By Sam Vandenbergh
When I was in Egypt in 2009 to study Arabic, I went for a walk in Cairo and didn’t need Facebook to notice that there was something going on deep under the Egyptian skin. Europe did only recently, and hesitating.
One morning, there was finally a new face when I opened my newspaper here in Belgium, it was Wael Ghonim. In the days before that it seemed that Europe had lost its interest in the happenings in Egypt. This is no surprise, the riots in downtown Cairo and the pro-Mubarak supporters intimidated many journalists, our window on Egypt. But the face of Wael Ghonim brings a fresh wind to the covering of the revolution in Egypt. The media are getting a bit hyperactive here, not just about Egypt, but in general. They need new faces, new stories and they need them fast. The social networks were much faster, not for the first time, in the coverage of the “Jasmin Revolution” in Tunisia. Only in the first weeks of January the press noticed that there was something going on, so it became a point of honor to be in Egypt as fast as possible.
Quotes of Silvio Berlusconi calling Mubarak a wise man, didn’t help the efforts the European Commission and European Council are taking to pronounce a unified voice for Europe. The people do support the Egyptians in their call for democracy and freedom of speech, and in their call for any dictator to step down. But because of these incidents, the official statements are very polite, unable to strengthen their message. President of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy, acknowledged this recently. So Europe isn’t one monolithic block, not in politics and not in media. Just like their national leaders, the media also fail to play their role, that of the fourth estate.
The fact that the media gave more attention to this event in the final days than the real thing, happening thousands of miles away, is significant. If editors choose to focus on just the revolution itself, the coverage of it comes, rather quickly, to a dead point. Few dare to stay, and want to report in poor and middle class areas, about the social problems that triggered the uprising.
To many newspapers this is just another revolution, and a way to make money from it. But apparently they don’t see the possible role they can play in the future of global history. Now that Mubarak has stepped down, the chances are pretty big that there will come just another dictator. Washington is only interested in “stability”, and a revolution just isn’t the shortest route to achieve this. If the media in Europe focus on the social problems and the call for democracy, they can put pressure on the politicians of the world and the future rulers of Egypt. They should make a checklist for the things that need to change, not just more democracy but very elaborate.
The economic crisis, however, left some scars. And since the media are getting more commercialized into conglomerates, they don’t want or can’t spend budgets on these foreign affairs. Instead, they focus on internal problems. Cutting in the budgets of education or other policy domains now keep the journalists busy. And there is nothing against this, only the way these cuts are carried out are subject of discussion, but people see this as a necessary pain in the recovery of the economy.
Wealthy Europeans have to give back some of the gains in the last century. This makes us into, as some have said, nations of whiners, there seems to be nothing positive anymore. The wave of revolutions in the Arab world came by surprise for the West, and it was a very positive signal from a region where the people are believed to be gagged.
Unexpected news gets high appreciation rates by its readers, but due to its hyperactivity the European press needs new unexpected things every day. The press wants to believe that change is coming indeed, but they don’t know what to do when there isn’t a new story.
Then they focus lies on the Muslim Brotherhood or unorganized opposition. Again: negative stories. So it’s the task of the protesters to make news at this moment, to keep it positive and keep the attention of the West on Egypt. It’s the world upside down, but that’s just characteristic for an era where social media make the news agenda.
