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Ed Webb

LGBT+ activists call on Facebook to move faster on hate speech - 0 views

  • the Arab Network for Knowledge about Human Rights (ANKH), which has conducted the first survey of LGBT+ Arab Facebook users. More than 90% of the 450 Arabic speakers who responded had been targeted by hate speech on the platform, it found. A quarter of online hate speech in the Middle East and North Africa urged violence against LGBT+ people and 15% made direct threats. More than half the respondents reported feeling hopeless or depressed as a result and almost one in four had thought of self-harming.
  • Activists say Facebook can be an essential tool for LGBT+ people in the Arab world, where many face an oppressive legal and social atmosphere, and vague laws against indecency are often used to criminalize sexual activity. Strong social stigma around homosexuality, amplified by conservative religious entities, has led to low acceptance of gay people across the region. LGBT+ activists in the area risk social exclusion, prison sentences, and violence by security forces, according to Human Rights Watch.
  • Jillian York, director of international freedom of expression at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights group, said enforcing policies would require vast investment in language skills to navigate slang and dozens of dialects. "(Social media companies) are really bad at defining and dealing with incitement and dehumanizing language," she said, adding that Facebook "have a dearth of content moderators in a number of languages where they should have a lot more".
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  • Many Arab LGBT+ activists - even those who work closely with Facebook - say the rules are still poorly enforced. In recent months, LGBT+ groups have formed their own Facebook groups to mass-report viral hate speech, appealing to the company to act quickly. In June, Facebook set up phone calls with prominent Arab LGBT+ activists and groups to hear their concerns, according to four participants in those calls. But activists said they were unconvinced that moderators were well-trained to identify all Arabic hate speech.
  • The ANKH survey found the problem persisted into August, with 77% of respondents saying they were subjected to online hate speech.
  • "People were sending them to my family and colleagues asking if it was me," he said. "I never expected things would turn real."
Ed Webb

Tunisia's LGBTQ scene celebrates Mawjoudin Queer Film Festival - Al-Monitor: Independent, trusted coverage of the Middle East - 0 views

  • “Daring to organize and host an event dedicated to the question of gender identity and the reality of queer people is after all a militant act,” Aouini said. The MQFF took place on the backdrop of a reversal of Tunisia’s hard-won democratic gains following a year of drastic moves by Saied that expanded presidential powers since his power grab on July 25, 2021, effectively taking the country — once the Arab democratic exception — back to one-man rule.
  • “The fact that we succeed in having a queer festival in an Arab Muslim country is an achievement,” Jerbi told Al-Monitor. “Coming to this event and meeting people like me is in itself something. We are not here to seek attention; we are here to just see our rights respected.”
Ed Webb

Tunisia: Attack on Djerba synagogue was premeditated by national guard member - Al-Monitor: Independent, trusted coverage of the Middle East - 0 views

  • Tunisia’s Interior Ministry has identified the man behind an attack that killed five people earlier this week, saying Thursday that he intentionally targeted a synagogue on the Mediterranean island of Djerba in a premeditated act. The ministry described the shooting as a “cowardly criminal attack” but refrained from calling it an act of terrorism.
  • The French National Terrorism Prosecution Office has launched its own probe into the attack. Benjamin Haddad, who was French, was killed in the attack along with his cousin Aviel Haddad, who held dual Tunisian and Israeli citizenship.
  • The shooting coincided with the annual Jewish pilgrimage that is part of Lag Ba’omer celebration. Thousands of Jews from around the world gather at El-Ghriba synagogue, believed to be the oldest in Africa dating back 2,500 years.
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  • Djerba’s Jewish population is one of North Africa’s biggest, although in recent years it declined to 1,500, down from 100,000 in the 1960s
  • Tunisia and Israel do not have formal diplomatic relations, but Israelis can apply for a visa to travel to Djerba for the pilgrimage.
  • During his electoral campaign in 2019, Saied, who has since cemented his one-man rule, labeled normalization with Israel “high treason.”
Ed Webb

'Three Thousand Years' and the History of Middle East Tales - New Lines Magazine - 0 views

  • a film based on “The 1,001 Arabian Nights” is a risky venture. On the one hand, Hollywood Golden Age standards like “The Thief of Baghdad” (1924) and “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves” (1944) get applause even from someone like Jack Shaheen, who in his book “Reel Bad Arabs” tries very hard to sniff out anti-Arab sentiment. On the other hand, Disney rolled the dice in 1992 and wound up with “Aladdin,” one of the most scandalous films ever made. This was thanks to an ill-advised song lyric about the Middle East: “Where they cut off your ear if they don’t like your face.” (The 1993 VHS version tossed out this carbuncle but kept the phrase “It’s barbaric, but hey it’s home.”) The 2019 Will Smith reboot of the same name, one of that year’s highest-grossing films, didn’t do much in the eyes of critics to update Orientalist caricatures. Teachers still use the 1992 version to show what not to say about Arabs and Islam. Another Disney production, 2010’s “Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time,” which was based on the Persian national epic “Shahnameh,” got panned for casting Jake Gyllenhaal, a white actor, to play a Persian character. And the list goes on.
  • both Byatt and Miller get much of the folklore right. Viewers learn that djinn come in many varieties, including those who fear God, like Alithea’s djinn insists he does, and those who don’t. Djinn are made of “smokeless fire” while humans are made from dust, based on the Quran’s chapter 55, “The Merciful.” Djinn can live for thousands of years, change size and shape, make love, eat and sleep (the djinn in the movie says his kind don’t do the latter). All this and more, drawn from Islamic folklore through Byatt’s story, makes Robin Williams’ blue meanie from the 1992 “Aladdin” look like the cardboard cutout he is
  • at a time of heightened sensitivity to who gets to tell stories, can Hollywood still celebrate the Middle East?
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  • these tales don’t come from fantasies like “The 1,001 Arabian Nights” but instead Middle Eastern history, especially Ottoman history. Anyone familiar with the region’s culture and storytelling will be struck by how thoughtful the film is, despite its kooky, over-the-top vaudeville
  • Miller’s location, cast and music celebrate rather than lampoon the Middle East, above all the wonders of Turkey. Shot on location in Istanbul, the film pans over Topkapi Palace, the Hagia Sophia and other iconic hotspots. Turkish actors fill most of the minor roles and speak Turkish throughout (Elba gives it his best college try). “Chesm-i bulbul,” or “the nightingale’s eye,” the name for the djinn’s bottle and hence of Byatt’s story, is in fact a beloved style of glasswork. The film credits roll to a Turkish love song.
  • “Three Thousand Years,” billed as “Aladdin for adults” and based on the 1994 short story “The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye” by A.S. Byatt for The Paris Review
  • he adds a scene that’s unjustified by the plot and which mainly serves the demands of cultural sensitivity, in deference to viewers who don’t know enough about the Middle East to see how much care Miller has taken. Back in London and close to the finale, Alithea greets two neighbor ladies who ask why Alithea wastes time with “ethnics.” She fires back that she can’t abide people — like them — with knee-jerk reactions against anyone different. “Fuckface,” one of them spits at Alithea, who ducks back into her house.
  • This scene’s welcome jab at xenophobia is not what annoys; it is rather the non sequitur. It’s the one and only time we meet these neighbors, though they later stand aghast while Alithea explains her enormous ebony djinn will be staying for a while. It’s the one time we hear their views. Their struggle to grasp the Middle East has not shaped us in any way, nor does the script humanize them beyond political caricature. “OK, boomer,” says the movie with a sneer. Miller could have stood on his thoughtfulness toward the Middle East without pandering, but in fairness, he’s less to blame than a culture industry that makes directors like him think that pandering is the price of keeping their skin.
  • Byatt’s story is nothing if not highly sexed, and Miller’s retelling can’t do it justice.
  • That both the djinn and Alithea are trapped by their own gigantic emotions produces one of the film’s loveliest sentiments, spoken by Alithea as part of her wish for the djinn’s affections: “I want our solitudes to be together.”
Ed Webb

Journalists tell CPJ how Tunisia's tough new constitution curbs their access to information - Committee to Protect Journalists - 1 views

  • CPJ could not meet with Hajji at the Al-Jazeera office because it has remained closed since police raided the bureau on July 26, 2021, confiscating all broadcasting equipment and forcing all staff to leave the building. The raid came less than 24 hours after Tunisia President Kais Saied fired Prime Minister Hichem Mechichi and suspended parliament, granting himself sole executive power. A new constitution, approved by a largely boycotted voter referendum nearly a year later, on July 25, 2022, codified Saied’s nearly unchecked power, upending the checks and balances between the president, prime minister, and parliament provided by the 2014 constitution.
  • at least four journalists have been arrested, and two were sentenced to several months in prison by military courts. Many others have been attacked by security forces while covering protests.
  • “We found that 2022 was one of the worst years in terms of press freedom violations since we began monitoring them six years ago,” Khawla Chabbeh, coordinator of the documentation and monitoring unit at the National Syndicate of Tunisian Journalists (SNJT), a local trade union, told CPJ in a meeting. On July 25, 2022, the day of the constitutional referendum, “we monitored the most violations against journalists that has occurred in a single day,”
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  • Following the constitutional referendum on July 25, Tunisia approved the new constitution, replacing what was considered one of the most progressive in the Arab world. The new document is missing many of the articles that had guaranteed the protection of rights and freedoms. It eliminates several constitutional commissions created under the 2014 constitution, such as the Human Rights Commission, which investigated human rights violations, and the Independent High Commission for Audiovisual Communication, the country’s media regulatory body.
  • “The 2014 constitution protected the freedom of the press, publication, and expression. However, the new constitution does not mention anything on the independence of the judicial system, which is one of the few things that could guarantee fair trials when violations against journalists or the press occur,” Mohamed Yassine Jelassi, president of the SNJT, told CPJ in a meeting. “And now, with the lack of independent constitutional bodies, we are going to start dealing again with a Ministry of Communications that takes its orders straight from authorities.”
  • Jelassi told CPJ that the new constitution further diminishes the protection of journalists and the freedom of publication by using vague language that could lead to the conviction of journalists on charges unrelated to journalism. Under the 2014 constitution, authorities were prohibited from interfering with any journalistic content, since it would violate the freedom of publication. By contrast, the new constitution protects the freedom of publication only if it does not harm “national security,” “public morals,” or “public health,” which are all defined by the law.
  • while Al-Jazeera has all its paperwork, licenses, and taxes in order, the office remains closed. As of early September, police were still heavily present in front of the bureau’s building
  • “Most private [and non-profit] news organizations are partially funded by foreign groups or governments,” said Khadhraoui. “Without these funds, it will be impossible to pay staff salaries, and therefore there won’t be any independent press sector in Tunisia.”
Ed Webb

Journalists Syndicate head says judiciary to decide on dispute | Egypt Independent - 0 views

  • Board member Gamal Abdel Rahim said Wali’s attendance gave legitimacy to the articles related to the detention of journalists, seizure of newspapers and dissolution of unions, as well as the article that states the president of the republic has the right to appoint the head of a national media council. Such articles could put journalist under state control, he said
Ed Webb

Israeli and Palestinian textbooks: Researchers have conducted a comprehensive study that reveals that both sides are guilty of distorting the truth in the classroom. - Slate Magazine - 0 views

  • “Dehumanizing and demonizing characterizations of the other were very rare in both Israeli and Palestinian books.” The research team found 20 extreme negative depictions in the Israeli state books, seven in the ultra-Orthodox books, and six in the Palestinian books. An example of this rare occurrence from an Israeli book: A passage saying that a ruined Arab village “had always been a nest of murderers.” And an example from a Palestinian book: “I was in ‘the slaughterhouse’ for 13 days,” referring to an Israeli interrogation center. This could be a lot worse, right?
  • 84 percent of the literature pieces in the Palestinian books portray Israelis and Jews negatively, 73 percent of the pieces in the ultra-Orthodox books portray Palestinians and Arabs negatively, and only 49 percent of the pieces in Israeli state schools do the same. In an Israeli state school text, a passage reads: “The Arab countries have accumulated weapons and ammunition and strengthened their armies to wage a total war against Israel.” In the ultra-Orthodox, it ratchets up: “Like a little lamb in a sea of 70 wolves is Israel among the Arab states.” In the Palestinian case: “The enemy turned to the deserted houses, looting and carrying off all they could from the village that had become grave upon grave.” These statements aren’t necessarily false, but they are just one-sided and fearful—and they are rarely balanced by anything sunnier
  • The research team found that 58 percent of Palestinian textbooks published after 1967 (the year in which Israel took control of the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan, Gaza and Sinai from Egypt, and the Golan Heights from Syria) made no reference to Israel. Instead, they referred to the entire area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea as Palestine. In the Israeli state system, 65 percent of maps had no borders and made no mention of Palestine or the Palestinian Authority, while in the ultra-Orthodox system that number was a staggering 95 percent.
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  • One striking difference between the Israeli state books on the one hand, and the ultra-Orthodox and Palestinian books on the other, is their willingness to engage in self-criticism. For the Israelis, this is an evolution that began in the late 1990s, after many historians began to re-evaluate early Israeli history, and a left-wing member of the Knesset became education minister. Israeli state textbooks began to admit that some Palestinians left their land within Israel because they were expelled. And they began to make reference to the Arabic name for Israel’s War of Independence in 1948: the Naqba, or Catastrophe. They also began ask Israeli Jewish students how they would have felt about Zionism if they’d been in the place of the Palestinians. There is still far less of this in either the ultra-Orthodox or Palestinian books. For example, the Palestinian texts don’t deal in any significant way with the Holocaust or its relationship to the founding of Israel.
  • just how politicized the teaching of history and geography has become for Israelis and Palestinians—with both sides at times quite literally wiping each other off the map. Not that Israelis and Palestinians are alone on this score. Think of Cyprus, where for decades Greek and Turk Cypriotes did not consider themselves part of a single people, or Northern Ireland, where even the name used to describe the territory continues to be highly charged. (Is it a province? A state? A region?) The process of ending such misrepresentations, the authors of the study find, is therefore “exceedingly difficult and requires deliberate and courageous effort.” It also takes time.
  • Palestinian textbooks are still in their first generation
  • Sociologist Sammy Smooha of Haifa University, who conducts an annual survey of Arab and Jewish relations, says that the goal now should be to write textbooks that do more to expose each side to the other’s narrative. “You have to engage with the other side’s arguments in a serious manner and not just build up a straw man in order to break it.” Eyal Naveh, a professor of history at Tel Aviv University and the author of several textbooks for middle-school and high-school students, agrees. “If you ignore it, it’s as if it doesn’t exist,” he said.
  • a book called Side By Side that included a “dual narrative” of all major events in the region since 1917, through the Second Intifada in 2000. Naveh calls the book “a successful failure:” Though it had been lauded by the international press and continues to sell abroad, the book was banned by both the Israeli and Palestinian education ministries. Naveh now believes that getting such a textbook to become part of the Israeli and Palestinian curricula is “impossible.”
Ed Webb

Ahram Online Editor Says Brotherhood Drove Him out of Institution - 2 views

  • He served as Ahram Weekly’s editor-in chief for nearly fourteen years, from 1991 to 2005
    • Ed Webb
       
      This is an error. Hosny Guindy was editor in chief for most of that period. Hani and Mona Anis worked closely with him, with Hani as managing editor, only taking over the top chair on Hosny's death a couple of years before he was replaced, in 2005. Ahram has effectively now sacked Hani twice.
Ed Webb

Tunisia's bitter cyberwar - Features - Al Jazeera English - 2 views

  • Most international news organisations have no presence in the country (and, some say, a lack of interest in the protests). Media posted online by Tunisian web activists has been some of the only material that has slipped through the blackout, even if their videos and photos haven't generated quite the same enthusiastic coverage by Western media as the Iranian protest movement did in 2009.
  • Several sources Al Jazeera spoke with said that web activists had been receiving anonymous phone calls, warning them to delete critical posts on their Facebook pages or face the consequences.
  • Sami Ben Gharbia, who monitors Tunisia's web censorship for Global Voices, said that Google and Facebook were in no way complicit in the sophisticated phishing technique. The initial signs that something was underway came on Saturday, he said, when the secure https protocol became unavailable in Tunisia. This forced web users to use the non-secure http protocol. The government's internet team then appears to have gone phishing for individuals' usernames and passwords on services including Gmail, Facebook, Yahoo and Hotmail. Web activists and journalists alerted others of the alleged hacking by the government via Twitter, which is not susceptible to the same types of operations. "The goal, amongst others, is to delete the Facebook pages which these people administer," a Tunisian internet professional, who has also been in contact with Anonymous, told Al Jazeera in an emailed interview. The same source, who asked to remain unidentified due to the potential consequences for speaking out, said that in communication with the international group, he had come up with a Greasemonkey script for fireFox internet browsers that deactivated the government's malicious code.
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  • The Committee to Protect Journalists says there is clear proof that the phishing campaign is organised and co-ordinated by the Tunisian government, as did other sources that Al Jazeera spoke with.
  • In the siege against cyber dissidence, Twitter has been a bastion for activists. Because people can access Twitter via clients rather than going through the website itself, many Tunisians can still communicate online. The web-savvy use proxies to browse the other censored sites. Yet even if bloggers manage to maintain their blogging, the censorship deprives them of those readers who do not use proxies. The result is what Ben Gharbia described as the "killing" of the Tunisian blogosphere.  Ben Mhenni said that the government's biggest censorship of webpages en masse happened in April 2010, when more than 100 blogs were blocked, in addition to other websites. She said the hijackings that had taken place in the past week, however, marked the biggest government-organised hacking operation. Most of the pages that had been deleted in recent days were already censored. Amamy said the government's approach to the internet policy is invasive and all-controlling. "Here we don't really have internet, we have a national intranet," he said.
Ed Webb

Digital Platforms, Analog Elections: How Civic Groups Are Trying to Bring Back Democracy in Turkey - 1 views

  • As soon as the counting kicked off at the ballot boxes, Turkey’s Twitter timeline was swarming with reports of fraud, power outages, and paper ballots found in trash bins. Calls for people to go to local polling stations to watch the counting were circulating. And the mainstream media, with reports coming in from two news agencies, were reporting totally conflicting results. Journos asked its followers to tweet the results from ballot boxes. Citizens who were already at polling stations started taking pictures of the ballot box results and sent them to Journos, using the hashtag #SandıkTutanağı. Engin says they have never experienced such voluminous response from citizens on one day (bear in mind that they were actively reporting during the Gezi Protests). Thousands of reports reached Journos via Twitter, Facebook, Whatsapp, and SMS messaging only in a couple of hours.
  • As Journos kept on receiving and documenting those results through the early hours of 31 March, people in front of their television and computer screens witnessed this: in Ankara, where the votes had been swaying between the AKP candidate Melih Gökçek and the CHP’s Mansur Yavaş, vote-count pages stopped refreshing. At the time, a sizeable portion of votes were left to be counted in two neighborhoods that are CHP strongholds, and Gökçek was leading by only three thousand votes. For almost an hour, there was no incoming data. In the meantime, citizens reported that the Interior Minister, Efkan Ala, arrived at a polling station with riot police, while Melih Gökçek went to the building that houses the Supreme Electoral Board (YSK). When the data page was finally refreshed, people saw that all the results were uploaded at once, and Gökçek was leading by twenty thousand votes. Whether or not that pause meant fraud, people’s concerns with the process skyrocketed, and reports of ballot box results soared on Twitter.
  • the launch of Turkey’s first citizen vote counting system
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  • On the morning of 1 April, when official complaints about elections were due, they documented nearly two hundred and fifty irregularities. “This is the first time citizens counted their own votes in Turkey,” says Engin. “We made a call on social media, and in a couple of hours we have received more than six thousand responses. With software finalized in two hours and a team of two hundred volunteers, we reported the irregularities and challenged results in Istanbul and Ankara,”
  • “We are quite worried about the current political and media system in Turkey,” Engin adds, “and we want our broadcast to provoke people to interrogate what the system tells them.” I press him a little and remind him that their efforts could not change much, so why continue? At first, he does not even understand my question. He then explains that we need people to stop submitting to the state, capital, and the mainstream media. Until then, Journos will keep on doing what they are doing.
  • Journos is now working on a web interface that will share all the ballot box results they have received with the public in a way that lets people run their own search. Citizens will be able to detect the discrepancies between the number of votes documented in paper ballots and the official results
Ed Webb

Vote or else, Egyptian media warns public - News - Aswat Masriya - 1 views

  • Egyptian media castigated the public for a low turnout in a presidential election which former army chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is expected to win, with one commentator saying those who failed to vote should be shot.
  • The popular uprising which toppled Hosni Mubarak in 2011 raised hopes that the Egyptian press would no longer blindly back the country's leaders and would instead take a critical look at their performance. Egyptian media, both state and private, have hailed Sisi as a saviour since he ousted Islamist President Mohamed Mursi after mass protests and cracked down on his Muslim Brotherhood.
  • "We are looking for a popular vote that will make it clear to the world that this is the will of the people," said Lamees al-Hadidi, a popular talk show host on a private news channel. Two private Egyptian television channels flashed news urgents on Tuesday quoting officials at the supreme election committee saying that those who do not vote could be fined and referred to the public prosecutor.
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  • Several Egyptian journalists interviewed by Reuters said it was their national duty to defend the state because the Brotherhood posed a threat to its existence. Mostafa Bakry - an Egyptian commentator who once said Americans in Egypt should be killed in the streets if the United States ever harmed Sisi - joined the frenzied media call for a high turnout to give Sisi a strong mandate. "Anyone who doesn't go down to vote, you are giving the kiss of life to those terrorists," Bakry shouted as he pointed his finger at the screen on privately owned Al-Nahar television. "Go out (to vote), and those who don't go are traitors, traitors, traitors, who are selling this country."
Ed Webb

Social Media Made the Arab Spring, But Couldn't Save It | WIRED - 3 views

  • Activists were able to organize and mobilize in 2011 partly because authoritarian governments didn’t yet understand very much about how to use social media
  • “The activists’ accounts on Twitter and Facebook are very active and they have a lot of followers, but they cannot drive masses,”
  • governments have also become adept at using those same channels to spread misinformation. “You can now create a narrative saying a democracy activist was a traitor and a pedophile,” says Anne Applebaum, an author who directs a program on radical political and economic change at the Legatum Institute in London. “The possibility of creating an alternative narrative is one people didn’t consider, and it turns out people in authoritarian regimes are quite good at it.”
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  • bad people are also very good at social media
Ed Webb

Arab Media & Society - 1 views

  • A prolific writer, Heikal penned dozens of books, chronicling events as a witness to history, his legacy linked with his association with Nasser. He was not just a journalist, newspaper editor, and later historian. Heikal was Nasser’s emissary with Western diplomats, a champion of Nasser’s brand of socialism and pan-Arab nationalism. He composed his speeches and ghost wrote Nasser’s political manifesto, The Philosophy of the Revolution. As the president’s alter ego, Heikal’s writings were read for clues to Nasser’s thinking. His influence derived from his proximity to power.
  • Heikal blurred the line between the role of a journalist and that of a politician. “He introduced a model in Egypt and the Arab world about what your ambitions should be as a journalist. In the West or Europe, you gain your reputation from your independence as a journalist,” explained Dawoud. “When I am the president’s consultant and I attend his close meetings and I write his speeches, there is definitely a lot of information that I would have to keep secret. That goes contrary to my job as a journalist, which is to find as much information as I can.”
  • The state media wholeheartedly embraced socialism and pan-Arabism, becoming a filter of information and propaganda, instead of the promised transformation of the institution into one that supposedly guides the public and builds society. Critical voices were muted, the military junta was sacrosanct, and Nasser was fortified as a national hero. The failings of the regime were not attributed to the president, but to the reactionary and destructive forces of capitalism and feudalism. Nasser’s personal confidant Muhammad Hassanein Heikal was appointed chairman of the board of al-Ahram, then later of Dar al-Hilal and Akhbar al-Youm publishing houses.
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  • Long committed to a free media, Mustafa Amin was imprisoned for six months in 1939 for an article in Akher sa‘a (Last Hour) magazine deemed critical of King Faruq. An advocate of democracy and Western liberalism, he was arrested in 1965, tried secretly in 1966, and convicted of being a spy for America and smuggling funds. Sentenced to a life sentence, he spent nine years in prison before being pardoned by Nasser’s successor, President Anwar Sadat. Ali Amin, accused by Heikal of working for British and Saudi intelligence, went into exile in 1965.
  • Room for expression existed mainly in the literary pages of al-Ahram, where writers under Heikal’s wings, like Naguib Mahfouz, could publish works of fiction that could be read as challenges to the status quo.[5] As far as the press was concerned, censorship was directed at politically oriented news and commentary rather than the literary sections
  • During the conflict, as the Egyptian army, under Field Marshal Abd al-Hakim Amer’s command, was hastily retreating from Sinai, broadcast outlets aired invented reports of fabulous victories against the Zionist foe. At no other moment did the state media prove so woefully deficient, contributing to a deep sense of public betrayal.
  • The speech was written for him by prominent journalist Mohamed Hassanein Heikal and tactfully framed a romp of Arab armies as a “setback,” displaying Heikal’s knack for being both a propagandist and political powerbroker.   It was a moment that brilliantly served to shore up Nasser’s support. Egyptians took to the streets demanding that their leader stay in power. “The People Say ‘No,’” declared Akhbar al-youm (News of the Day) in large red writing. In smaller black lettering the headline read, “The Leader Discloses the Whole Truth to the People.” It is difficult to say how populist and genuine the appeal was and how much of the public display of support for Nasser was behind-the-scenes political machinations of the regime and its media. While Nasser did stay in power, it was only later that Egyptians could comprehend the true extent of the defeat—especially in light of official propaganda—and the institutional failures that placed the whole of Sinai under Israeli control.
  • slogans shouted and scrawled on building walls that demanded: “Stop the Rule of the Intelligence,” “Down with the Police State,” and “Down with Heikal’s Lying Press.”
  • Student periodicals posted on the walls of the campuses emerged as the freest press in Egypt. Nasser for the first time became the object of direct criticism in the public space. A campaign against student unrest was waged in the state-owned media, which labeled the activists as provocateurs and counter-revolutionaries goaded by foreign elements
  • “A centralized editorial secretariat, called the Desk, was founded, as well as the Center for Strategic Studies and the Information Division. To his detractors, these innovations appeared to be spying sessions of an extensive empire dedicated to intelligence gathering
  • Nasser appointed Heikal to the post of minister of information and national guidance, a role he assumed for six months in 1970 until Nasser’s death. Yet the self-described journalist confided his frustration of being assigned a ministerial post, perhaps intended to distance him from the publishing empire he built, to a colleague, the leftist writer Lutfi al-Khouli, at his home. The encounter was surreptitiously recorded by the secret police, leading to the arrest and brief imprisonment of al-Khouli, and Heikal’s secretary and her husband, who were also present. “Now, Nasser’s regime had two aspects: it had great achievements to its credit but also it had a repressive side. I do not myself believe that the achievements . . . could have been carried out without some degree of enforcement,” Heikal wrote in The Road to Ramadan. “But after the 1967 defeat the positive achievements came to an end, because all resources were geared to the coming battle, while repression became more obvious. When Nasser died the executants of repression took it on themselves to be the ideologues of the new regime as well. They held almost all the key posts in the country. The people resented this and came to hate what they saw as their oppressors.”
  • after his increasing criticism of Sadat’s handling of the October 1973 War and appeals to the United States to address the impasse, Heikal was removed from al-Ahram in 1974. He remained a prolific author. In May 1978, Heikal was one of dozens of writers accused by the state prosecutor of defaming Egypt and weakening social peace and was subject to an interrogation that extended three months
  • Sadat attempted to bring the dissident cacophony into line through the mass arrest in September 1981 of more than 1,500 intellectuals, writers, journalists, and opposition elements of every stripe. Among those arrested were leading members of the Journalists’ Syndicate and prominent figures like the political writer Muhammad Hassanein Heikal and novelist Nawal El Saadawi. Sadat’s crackdown against his opponents culminated in his assassination by Islamic militants on October 6, 1981 during a military parade to commemorate the start of the 1973 War. Soon after Hosni Mubarak assumed power, Heikal was released from prison
  • When Dream aired the lecture Heikal gave at the American University in Cairo, direct pressure was placed on the owner’s business interests, and the veteran journalist found a new forum on pan-Arab satellite broadcasting. The influential writer has made opposition to Gamal Mubarak’s succession a staple of his newspaper columns.
  • With the rise of satellite television, Qatar’s Al Jazeera commanded audiences not only with news but with popular discussion programmed, like Ma‘ Heikal (With Heikal), a program by Heikal that began the year after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and which was watched by the Arab public with eager interest. Seated behind a desk and looking into the camera, Heikal gave his narrative of historical events and commentary on Middle Eastern and world affairs, exposing the intrigues of regional and global powers from his perch, having privileged access to leaders, diplomats, and decision makers. He has been a critic of Saudi diplomacy, its ballooning regional influence given the power of petrodollars, and its confrontation with Iran. Saudi pundits have consistently taken potshots at Heikal.
  • A couple of months before Morsi’s ouster on July 3, 2013, Heikal was contacted by Morsi’s defense minister Abd al-Fattah al-Sisi for a meeting, which had led to speculation that the Heikal devised the behind-the-scenes scenarios for an elected president’s removal as the dominant political player, the Muslim Brotherhood, was sinking in popularity. After Morsi was expelled from office, Heikal suggested to the military leader that he seek a popular mandate to lead the country, mirroring Nasser-style populism. Attired in full military regalia, al-Sisi at a July 24, 2013 graduation ceremony of the naval and air defence academies, broadcast live, warned that national security was in peril and summoned nationwide rallies two days later. Heikal supported al-Sisi’s bid for the presidency viewing him as the candidate born of necessity.
Ed Webb

Arianna Huffington: Virality Uber Alles: What the Fetishization of Social Media Is Costing Us All - 0 views

  • The media world's fetishization of social media has reached idol-worshipping proportions. Media conference agendas are filled with panels devoted to social media and how to use social tools to amplify coverage, but you rarely see one discussing what that coverage should actually be about. As Wadah Khanfar, former Director General of Al Jazeera, told our editors when he visited our newsroom last week, "The lack of contextualization and prioritization in the U.S. media makes it harder to know what the most important story is at any given time."
  • locked in the Perpetual Now
  • There's no reason why the notion of the scoop can't be recalibrated to mean not just letting us know 10 seconds before everybody else whom Donald Trump is going to endorse but also giving us more understanding, more clarity, a brighter spotlight on solutions
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  • We're treating virality as a good in and of itself, moving forward for the sake of moving
  • "Twitter's algorithm favors novelty over popularity."
  • there were too many tweets about WikiLeaks, and they were so constant that Twitter started treating WikiLeaks as the new normal
  • as we adopt new and better ways to help people communicate, can we keep asking what is really being communicated? And what's the opportunity cost of what is not being communicated while we're all locked in the perpetual present chasing whatever is trending?
  • "What it means to be social is if you want to talk to me, you have to listen to me as well." A lot of brands want to be social, but they don't want to listen, because much of what they're hearing is quite simply not to their liking, and, just as in relationships in the offline world, engaging with your customers or your readers in a transparent and authentic way is not all sweetness and light. So simply issuing a statement saying you're committed to listening isn't the same thing as listening.
  • Fetishizing "social" has become a major distraction, and we're clearly a country that loves to be distracted. Our job in the media is to use all the social tools at our disposal to tell the stories that matter -- as well as the stories that entertain -- and to keep reminding ourselves that the tools are not the story. When we become too obsessed with our closed, circular Twitter or Facebook ecosystem, we can easily forget that poverty is on the rise, or that downward mobility is trending upward, or that over 5 million people have been without a job for half a year or more, or that millions of homeowners are still underwater. And just as easily, we can ignore all the great instances of compassion, ingenuity, and innovation that are changing lives and communities.
  • conflates the form with the substance
  • new social tools can help us bear witness more powerfully or they can help us be distracted more obsessively
  • humans are really a herd animal and that is what we are doing on these social sites, Herding up
Ed Webb

Egypt's media revolution only beginning | UNCUT - 0 views

  • “Red lines remain that cannot be crossed. In the old days Mubarak was the red line. Today, it is the ruling military council or SCAF,” says journalist Khaled Dawoud who works for state-sponsored Al Ahram.
  • the interim military government issued directives for any media coverage of the military to be sent to the Armed Forces Morale Affairs Department for review before broadcast or publication. Broadcasters and editors working for Egyptian state-owned and independent media continue to complain about heavy censorship of their work, and in recent months several have resigned in protest.
  • soon the editors slid back to their old habits, repeating the mistakes of the past. During violent clashes at Maspero in October, Rasha Magdy, a state TV newscaster urged the public to defend the military against attacks by Coptic protesters. Magdy’s plea earned her the wrath of the public and she was accused of inciting violence against the protesters.
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  • Calls for a public service broadcaster to replace the propaganda machine of the ruling authorities have so far been ignored and a former military general has been appointed as Minister of Information in the new cabinet — despite calls to dismantle the ministry altogether and replace it with a media council. Journalists opposing the appointment of the minister say the move can only mean tighter control of the media and more propaganda for the military authorities. “We had hoped that television in the post — revolutionary era would become the mouthpiece of the people not the regime,” lamented Salma Amer, a former reporter at state TV.
  • The media landscape is being transformed and the introduction of political satire in comedy shows like Bassem Youssef’s The Program would have been unthinkable just a year ago. Despite being on air for just a few months, Youssef is already a household name in Egypt and has developed a mass following for his unique brand of sarcastic humor. For him, the sky’s the limit and Youssef has mercilessly poked fun at practically everything and everyone including the military establishment.
Ed Webb

Egyptians feel less safe after Jan25, correlated with media, says poll - Bikya Masr : Bikya Masr - 0 views

  • Only 8 percent of all Egyptians said that they received their news via Twitter or Facebook, however, debunking the fallacy that Egypt’s revolution and popular opinion was guided by social networking outlets.
  • “What is a blog?” she asked conversationally, upon hearing that bloggers relate the news online.
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