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| The Power of Blogs in the Arab World | ||||
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"Blogs play a much more important role in the Arab world than in the West because of the absence of a free press in the Middle East and the Arab Maghreb," says Michel Touma, chief editor at L'Orient-Le Jour, explaining that in the Arab world, blogs enjoy a greater freedom than newspapers. by Patricia Khoder APN: How important are blogs in the Arab world? Michel Touma: Blogs in the Arab world certainly play a greater role than in the West, and for an obvious reason: in the Arab world there are few, if any, free newspapers (with a couple of notable exceptions). So people turn to blogs. Although in some Arab countries even the Internet is monitored and censored. And there have been cases of websites being censored in many Arab countries. Still, in principle, journalists and intellectuals who do manage to start up their own blogs will enjoy a margin of freedom far beyond what is allowed the traditional media. The blog compensates for this lack of free expression by offering a virtually unlimited forum, one that simply does not exist for ordinary or traditional media. APN: Do these blogs compete with the print media or act as a complement to it? Michel Touma: They act as a complement. Blogs cannot compete with the print media because nothing can take its place in terms of expertise in certain subject areas, on certain issues. Moreover, newspapers offer a visual aid for an issue. Blogs are limited to one screen. If you're reading a blog on a particular subject, for example, you have to scroll down the screen through the various parts of the text, which doesn't give you an overall view. Your brain can't remember everything that it saw. But with a newspaper or magazine, you have a visual aid in front of you to give you that comprehensive view. APN: How do they complement each other? Michel Touma: This is the Arab world. Blogs provide a means of expression in Arab countries which very often does not exist in the print media. As well, blogs offer the possibility of linking to other sources of information, which you can't do with newspapers. In other words, if a newspaper puts out a report on a particular issue, that report is static, it is not interactive, whereas a blog might offer links to other sites dealing with the same subject, which then opens up a whole range of opportunities to access information that you just don't have with the print media. So the print media offers the advantage of being a visual aid, which affords the reader a complete and comprehensive view of an issue, whereas blogs, which don't have that same advantage, have others, such as the possibility of linking to other sources of information. APN: Do you think that bloggers are journalists? Michel Touma: They can be journalists. Certainly, not all bloggers are journalists. But a blogger who takes his work seriously can do the work as a journalist. A journalist's work is all about going after the information and then presenting it to the reader in a clear, straightforward and understandable manner. A blogger can do this as well. There's no reason why a blogger can't go out in the field and research his topic, go into the archives, and then present the results of his work, as a journalist does. But if a blogger is satisfied with simply offering his opinion or his take on a situation, he is no longer a journalist. A blogger can be a journalist if he wants to, if he makes the effort to be one. APN: How important is a story, an article or even an exclusive scoop published on a blog? Michel Touma: The value of a blog as an information vehicle lies in its ability to reach a far wider readership than the print media, not including, of course, a newspaper's website, that is, an online paper. A newspaper, in its printed format, has a limited circulation, whereas a blog's readership is, in theory, limitless. Now if we compare an online newspaper and a blog, then the numbers become equal in terms of readership. If we compare a blog to the print media in terms of freedom of information, well, it depends on the case. The difference between a newspaper's website and a blog in terms of freedom of expression is that a newspaper's site is owned by the paper, so it is subject to repression by authorities in the given country. This repression is not felt so keenly by blogs, although you do have the example of Syria and Egypt, where bloggers have been thrown in jail. In some countries, blogs themselves are the target of repression. In Lebanon, this is not the case. The press code does not apply to blogs. In Lebanon, they are not governed by any law. Generally speaking, blogs enjoy greater freedom than the print media. APN: How trustworthy a source are blogs in the Arab world? Michel Touma: It's very relative. Blogs are not institutionalised, they are not governed by any legislation. There are no safeguards. Anyone can start up their own blog. So credibility becomes more relative. A newspaper or a magazine may be careful to respect their brand image, whereas a blogger can give free reign to his imagination and his fantasies. APN: Why did L'Orient-Le Jour create its own blog? Michel Touma: L'Orient-Le Jour's blog came about as a result of one of our journalists attending a seminar where the participants had to create a blog as their final project. The blog was born of a confluence of factors and not as part of a clear, strategic decision. Not a business decision, as such. APN: What is the difference between the web version of L'Orient Le Jour and the paper's blog, particularly as the online version is interactive, with the reader being able to respond to articles? Michel Touma: The paper's website is the result of the efforts of a whole team, the whole paper, whereas the blog is the result of one or two persons' work. |
