by Rania Habib on Tuesday, 01 September 2009 Investigative journalists are like the dead rat that was brought to the party. No one likes us.” A colorful, throwaway quote from Seymour Hersh, the world’s most famous investigative journalist, speaking at this year’s Arab Media Forum in Dubai. And in the Middle East he could well be right; the region is hardly revered for its freedom of expression. In fact, the 2008 Press Freedom Index compiled by Reporters Without Borders (RWB) shows that, in a report spanning 173 countries, most in this region ranked outside the top 100 in terms of press freedom. Iraq, Syria, Palestine and Iran are among those countries that recorded low press freedom scores, with most of them moving down the rankings from their 2007 press freedom scores. Only Lebanon, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates ranked in the top 100, with the first four moving up in comparison to the previous year. Only this summer, UAE-based Arabic daily newspaper Al Emarat Al Youm’s print and online versions were suspended for 20 days and the editor was fined 20,000 dirhams for publishing an article in 2006 about the doping of a racehorse owned by the country’s ruling family. The paper was accused of “deliberately publishing false and inappropriate information.” RWB issued a statement saying that the ruling “poses a threat to the independence of investigative media in the United Arab Emirates,” and that the sentence was “disproportionate and liable to intimidate media, which will assume that they could also be suspended or fined if they publish articles that displease those in positions of influence.” In 2008, Egyptian private company Trust Chemical Industries sued Egyptian blogger Tamer Mabrouk over a blog entry accusing the company of dumping hazardous waste in a lake and the Suez Canal. A Port Said court fined Mabrouk, who was also fired from his job at the chemical company, 45,000 Egyptian pounds (around $8,000). RWB stated that, “The fine that has been imposed is an insult to free expression.” EGYPTIAN RUINS. Robert Fisk, Middle East correspondent for the UK daily paper The Independent, says the only investigative journalism undertaken in Egypt is carried out by leftist newspapers, which are often closed down, and are staffed by editors and journalists who are constantly threatened and put in prison. “Many news agencies have invested hugely in offices around the world,” says Fisk, who holds more journalism awards than any other correspondent. “Let’s take Cairo for example. When was the last time you saw a Western agency in Cairo investigating torture by the Egyptian police? They don’t. So many people in the agency work for the mukhabarat (intelligence) that they can’t. And if they did investigate, the Egyptian government would threaten to close their bureau, which is worth millions and millions. So what you’ll find is, if there are accusations of torture in Egypt, Reuters for example will quote Amnesty International in London as saying there is torture, but Egyptian authorities will deny it.” “It’s a strange situation,” he continues. “Western organizations are so deeply imbedded in the Arab world, they are so financially invested, that they cannot question the government, so the whole purpose of having a bureau there in the first place disappears.” Fisk says that in Egypt, and throughout the Middle East in general, investigative journalism is stigmatized and automatically becomes subversive, because a lot of problems in the region turn out to have a political background. “In Britain, when we investigative the government, we don’t want to overthrow the regime, we just want to know,” he says. “If [Arab journalists] do what I do, it appears like a lack of patriotism.” Yosri Fouda, the former chief investigative correspondent and executive producer at Al Jazeera television news station, says that while there has been progress in the state of investigative journalism in the Middle East over the past decade, there remains a lack of appreciation for the job and its role for several reasons. One of the main obstacles, Fouda says, is societal; regional culture is largely oral. “This doesn’t help with investigative journalism,” he says. “We don’t really like figures and statistics. We are moved rather by rhythm and tunes and poetry; that doesn’t exactly help those who are supposed to be after facts, sorting facts out of speculations and rumors. Another challenge is how to present facts in an attractive way, which will engage the audience. It’s a sad statistic, but more than half of Arabs can’t read or write. One of the early challenges for me was writing my script, because I didn’t know who I was writing to; am I writing to a peasant who lives on the delta in Egypt, or a sheikh in Yemen, or the Syrian immigrant who is now a professor at Harvard?” Problems also exist within the media itself, says Fouda. Far too many editors or owners of media outlets do not understand or do not appreciate investigative journalism, or they are unwilling to spend a decent budget and give time to their staff to embark on investigative reports. “In addition, another question is whether the journalists themselves are interested in taking the rather difficult route of establishing themselves and paying the price of building their credibility brick by brick, taking the time to investigate the story, and having the passion to start with.” LIE SOCIETY. Rana Sabbagh Gargour, former chief editor of The Jordan Times, is now an independent journalist and the founder of Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism (ARIJ), a regional network that supports independent journalism. She says that the challenges from society are actually now more restrictive than any lack of governmental transparency. “People have given up on political corruption,” she says. “They are more worried about daily living standards, jobs, and education. With stories about sexual abuse, for example, people attacked us saying that we were creating stories, that theirs is a clean and religious society and those things could not happen.” It’s a situation Fisk can well understand. He says problems like this are universal. “Unfortunately, [journalists] have become a kind of trumpet, or an echo chamber for government spokesmen, in which we don’t actually channel their statements through our own critical faculties,” he says. “We don’t actually investigate, we don’t ask the question why.” Al Jazeera is one outlet that Fisk clearly believes is asking why. He credits the 13-year-old network with transforming coverage of the Middle East. He recalls a quote from Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak who upon visiting the Al Jazeera headquarters in Doha said, “You mean this little matchbox is causing all of my problems?” Fisk also recalls speaking to an Al Jazeera senior editor who was with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair while he visited the Al Jazeera offices. Blair was asked if George W. Bush truly did want to bomb the network’s building in Doha, and he dodged the question, but Fisk is in no doubt. “Of course Bush wanted to bomb Al Jazeera, because he didn’t want it to investigate,” he says. Fouda says there is another challenging element of investigative journalism common across the world: accessing information and getting people to speak to you. “Investigative journalism is always difficult, because you’re usually after the kind of information that sources are reluctant to give to you,” he says. “I’ve found that almost every single investigation I’ve embarked on has been very difficult, particularly when dealing with the US. If it’s not difficult, then you’re probably not doing the right story. I haven’t heard of a true scoop without repercussions; one party or the other will be affected negatively or positively by your story. What matters is that you know your truth, you know the law, you calculate the risks, and off you go. That doesn’t mean that you’re 100 percent sure that everything will be OK, but that’s the nature of the beast. Investigative journalists do enjoy the pleasure of surprise.” YOUTHFUL ENTHUSIASM. Fisk says Lebanon (where he has been based for more than 30 years) is the only country in the Middle East making great strides in the advancement of investigative journalism, especially after the Syrian forces retreated from the country. “I suppose this is a cliché, but one can always tell a country by its youth,” he says. “Since the end of the civil war, there’s been this great infusion of young people, who were sent away to the West by their parents, probably for safety reasons, who returned to Lebanon with this belief in secularism and having a free society. They could breathe, they could say what they wanted, they could write what they wanted, and read anything that they wanted.” Clearly, while the overall state of investigative journalism in the Middle East still appears grim, there are beacons of hope as well. Fouda says that editors are much more aware of the need to invest in this line of journalism, and that there is a new generation of young journalists who are passionate about it too. He says even audiences, now that they have been exposed to investigative journalism, would miss it if it were no longer there. Once upon a time they wouldn’t have even known about it. “That propels me to think that the situation now is much better,” says Fouda confidently. His hopes are tinged by realism, though. “It’s by no means perfect,” he concludes. “And we have a very long way to go to begin really establishing Arab investigative journalism.” Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Index 2008 Rank    Country 1     Iceland –     Luxembourg –     Norway 61     Kuwait 66     Lebanon 69     United Arab Emirates 74     Qatar 96     Bahrain 121     Algeria 122     Morocco 123     Oman 128     Jordan 143     Tunisia 146     Egypt 155     Yemen 158     Iraq 159     Syria 160     Libya 161     Saudi Arabia 163     Palestinian Territories 166     Iran 172     North Korea 173     Eritrea Arab Reporters for Investigative JournalismThe ARIJ, which includes Rana Sabbagh Gargour and Yosri Fouda on its board, says it has changed the face of investigative journalism and educating journalists in the Middle East. The Amman-based network was established by Arab media activists and media organizations in cooperation with Copenhagen-based International Media Support and the Danish Association for Investigative Journalism, and is funded by the Danish parliament. ARIJ has recently released a free document, Story-Based Inquiry: A Manual for Investigative Reporters. Gargour says ARIJ has come a long way, especially with the release of the manual, and says the next step will be trying to support the creation of units for investigative journalism in newspapers. With countries including Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, and Palestine in the ARIJ network, she says the organization wants to run workshops, train journalists, and provide them with experience, money, and in-house lawyers. It would also help persuade editors to let journalists leave for weeks or months to pursue a story. Stories by ARIJ reporters focus on social rights, human rights and sexual abuse, and also attempt to expose the failures of the establishment, and how it should be fixed. “We’re hoping investigative journalism will be a part of the values in the Arab newsroom,” says Sabbagh Gargour.Investigative journalists are like the dead rat that was brought to the party. No one likes us.” A colorful, throwaway quote from Seymour Hersh, the world’s most famous investigative journalist, speaking at this year’s Arab Media Forum in Dubai. And in the Middle East he could well be right; the region is hardly revered for its freedom of expression. In fact, the 2008 Press Freedom Index compiled by Reporters Without Borders (RWB) shows that, in a report spanning 173 countries, most in this region ranked outside the top 100 in terms of press freedom. Iraq, Syria, Palestine and Iran are among those countries that recorded low press freedom scores, with most of them moving down the rankings from their 2007 press freedom scores. Only Lebanon, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates ranked in the top 100, with the first four moving up in comparison to the previous year. Only this summer, UAE-based Arabic daily newspaper Al Emarat Al Youm’s print and online versions were suspended for 20 days and the editor was fined 20,000 dirhams for publishing an article in 2006 about the doping of a racehorse owned by the country’s ruling family. The paper was accused of “deliberately publishing false and inappropriate information.” RWB issued a statement saying that the ruling “poses a threat to the independence of investigative media in the United Arab Emirates,” and that the sentence was “disproportionate and liable to intimidate media, which will assume that they could also be suspended or fined if they publish articles that displease those in positions of influence.” In 2008, Egyptian private company Trust Chemical Industries sued Egyptian blogger Tamer Mabrouk over a blog entry accusing the company of dumping hazardous waste in a lake and the Suez Canal. A Port Said court fined Mabrouk, who was also fired from his job at the chemical company, 45,000 Egyptian pounds (around $8,000). RWB stated that, “The fine that has been imposed is an insult to free expression.” EGYPTIAN RUINS. Robert Fisk, Middle East correspondent for the UK daily paper The Independent, says the only investigative journalism undertaken in Egypt is carried out by leftist newspapers, which are often closed down, and are staffed by editors and journalists who are constantly threatened and put in prison. “Many news agencies have invested hugely in offices around the world,” says Fisk, who holds more journalism awards than any other correspondent. “Let’s take Cairo for example. When was the last time you saw a Western agency in Cairo investigating torture by the Egyptian police? They don’t. So many people in the agency work for the mukhabarat (intelligence) that they can’t. And if they did investigate, the Egyptian government would threaten to close their bureau, which is worth millions and millions. So what you’ll find is, if there are accusations of torture in Egypt, Reuters for example will quote Amnesty International in London as saying there is torture, but Egyptian authorities will deny it.” “It’s a strange situation,” he continues. “Western organizations are so deeply imbedded in the Arab world, they are so financially invested, that they cannot question the government, so the whole purpose of having a bureau there in the first place disappears.” Fisk says that in Egypt, and throughout the Middle East in general, investigative journalism is stigmatized and automatically becomes subversive, because a lot of problems in the region turn out to have a political background. “In Britain, when we investigative the government, we don’t want to overthrow the regime, we just want to know,” he says. “If [Arab journalists] do what I do, it appears like a lack of patriotism.” Yosri Fouda, the former chief investigative correspondent and executive producer at Al Jazeera television news station, says that while there has been progress in the state of investigative journalism in the Middle East over the past decade, there remains a lack of appreciation for the job and its role for several reasons. One of the main obstacles, Fouda says, is societal; regional culture is largely oral. “This doesn’t help with investigative journalism,” he says. “We don’t really like figures and statistics. We are moved rather by rhythm and tunes and poetry; that doesn’t exactly help those who are supposed to be after facts, sorting facts out of speculations and rumors. Another challenge is how to present facts in an attractive way, which will engage the audience.  It’s a sad statistic, but more than half of Arabs can’t read or write. One of the early challenges for me was writing my script, because I didn’t know who I was writing to; am I writing to a peasant who lives on the delta in Egypt, or a sheikh in Yemen, or the Syrian immigrant who is now a professor at Harvard?” Problems also exist within the media itself, says Fouda. Far too many editors or owners of media outlets do not understand or do not appreciate investigative journalism, or they are unwilling to spend a decent budget and give time to their staff to embark on investigative reports. “In addition, another question is whether the journalists themselves are interested in taking the rather difficult route of establishing themselves and paying the price of building their credibility brick by brick, taking the time to investigate the story, and having the passion to start with.”LIE SOCIETY. Rana Sabbagh Gargour, former chief editor of The Jordan Times, is now an independent journalist and the founder of Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism (ARIJ), a regional network that supports independent journalism. She says that the challenges from society are actually now more restrictive than any lack of governmental transparency. “People have given up on political corruption,” she says. “They are more worried about daily living standards, jobs, and education. With stories about sexual abuse, for example, people attacked us saying that we were creating stories, that theirs is a clean and religious society and those things could not happen.” It’s a situation Fisk can well understand. He says problems like this are universal. “Unfortunately, [journalists] have become a kind of trumpet, or an echo chamber for government spokesmen, in which we don’t actually channel their statements through our own critical faculties,” he says. “We don’t actually investigate, we don’t ask the question why.” Al Jazeera is one outlet that Fisk clearly believes is asking why. He credits the 13-year-old network with transforming coverage of the Middle East. He recalls a quote from Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak who upon visiting the Al Jazeera headquarters in Doha said, “You mean this little matchbox is causing all of my problems?” Fisk also recalls speaking to an Al Jazeera senior editor who was with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair while he visited the Al Jazeera offices. Blair was asked if George W. Bush truly did want to bomb the network’s building in Doha, and he dodged the question, but Fisk is in no doubt. “Of course Bush wanted to bomb Al Jazeera, because he didn’t want it to investigate,” he says. Fouda says there is another challenging element of investigative journalism common across the world: accessing information and getting people to speak to you. “Investigative journalism is always difficult, because you’re usually after the kind of information that sources are reluctant to give to you,” he says. “I’ve found that almost every single investigation I’ve embarked on has been very difficult, particularly when dealing with the US. If it’s not difficult, then you’re probably not doing the right story.  I haven’t heard of a true scoop without repercussions; one party or the other will be affected negatively or positively by your story. What matters is that you know your truth, you know the law, you calculate the risks, and off you go. That doesn’t mean that you’re 100 percent sure that everything will be OK, but that’s the nature of the beast. Investigative journalists do enjoy the pleasure of surprise.” YOUTHFUL ENTHUSIASM. Fisk says Lebanon (where he has been based for more than 30 years) is the only country in the Middle East making great strides in the advancement of investigative journalism, especially after the Syrian forces retreated from the country. “I suppose this is a cliché, but one can always tell a country by its youth,” he says. “Since the end of the civil war, there’s been this great infusion of young people, who were sent away to the West by their parents, probably for safety reasons, who returned to Lebanon with this belief in secularism and having a free society. They could breathe, they could say what they wanted, they could write what they wanted, and read anything that they wanted.” Clearly, while the overall state of investigative journalism in the Middle East still appears grim, there are beacons of hope as well. Fouda says that editors are much more aware of the need to invest in this line of journalism, and that there is a new generation of young journalists who are passionate about it too. He says even audiences, now that they have been exposed to investigative journalism, would miss it if it were no longer there. Once upon a time they wouldn’t have even known about it. “That propels me to think that the situation now is much better,” says Fouda confidently. His hopes are tinged by realism, though. “It’s by no means perfect,” he concludes. “And we have a very long way to go to begin really establishing Arab investigative journalism.” Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Index 2008 Rank    Country 1     Iceland –     Luxembourg –     Norway 61     Kuwait 66     Lebanon 69     United Arab Emirates 74     Qatar 96     Bahrain 121     Algeria 122     Morocco 123     Oman 128     Jordan 143     Tunisia 146     Egypt 155     Yemen 158     Iraq 159     Syria 160     Libya 161     Saudi Arabia 163     Palestinian Territories 166     Iran 172     North Korea 173     EritreaArab Reporters for Investigative Journalism The ARIJ, which includes Rana Sabbagh Gargour and Yosri Fouda on its board, says it has changed the face of investigative journalism and educating journalists in the Middle East. The Amman-based network was established by Arab media activists and media organizations in cooperation with Copenhagen-based International Media Support and the Danish Association for Investigative Journalism, and is funded by the Danish parliament. ARIJ has recently released a free document, Story-Based Inquiry: A Manual for Investigative Reporters. Gargour says ARIJ has come a long way, especially with the release of the manual, and says the next step will be trying to support the creation of units for investigative journalism in newspapers. With countries including Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, and Palestine in the ARIJ network, she says the organization wants to run workshops, train journalists, and provide them with experience, money, and in-house lawyers. It would also help persuade editors to let journalists leave for weeks or months to pursue a story. Stories by ARIJ reporters focus on social rights, human rights and sexual abuse, and also attempt to expose the failures of the establishment, and how it should be fixed. “We’re hoping investigative journalism will be a part of the values in the Arab newsroom,” says Sabbagh Gargour. http://www.communicate.ae/node/3081