved the Higher Press Council, national television and state-run newspapers, certainly cannot be condoned by any journalist worth his salt.
But out of the same sense of patriotism, I should hope that they would speak out with the same energy when the reputations of ordinary citizens – and not just that of high officials – are at stake.
Mohamed Salmawyis President of the Writer’s Union of Egypt and editor-in-chief of Al-Ahram Hebdo. This article is syndicated in the Arabic press.
