A pressing case for neutrality

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Even before the campaigns of the presidential elections had opened questions were being raised about the neutrality and objectivity of the way in which they would be reported. Could free and fair elections really take place? Well they just have, more or less. The one exception appears to have been the state-run media which, according to some civil society monitoring groups, failed to adapt to the spirit of the campaign, allocating 40 times more coverage to the incumbent president than to the rest of the candidates combined.

The media's tangled relationship with the executive lies behind this lack of balance. Any discussion of neutrality, objectivity and even-handedness in press coverage becomes meaningless in the absence of true freedom. The free flow of information, and the freedom to establish, own and run newspapers, lies at the heart of the problem. In Egypt, as in the majority of Arab countries, objectivity and neutrality -- the prerequisites of a credible media -- will remain little more than a pipedream until the relationship between state and media is untangled.

It is the absence of separation in this relationship that allows the boundaries of neutrality to be regularly crossed. Yet as parliamentary elections approach, objective reporting is needed more than ever before. The writers of opinion articles are naturally expected to have opinions, and there is nothing wrong in that. It is in the reporting of news that readers are being let down.

In party-owned newspapers -- Al-Wafd, the Tagammu's Al-Ahali, the Nasserist's Al-Arabi and the National Democratic Party's Mayo, readers expect to see the owners' views aired. But major national publications, newspapers and magazines such as Al-Ahram, Al-Akhbar, Al-Gumhuriya, Al-Musawwar, and Rose El-Youssef, have a duty to present the positions of all political currents in the country, and to report news in an unbiased manner, with precision and fairness.

November's parliamentary elections present the press with an opportunity to salvage its reputation. The wheels of freedom have been set in motion and they cannot be turned back. Whatever the shortcomings, the presidential campaign has raised the expectations of citizens, newspaper readers and television viewers. The public is crying out for objective and accurate reporting. Those that fail to deliver will not be easily forgiven.