Even if the newspapers try hard to reflect realities as they are, what they reflect is only a picture of the reality or a reflection of it and not the reality itself.

Even if the newspapers try hard to reflect realities as they are, what they reflect is only a picture of the reality or a reflection of it and not the reality itself. Ordinary people are very much aware of this simple fact and they use the expression “Kalam Jarayid” (newspaper rumors) whenever they want to describe an exaggerated event, a manipulated one or a completely fabricated one.  However, knowing all this, people did not stop reading newspapers and giving their contents a special sanctity, in a very confusing manner and contradiction, just because the content is written in printed letters.  Hussein Amin (1932-2014), an Egyptian writer, expressed this dilemma in an exquisite manner in his book Shakhsiyat Ariftuha (People I knew).

In his early youth, Hussein Amin was one of the Arab employees at BBC in London, when Britain decided to participate – with France and Israel – in the biggest attack on Nasser’s Egypt, in what was known then as the Tripartite Aggression (al-Udwan al- Thulathi) in 1956. The moment the war was declared, the Arab employees met and discussed a proposal calling for a collective resignation of all Arab workers to protest Britain’s involvement in the aggression.

Hussein said in his book that all the enthusiasm was in vain, because after lengthy discussions the employees simply wanted to continue to earning their living. Only two people responded positively to the proposal: himself and Mahmoud Morsi, a broadcaster, who became, upon his return to Egypt, a movie and TV actor.  On the plane trip back to Egypt, they read the Egyptian coverage of their meeting, entitled: “A Meeting of Arab BBC Workers.” The content of this piece of news was: “All Arab workers of BBC resigned in expression of their anger and protest of the war.” 

Hussein Amin wrote that although he was personally part of the story, and was a witness of the extent of distortion, he continued to buy newspapers “in order to know what was going on in the world!“

Yet if this distortion was known in the year 1956, i.e., four years before the creation of Egyptian television, it is strange that newspaper rumours are still able to distort and fabricate news at a time of open screens. This happened recently in an event seen by the entire world during President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi’s visit to the United Nations this past September.

In mid-October 2014, the New York Times accused Al-Ahram Egyptian newspaper of distorting an article written by David Kirkpatrick on October 7 entitled As Egyptians Grasp for Stability, Sisi Fortifies His Presidency. In his article, Kirkpatrick wrote that al-Sisi’s speech at the UN was met with silence inside the UN hall, with praise coming only from the Egyptian delegation and press. However, the translation of the al-Ahram version of this article claimed that the praise came from “foreign delegations” and from the “leaders of the world.” It appeared that the New York Times – based on al-Ahram’s translation – is also praising the Egyptian president who (received warm applause from the assembled world leaders when he said “Long live Egypt”) according to the distorted translation.

This journalistic crisis ended with an apology of the English and Arabic al-Ahram. In the two apologies, the official “Middle East Agency” was blamed for the error in the translation of the original report.  However, the apology in Arabic contained an accusation against the US journalist describing him as hostile to the June 30 revolution. And of course, in the English apology, there was no such accusation. 

With the online world, the social media and the heated competition to attract the attention of users amid a flood of virtual materials, Newspapers Rumors became Site Rumors and this could be worse because printed news is usable for one day only but electronic news can be re-published and shared to spin forever in the virtual space.

Internet users in Egypt “reside” inside the social networking sites and they depend on the official pages of newspapers to get news.  For example, al-Masri al-Yaum (The Egyptian Today) newspaper has more than four million subscribers and it is facing a fierce competition from news sites that are not as serious and have less credibility. This is tempting the newspaper—known as the most institutionalized newspaper in the private Egyptian news world—in some cases, to practice unethical “media acts” which could implicate it.

Among such acts is a news title which was published on the newspaper’s cover and which was circulated by readers and agencies as well as by foreign press. The article was entitled: The Arrest of a University Student on Charge of Possessing George Orwell’s Famous 1984 Novel.

It was clear that this news piece was manipulated not only because the police, the apparatus which abducted the student, is not an apparatus with the power of pressing charges and not because this novel, which was published in 1984, is available in Egyptian bookshops and none of the readers of this novel had ever been arrested, neither any of its publishers or distributors. It was clear that it is fabricated because the content of the news says that the student arrested by the security services in the vicinity of the Cairo University (where a number of terrorist attacks took place), was carrying two mobile phones with no batteries, a number of flashes, a reader, a booklet with “Islamic slogans demanding the creation of a Caliph State,” as well as a copy of the famous novel (which was described in the arrest minutes as talking about police states).  

It seems that the eyes of the news editor saw the title of Orwell’s novel and he then drafted the title of this heated piece of news, “The arrest of a student carrying 1984 novel.”  And this piece of news has started to spread like wildfire. The strangest thing has been the results of this piece of news. 

After attacks launched by journalists as well as supporters of the existing regime, the newspaper corrected the title of this news piece by deleting the word “charge” and keeping “possession of a novel.”  Some of its officials admitted that this was a mistake, but the strange thing is that the audience, who celebrated this piece of news and circulated it on the different internet sites, did not care about the newspaper’s correction and its admittance that the title was wrong. It continued to defend the manipulated piece of news and many of the readers started to tell stories on the harassment they were subjected to or even to police charges because of the books which they were carrying around with them. 

It seems that in the internet world has become interactive than ever— between the site, the newspaper, and the reader who are becoming, with time, aware of the mood of each other. The journalist publishes the news or the titles that have the potential to be circulated on the internet. The reader expects such a title to circulate it in order to prove his pre-determined point of view. It appears that the readers of social media in particular do not want “news” as much as they need arguments and justifications.