This article was published by Issandr el-Amrani at the Guardian’s Comment is Free on May 3, 2007.

Heroes or martyrs?
The Arab world presents a generally grim picture of media freedom. Newspapers and television or radio stations are generally impossible to start without the state’s approval and require close connections to ruling regimes. While satellite news stations such as al-Jazeera have brought much good to the media landscape, they are not immune from the backroom dealings between Arab regimes or powerful business and political interests.

Local Rupert Murdochs have brought more polished, consumer-oriented media - a vast improvement over ossified state organs - but they tread carefully on the most sensitive issues, not wanting to endanger vast business empires. Even the most courageous journalists know they can be only a pen stroke away from being sacked, banned, imprisoned, or worse. Al-Jazeera journalist Howeida Taha found this out yesterday when an Egyptian court sentenced her in absentia to six months in prison - just in time for World Press Freedom Day.

It is little surprise, then, that in the past few years, some of the best journalism in the region has come from a burgeoning local blogosphere. Take the example of Egypt, the most populous Arab country and a cultural leader in the region. Last autumn, bloggers such as Wael Abbas - the closest thing in the Egyptian blogosphere to a wire service - were the first to publish gruesome torture videos made by police officers with their mobile phones. If you were interested in the wave of labour unrest that Egypt has exerienced in the last six months, you could do no better than to turn to Arabawy, where leftist journalist and blogger Hossam el-Hamalawy has kept tabs on a social upheaval barely covered by official Egyptian media. National indignation over the harassment of women in Downtown Cairo last Eid (the Muslim holiday after Ramadan) could not have become the major talking point of television chat shows for a week if it were not for bloggers that had captured the event on their mobile phones and broadcast it on YouTube. Bloggers have on repeated occasions imposed their agenda on the mainstream media, which could not afford to ignore what many were discussing online anyway.
Continue reading ‘Guardian: Heroes or martyrs?’