Tag: msm

Hypocrites!

Posted on By 3arabawy

Give me a break! I can’t take this bullshit anymore!

Mubarak’s grandson died? I’m heartbroken, but to declare three days of mourning at the State TV and private satellite channels, stop broadcasting films and songs, and just keep playing religious tunes and Quran on private and public radio channels?!! That’s just too much! Oh, and not only that, the Muslim Brothers, Ayman Nour  and the opposition were also quick to send condolences and express their devastation over hearing the news of the tragic event. Film screenings are canceled and the Cairo Opera House is in “chaos.”

Excuse me, Who is Muhammad Alaa Mubarak? A government official? A national hero? Who is he to put the state on hold for three days?

Why didn’t we have this national mourning when the kids in Duweiqa died? Everyday there are children who die in Gaza because of Mubarak’s insistence on strangling the strip by closing the Rafah crossing, No national mourning for that? What about the Mahalla children who were abused by Mubarak’s police in April 2008- No mourning for them?! What about those children who get whipped by Mubarak’s police in custody, no mourning for them?! No national mourning for the Shaha kid tortured by the police by electric shocks to death?!

Hypocrites!

Media, Old and New

Posted on By 3arabawy

Kafr el-Hanadwa forwarded to me this article about the Indian blogosphere. The argument put forward by the writer in this paragraph applies, in my view, to the Egyptian blogosphere:

But one fact internet crusaders omit to mention is that campaigns like these owe a great deal of their success to other, older media. Internet penetration in India is limited to 5-8 per cent of the population, and it is the extensive coverage that newspapers and TV channels give these Net initiatives that has vastly multiplied their visibility and audience outreach.

The number of those who have cyberaccess in Egypt, according to a 2008 government report, reached 9.17 million citizens, out of roughly 80 millions. This is a huge leap from the only 650,000 users we had in 2000. Still, this is a minority in the present time. But just like its Indian counterpart, the Egyptian mainstream media is obsessed with what goes on in the blogosphere. Local media outlets–whether they are Independent, opposition, government owned, or privately run–regularly monitor blogs, Facebook groups, web forums, and report on what goes on for their newspapers, TV and radio stations. Journalists are also hooking themselves up to Twitter and Jaiku to follow what the activists are tweeting and texting about. Many bloggers are also journalists, who have access to the mainstream media and can push for their stories and campaigns to get wider coverage. Of course this means we get on occasions tons of bullshit, negative and sensationalist reporting, but in all cases if a story now goes on some blog, or you launch a campaign on some website, you are more or less assured this will be picked up by journalists in the mainstream media who still have a wider audience than internet surfers.