Who is the journalist? Who is the media professional? What is journalism? What is media? What is the relationship between these individuals and "influencers" on social media platforms? And how do all these factors relate to the creation of "public relations" and the "promotion" of commercial or political products? These questions have become central to the media and advertising industries since the advent of the social media age. While they have existed before, they have not been as abundant or with such existential stakes.
The discussion on this matter is extensive; some aspects are astonishing and thought-provoking, while others are discouraging and frustrating. I have a modest opinion on this issue, but let us examine a new development emerging from Tunisia, where journalists reacted differently to the hashtag campaign #Intruders_Not_Colleagues on social media. Some believe that intruders have stolen the profession from its rightful owners, leading to the emergence of negative and dangerous media phenomena that both the professionals and the audience disapprove of. Others reject this notion, arguing that the crises in Tunisian media are bigger than the intruders, asserting that many esteemed and competent journalists are not journalism graduates.
In this Tunisian battle, some have accused journalists of bankruptcy and "cutting and pasting" from foreign media, particularly French sources. Others have claimed that social media participants are accused of opportunism and unprofessionalism. As previously mentioned, this is a recurring debate in Tunisia and beyond, even globally.
My modest opinion, which I referenced earlier, is that journalism, at least in the Arab world—especially in regions like Egypt, the Levant, and the Arabian Peninsula—rests on three essential pillars: the first is enlightenment, the second is literature, and the third is news reporting. Journalism was shaped by a group of pioneers of enlightenment and those concerned with ideas and reform, according to each group's vision for reform. This is why we find leading Arab intellectuals like the Damascus scholar Muhammad Kurd Ali, the Egyptian Ahmad Hasan al-Zayat, and the Arabian Peninsula scholar Hamad al-Jasser being regarded as pioneers of journalism alongside their literary outputs.
In addition to the function of enlightenment in issues like education reform and women's rights, there was also engagement in promoting literature and researching it, elevating the Arabic language and its arts. Prominent literary figures like Abbas Mahmud al-Aqqad were also stars of journalism and literature.
Finally, the function of "news reporting," which involves informing people of new developments, increased with the evolution of journalism and was most prominently exemplified by the journalism of the Egyptian brothers Ali and Mustafa Amin and the school of the newspaper "Al-Akhbar."
Thus, these three functions—enlightenment, literature, and news reporting—are the standard by which journalism is measured in its Arab form; they embody its spirit of old, and I believe it should continue to be so today. Anything beyond that can be described by its proponents however they wish, and it may be a new color or a mixture, but this is journalism, regardless of the means of its publication, be it print or digital.
