Al-Jazeera: Here We Stand; We Can Do No Otherwise

By Yosri Fouda, Al-Jazeera investigative correspondent and London bureau chief

Apart from other things, the sudden death of Syria's president Hafez Al-Asad last June meant that my boss and I were stuck in Cairo after the postponing of Egypt's Media Day, to which we had been invited. It was a chance for me to discover another side to the Qatari managing director of Al-Jazeera Satellite Channel, Mohammad Jasim Al-Ali.

In the evening he took me (the Egyptian) on a tour in the alleys of his much beloved Old Cairo. Later we caught up with our Baghdad bureau chief, a veteran of Egypt's much-cultured sixties. As we were all enjoying shisha in El-Gerioun Café someone approached us and introduced himself as a columnist with Al-Ahram. As far as he was concerned, it was all praise for Al-Jazeera for "all the freedom and professionalism it created in the Arab world," and especially for the making of "that documentary on Egypt's prisoners of war of 1956 and 1967." It was, in his own words, "a cinematic vision of a thorough investigation and a heartfelt expression of the plight of the forgotten."

A few months later, though, for reasons beyond my comprehension, I found myself reading in Al-Ahram by that same columnist what amounts to my being a traitor for having made that documentary. "The generals of Al-Jazeera have declared war. Look at him [me]! He is using an old woman and having her say, I have lost three sons in the war, what can I do?"

Out of the deep darkness of the sixties in Egypt emerges a text of an exceptional phone call made by the former head of Egypt's General (that is civil) Intelligence Service, Salah Nasr, who was at the time under house arrest, to the editor of Al-Ahram, Mohammad Hassanain Haikal, who is widely known as Gamal Abdel Nasser's media brain. Here is a translation of what is on the tape:

MH: Hello?
SN: Yes, ahlan wa-sahlan, I tried to get through to you in the morning. Did they tell you?
MH: Yes, they did. How are you and how's your health?
SN: Alhamdulillah, but I am a bit upset with you.
MH: Just let me tell you something. I know you might be upset with me.
SN: I know you are a free man. Just listen to me, to a man who is talking to you from prison.
MH: No, no, no. I'd like to tell you something before you go on. Please account for the difference between the writing and the making of a news item. You are a man who spent a long time in power.
SN: Of course I know [the difference].
MH: That's it. I have nothing more to add.
SN: I am interested in the truth, you see, and I know you are a free man whose only interest is the truth. I am now imprisoned and unable to talk or defend myself. Why would they not just let me talk? Is what was published true or was it just "newspaper [fantasy] talk"?
MH: I'll tell you something. I was glad when they told me you tried to get through. I thought I would put it in your hands that there is a difference between the case of someone editing a news item and someone dictating a news item. Irrespective of what the truth might be. Journalistically speaking, we are not, this is not of our doing.
SN: Khalaas, what can I say if it is not of your doing? Do I at least have the right to reply, or do I not?
MH: I'll tell you something, if you choose to reply I will be prepared to publish, but should it be censored I will of course let you know.

This is a most important phone call in the study of the relationship between Arab politics and the reality of Arab journalism. On the one hand, we have the most prominent Arab journalist during the sixties, and perhaps until now, begging us in the image of the most famous intelligence man to please understand "the difference between getting a story and making a story." This of course is in the context of trying to detach himself from the messy power conflict after what he creatively described as "al-naksa," the 5th of June catastrophe.

In other words, the editor of the widely distributed Al-Ahram is actually providing us with proof of the widespread suspicion that you could be "less than honest," and sometimes immoral, and still be a "respectable" journalist and a big writer.

And on the other hand, we understand the utmost attention given by Nasser to a set of mass media almost totally incorporated into the ruling regime to the point that the reality of what we were meant to believe to be "the fourth authority" is in actual terms nothing more than a dummy. This reality has defined for "journalists" how to think of themselves, the government, and the people and how to think of the inter-cutting lines between these parties. In such a paradigm the ruler becomes the chairman of the "journalistic" institution, the intelligence man the editor, and the "journalist" the shadow.

A few weeks prior to this phone call, Ahmed Said of Sout Al-Arab, the Voice of the Arabs, was famously shouting on his pan-Arab radio that "we have rounded them up in the central area of Sinai." He knew he was lying, but this is not important. A helpless group of about one hundred miserable non-armed Egyptian soldiers, having listened in to the only means of communication with home, decided to change their path of withdrawal from the southern to the central area. You can guess the rest: half of them were killed and the other half were captured by the Israelis. When I interviewed one of those former POWs he simply blamed the "journalist."

Although today's citizen is a little luckier than yesterday's who never knew what a satellite dish is, never saw his "big journalists" criticize the official line, and hardly had access to BBC shortwave service, there remains the fact that half the Arabs, to start with, are illiterate. There also remains the fact that our predominantly oral culture is still incapable of lending its beautiful treasures to a predominantly pragmatic businesslike age. And there remains the fact that the number of those of us who might be willing to give up their existing benefits for not-so-guaranteed wishes is far less than those of us who are capable of doing it. These facts are sadly considered positive by an authority whose top priority is to stay in power at any cost. continued

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