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"Treat accuracy as something that is sacred and fight hard to keep your biases from affecting your reporting." These are two pieces of advice from Aswat Masriya’s editor, Khaled Ezzelarab, to journalists in Egypt today, and the principles underpinning Aswat Masriya’s news operation.
Aswat Masriya has just finished covering Egypt’s presidential elections and distributing news about them to both Egyptian media outlets and readers in Egypt and around the world. The news service is run by Thomson Reuters Foundation with support from the Arab Partnership Fund and has been providing objective coverage of events in Egypt since 2011, backed by an extensive journalism and media training programme.
Taking an objective approach to news coverage set Aswat Masriya apart from many other media in Egypt and provided Egyptians with a place to find reliable news about the elections. AM covered many angles - from an exclusive on the budgets of Sabahi and Sisi’s presidential campaigns, to investigating the phenomenon of factories that were coercing their workers to vote, and tracking down some Egyptians who did not vote, and asking them why.
The site had almost 45,000 visits during the election alone, but readership was multiplied by the republication of stories across the Egyptian and international media from Al Ahram to The Financial Times.
Thomson Reuters Foundation asked Khaled about his experience of leading Aswat Masriya’s coverage of the elections.
Q: How did the Egyptian media cover the elections?
A: The Egyptian media poured a lot of resources into covering the elections, sending out reporters and TV crews to every province, and running 24-hour news operations. However, coverage was often unbalanced, tilting heavily towards one candidate. A perception that voter turnout was low on the first day dominated the news agenda and local media became almost obsessed with calling on people to go out and vote.
Q: What made Aswat Masriya's election coverage stand out in the Egyptian media?
A: Balance, fairness and accuracy were probably the most important features of our coverage and made it stand out among Egyptian media. When other outlets were jumping to conclusions and claiming a low turnout based on impressions, we sent our reporters out to get sample numbers, and we ended up with a different picture, one that turned out to be closer to the truth. And while most media outlets favoured one candidate, we made sure that our coverage was balanced not only between the two candidates, but also with regards to major players who were boycotting the elections (such as the Muslim Brotherhood).
Q: What were the main challenges in covering the elections?
A: Unlike most previous elections, this time there were few sources available to verify numbers claimed by the government and the electoral commission. One of the candidates didn't have enough representatives at polling stations, and there were few reliable independent observers. We had to diversify the pool of sources we relied on, and make sure that attributions were made very clear to the user. In the end I think users respected the fact that we were not making claims we couldn’t verify, and trusted what we had to say.
Q: What advice would you give to journalists in Egypt today?
A: In times of polarization such as this, it is even more important to fight hard to keep your biases from affecting your reporting. Treat accuracy as something that is sacred. And always be fair to the subjects of your reporting.
Q: What is the impact of Aswat Masriya's coverage and training?
A: Aswat Masriya has established itself as a "go-to" place for reliable news coverage, and proved that there is a space and a demand for objective reporting in Egypt today. The site has had almost eight million visits, and gained even wider readership through articles republished in Egyptian media and pickups by international outlets including Reuters, CNN, Al Jazeera, The Financial Times, The Guardian, NPR, The Huffington Post, USA Today, La Stampa, NRC Handelsblad and Foreign Policy magazine. Over 300 journalists have been trained by the Foundation and many have gone on to write for Aswat Masriya itself through its long-term mentoring programme.
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