The Arab world has recently seen the emergence of outspoken bloggers whose critical postings often anger the authorities. In several countries these freedom of expression advocates have been charged with defamation and put behind bars. How do Arab newspapers cope with these new competitors who scorn the market constraints and are able to bypass the governmental anti-free speech arsenals thanks to their anonymity?

One of the main reasons why Arab bloggers community is gaining notoriety is that it dares report on topics generally avoided by newspapers. "Citizen journalists not only comment on existing media reports but play a major role in creating them", the 20 year-old Bahraini blogger Esra'a al-Shafei wrote on the http://www.mideastyouth.com website in August 2007. The website gathers young bloggers from Arab countries, Iran, Israel and Kurdistan to "prove the fact that moderation, interfaith understanding, and sanity does exist in the region ». According to Al-Shafei, blogging is influencing many of the mainstream media outlets, pressuring them to cover human rights violations and previously unreported types of crimes.

This was the case a few months ago in Morocco, where a blogger who uses the pseudonym Targuist (name of a village in northern Rif region of the kingdom) Sniper filmed two corrupt policemen accepting money for car drivers. Sniper posted the video on YouTube and several other bloggers re-posted the incriminating movie on their blogs. Soon the story made the front page of the leading Moroccan daily Assabah and the two policemen were prosecuted for their criminal activities.

A growing influence

"Some of the blogs have become more reliable sources of news than the official ones," Said Essoulami, head of the Casablanca-base Center for Media Freedom MENA (CMF MENA), told APN. Essoulami says that blogging offers an opportunity for citizens who no longer believe in making their voices heard through the mainstream media. Tunisian blogger Salmazen called on for a campaign against bad journalism in June 2007 and another Tunisian blogger recently made a call for reports on topics censored in Tunisia.
Another reason why the bloggers community is playing an increasingly important role in the Arab society in is a general dissatisfaction over the fact that the media tend to avoid the frowned-upon national and local topics and instead report on consensual ones such as the Iraqi invasion or the Arab-Israeli conflict. Moroccan blogger Ayyoub Ajmi recently told Le Journal Hebdomadaire that he created a local news website because he wanted to know what is happening in his own district "before getting news about Sadr City."

Even though some critics consider that citizen journalists lack professional training and do not respect the basic rules of good reporting, bloggers are nevertheless forging ahead on the media scene. They have started to win distinctions so far reserved to seasoned journalists. Among awarded laureates Egyptian bloggers are 23-year-old Kareem Amer and 32-year-old Wael Abbas. Amer was one of the 2007 Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression winners and Abbas recently received the 2007 Knight International Journalism Award. His blog, Misr Digital, regularly breaks stories on subjects such as corruption and police brutality in Egypt. His reports, videos and photographs have attracted thousands of readers and the attention of mainstream news outlets, which have started to pick up his stories and publish them.

The other side of the coin? Just like journalists, the most outspoken bloggers are being censored and sentenced to prison. In Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, personal websites have been closed down and their authors sent to prison. Abbas has been arrested, interrogated and beaten, but remains undaunted. "The bloggers in Egypt are the last independent voice," he recently wrote on his blog. "If we are silenced, no protests will be heard in Egypt /.../ And so the choice to blog is not only serious, but necessary."
How are then newspapers reacting to Arab citizen journalism, which made its first appearance with the American invasion of Iraq? "Iraqi bloggers took the initiative to inform the world of the events linked to the occupation of their country. Media outlets which could for security reasons not send their reporters to Iraq, started to quote them," says Essoulami. Iraqi bloggers are certainly attracting the interest of newspapers, but are their fellows from other Arab countries taken seriously by the press?
In the United Arab Emirates, the daily Gulf News tries to give them some space. The paper offers a hotline and a SMS number for reader 'witness journalism' and web forms with which to submit stories, alerts and pictures. In the future, Gulf News is aiming to have some trusted non-staff contributors blogging on its website.

Unfortunately, most Arab papers fail to take citizen journalism into account. "I have to confess that we have not tackled the issue yet," Abdou Benabbou, Publication Director of the Algerian daily Quotidien d'Oran told APN. 

Bypassing censorship

Sam Bahour, who is about to launch a new weekly in Palestine, says to APN: "I am very excited about the emergence of citizen journalism, but at the same time newspapers are facing a huge challenge if they are to take that kind of journalism into consideration. Firstly, we have to invest in the technology that will enable bloggers to interact with the readers. Secondly, we should claim greater freedom from the authorities in order to publish the wide range of critical opinions circulated through blogs. Lastly, we would have to make sure that all views get an equal space in the newspaper. Overcoming these challenges would take our press into the 21st century - and it's about time."

"Traditional Arab media outlets have not yet acknowledged the importance of user-generated content and rarely make use of it," says Essoulami from CMF MENA. According to him, the established Arab press ignore citizen journalists because they do not respect the rules of journalism and because they report in a personal and emotive way. He is, however, positive about the future. "Arab young bloggers are emerging as supporters of a new way of seeing and interpreting events. I think they will manage to bypass censorship and the old mentalities and will activate the dynamics of change in their respective countries."

Any comment on this article can be sent to fmiadi@wan.asso.fr