Even though my career in journalism started before I even graduated from university, I find myself, after decades of professional work – and I don't say proficient work- in front of a British lesson in journalism. The liberal paper The Independent started publishing while I was living in London, and I have been reading it from the start along with the remainder of London's papers by virtue of work. In recent years, I have hardly missed a single commentary by Johann Hari, one of the most prominent contributors in The Independent, as his politics and his linguistic style appeal to me. As such, it came as a shock to me to read an article he wrote last month, entitled “I Have Betrayed My Readers' Trust (In what I write)”, in which he confessed that he had altered the responses of some of his interviewees, when he found that their responses were not comprehensible, or that there were better responses to be found in what those interviewees wrote in the past. He also confessed that he went to Wikipedia and modified in the part about his life and work in his own entry on the site, and deleted criticisms made against him, and even did the same thing in what he read about the colleagues that he liked. To atone for this, he decided to return the George Orwell Prize which he won for articles he wrote, and to take an unpaid leave of absence from the Independent until 2012, which he will use to undertake a program of journalism training. He also said that when he returns, he will footnote all his interviews to show their sources, while posting the audio of any conversations on the newspaper's website. No doubt, Johann Hari is not an Arab journalist. If we were to apply his standards to the profession in our countries, no more than ten or twenty journalists out of 20 thousand would remain in their jobs. My favorite story on the subject is still the one involving one Lebanese colleague before the Civil War. This colleague received two thousand liras to go and cover an Arab summit meeting. But he decided to hide at home, and sent his son every day to the newspaper with details of the summit and interviews with the participants. But he was soon exposed when the editing director asked his young son about a missing page, only for the latter to say that he will go ask his father because the page is probably is still with him at home. The Western press is not Caesar's wife, for it can be accused of many things in turn. I, for instance, criticize with tedious frequency the discrimination against Arabs and Muslims found in the Western press, and I am yet to face rebuttal of what I write or threats of litigation if I do not rectify and backtrack on my criticisms. Nevertheless, this same press differentiates between opinions and news, two words that pretty much sum-up modern journalism. Opinions are sacred rights to those who express them, but the news must be accurate. As such, I recently attacked an op-ed in the Washington Post advocating Israel despite her crimes, while having nothing but respect for the prestigious newspaper that I read on a daily basis. I realize that when it comes to news, the Washington Post insists on having two sources independent of one another for any news story before it is published. For this reason, I do not recall that I have ever objected to the accuracy of any news story run by the Post. If it is published, then it must be correct. I say this while harboring nothing but contempt for some of the Likudnik contributors in the op-ed section, whom I consider to be partners in the crimes of the Israeli government and enablers of such crimes. I do not think that Arab journalists are less able or less willing to perform well than their British or American counterparts. That said, what really restricts their chance for a good career is the lack of freedoms and the limited revenues from sales and advertisements. So much so that that the annual revenues of a paper like the New York Times or the Washington Post is equal to the annual revenues of the whole Arab media joined together, and this while bearing in mind that the Western press has been complaining of a sustained decline in circulation numbers and advertisements, with justified speculations over the near demise of the printed press. I read many comments on Johann Hari's decision to resign until further notice, and return to learning the fundamentals of the profession. For one thing, what he did is rare even by Western standards. What is more usual instead is that if a journalist ever refers to an old article he wrote or an interview he conducted, the reason would be that he had beaten everyone by a month or a year or more to the scoop on the subject making the news today. I replace the word ‘writing' with the word 'journalism', in an ancient poem that can describe the status of the Arab press today [a play on a poem with the gist being feckless fools pretending to be journalists]. […] [email protected]
