By Rana Khaled
Although being a journalist is not an easy task in any place in the world, it’s considered a big challenge in a country like Egypt. Journalists there encounter a number of challenges varying from access to objective information to everyday issues such as low salaries.
“Because there is no law for regulating the free flow of information, journalists are usually trapped between the official and non-official data,” said Adham Youssef, a senior political reporter at Daily News Egypt.
“When they cannot get a permission to acquire authentic information from the official institutions, they usually resort to depending on anonymous sources who may deny giving the information after that. This is a double-edged weapon that can send the journalist to jail,” he added.
“Under the war of traffic, reporters are asked to collect as much information as possible and post more stories on the website. Sometimes, they are also asked to cover protests and conflicts without any adequate previous training,” said Mohammed Saudi, a journalist for Youm 7, one of the most widely read newspapers in Egypt.
”Every morning, thousands of journalists go to their offices to start a new working day. Most of them stay for 8 or 10 hours in front of their computers to write a required number of news stories and call sources,” he added.
Quantity vs Quality
On the other side, Mahmoud Mostafa, a political reporter, believes that Egyptian media institutions have been living the fierce ”war of traffic” over the past five years.
Although he thinks that Egypt has a big number of qualified journalists in governmental, private and partisan newspapers, there are still a number of factors that influence the quality of their work.
“Most journalists are overworked in their institutions that pay great attention to the quantity of the stories produced regardless of the quality of the content they convey. They care about attracting more audience and getting more hits on the website to be able to attract more advertisers and gain more profits,” he explained.
However, Essam Amer, a journalist at Al-Shorouk newspaper and a media trainer, argued that improving the standards of living of journalists and increasing their salaries may urge them to provide a better journalistic product.
“At the end of the month, young journalists get an average of 1200 L.E (120 euros) which can’t cover their daily expenses,” noted Saudi.
“Most journalists are slaves for the media institutions they write for in a way that doesn’t give them any chance to improve their abilities or seek any kind of additional training. This turned them from believing in the journalism as a noble message into thinking of it as an occupation and turned them from creative content producers into employees,” Amer said.
In his opinion, the press syndicate must play a more crucial role in monitoring the journalistic performance and punishing the journalists who violate the codes of ethics.
However, it must also guarantee the rights of the journalists in the organizations they work for. This two-sided intermediary role will help to balance the scales of justice.
