Al-Ahram Weekly Issue No. 246 9 - 15 November 1995
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875

Capital perspectives

Barely two years old, the Nasserists' mouth-piece, the weekly Al-Arabi, is Egypt's youngest opposition newspaper. Now appearing on a twice-weekly basis in the run-up to the forthcoming elections, the newspaper had a modest start, employing a group of young reporters, some of them part-timers, and others who were Nasserists with no previous journalistic experience.

And yet its editor-in-chief, Mahmoud El-Maraghi, claims a circulation ranking second among opposition newspapers. Although he refused to provide details, other sources maintain that circulation stands at around 40,000, a figure which rises on Nasserist anniversaries.

Since the newspaper's establishment, its staff and sources of funding have changed dramatically. Nowadays the majority of reporters are not party members, and, whereas party donors provided most of the money at first, the paper is now largely self-financing, with 80-90 per cent of expenditure covered by advertisements and circulation, El-Maraghi claims.

According to Dr. Awatef Abdel-Rahman, a professor of journalism at Cairo University, one of the newspaper's flaws is that it devotes regular columns to party leaders, at the expense of giving a voice to the younger generation, which, in her view, is better able to serve the party's interests.

"I believe the newspaper still has a long way to go," Abdel-Rahman said. "Although it has a good editor-in-chief, the staff do not work well together; they do not make a team capable of putting out a party mouthpiece.

Another problem with the newspaper, Abdel-Rahman continued, is that it focuses on events in the capital, giving little attention to the provinces and shanty towns. "As a newspaper addressing Nasser's followers, it should give more space to the people's problems. There will be an erosion of the newspaper's quality if it continues to take the shape of a party newsletter," she added.

According to El-Maraghi, the newspaper carries Egyptian and Arab news, but has little interest in international events. "We deal with the Egyptian and Arab situations from a specific perspective," he said, while insisting that, "This perspective is not copied from the past - what happened in the 1960s cannot be repeated in the '90s." However he stressed that Nasserist fundamentals such as social equality, national independence and Arab nationalism were always upheld.

"We reject US domination of our decision-making," he explained. "But although we reject subservience to the US and the International Monetary Fund, we are not against cooperation. We may agree or disagree with the government but we still believe that it should play a role in directing our economy." Much of Al-Arabi's coverage, El-Maraghi said, is devoted to exposing corruption in government circles and opposing the normalisation of relations with Israel.

Like other opposition newspaper editors, he complained that his reporters do not have sufficient access to information; they are not allowed into the Office of the Presidency, the prime minister's office or the Foreign Ministry. "Even in places where we are allowed to have representatives, reporters from national newspapers have a greater chance of obtaining information," he said.

Moreover, he alleged, the state turns a deaf ear to the material published in Al-Arabi. "We write, with evidence, about specific cases of corruption, but no one bothers to reply to our allegations. There is a state trend to hold public opinion in contempt."

But he was quick to distance the Nasserist newspaper from some other opposition publications. "What distinguishes Al-Arabi from other newspapers," El-Maraghi said, "is that we are extremely objective in what we publish. We differ with the president, but we do not attack him personally. We do not get involved in verbal sparring."

ARCHIVES Letter from the Editor Editorial Board Subscription

WEEKLY ONLINE: www.ahram.org.eg/weekly Updated every Saturday at 11.00 GMT, 2pm local time weeklyweb@ahram.org.eg

Al-Ahram Organisation