I
received a lot of comments regarding what I wrote in the last two weeks about journalism
where I focused on flaws in our profession in our current time, especially the
human component… I was not surprised that all comments were of the same opinion…
actually some of them went on detailing to the extent that I cannot published
what Mr. Salah Said said for example as he gave examples of journalists from
different eras.
If
it has to do with me, I would not have hesitated for a moment to publish all
opinions no matter wild they are… since I believe that curing inflammation hit
by pus is by bursting this pus out by force in order to get rid of it and after
this comes the blood to make sure that the white cells that stood to the virus
and died are gone now… and it is now time for the red cells to start flooding
again and do its important job.
Of
what I received, I had a message from the colleague and friend Mahmoud
ash-Sherbini; the earnest journalist, in which he said: “do they say that what
you write is painful?... what if you told them about the really painful facts?...
what will they say or do?... even some years after Mubarak came to power, we
still had real newspapers and true profession leaders in journalism… we had
Abdel-Rahman ash-Sharqawi, Salah Hafez, Mustafa Bahgat Badawi, Lotfi el-Kholi “before
Copenhagen Declaration”, Salah Eissa “before working in Al-Qahera newspaper”,
Muhammed Sayed Ahmed, Mahmoud Amin el-A’alem, Kamel Zoheiri and many other
names here and there… since Mubarak insulted the researcher Dr. Muhammed Sayed
Saied, journalism has been abused until our present time… those Sheikhs
of profession or old-in-age journalists we have now are not comparable in their
writings to some writers whom I won’t call young or youth, but I prefer to call
them the new writers…
“…
Hosni Mubarak had offended the profession of journalism and gave some “supposed-to-be”
profession leaders gifts and privileges… also Safwat esh-Sherif granted them
the “no-honor” medal… and so they fell and cared no longer but for gifts,
privileges and luxury… it was normal that they used the profession for their
very own benefits… and so, diligence, hardworking, mere truth, and
unprecedented unique idea became no longer the criteria for assessing the journalistic
work…
“…
by time, journalists of the new generations got used to this shameful reality…
profession leaders backed from doing their role… profiteers advanced to the
frontline to make use of the grants given to them by cajoling people in
authority… and so, our profession ended up in the current situation it suffers
from…
“…
for example, that journalist specialized in low-profile repugnant artistic
interviews became the editor-in-chief of some of the biggest newly-born
newspapers depending on some journalists good at writing without producing
something new… then he became an announcer in a very famous satellite channel…
and that light-hearted desk editor suddenly became an announcer of a TV show
and is interviewing big names in order to make a big name for himself… not to
mention other journalists working in satellite channels and who receive orders
from security agencies…
“…
I also believe that most of our present-time stars in media have not read a
single book… they do not know that we have Zaki Naguib Mahmoud… and we have
Naguib Mahfouz… and that there is no Zaki Naguib Mahfouz at all… what Mubarak
did to journalism, culture and stagnation of cultural life of all its kinds has
led to our current miserable state… everyone turned from the hardworking
journalism into journalism of indulging in luxury… and so we all became words
in your article diagnosing the horrible conditions of our profession… my
sincere wishes to you, Sir”.
I
have published the message of colleague Mahmoud ash-Sherbini as it is with the
bitterness included in it… and I still have more than thirty comments other
than this… some of them cannot be published in Al Ahram as I said above… however,
I can say like my colleague Mr. Ahmed Abo el-Ma’ati said in his long message: “…
it is a big issue that needs a series of articles for the situation is really
serious and the future is not clear to a great extent that may push our profession
– if we continued with the same current state – into extinction”.
For
the space is limited, I will keep the comments of my colleagues and readers
that I have not published for later for they represent part of the diagnosis
and cure of the flaws of journalism in specific and media in general.
Now
I say I believe we should give the chance for the councils recently established
to produce… and let our assessment criteria be their outcome and not the
persons in charge of them or their history… despite that some have noticed that
if the decision maker wants to tighten the grip over any profession
congregation, he brings someone they have declined before… someone they thought
they have got him out of the field but one sees him again coming back as an
opponent and judge in the same time… Sadat did it before when he appointed a
minister for justice whom judges have already refused as a head for their
congregation few days before he was nominated minister.
We
shall continue later…
Translated into English by: Dalia Elnaggar
This article was published in Al Ahram newspaper on
May 11, 2017.
To see the original article, go to:
#alahram #ahmed_elgammal #journalism_in_Egypt
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