When all is said and done, Mohamed Hassanein Heikal's remains a legacy of journalism at its best Any initiative in the world of journalism is an event to be reckoned with. And, controversially received, the official launch of the Heikal Foundation for Arab Press is due later this month. Bearing the name and mark of Mohamed Hassanein Heikal, one of the Arab world's best known political commentators and for many years chairman and editor of Al-Ahram, the foundation is the subject of debates concerning Heikal's close association with the former president Gamal Abdel-Nasser. Another question: why launch a foundation training journalists rather than a press award or a newspaper? The many questions have been largely ignored by the octogenarian himself, whose main response was that there is much room for improvement in print and broadcast journalism across the Arab world; this has nothing to do with his own political views, aired regularly through a popular show on Al-Jazeera. The foundation's executive director is Hani Shukrallah, the former executive editor of Al-Ahram Weekly, whose political position put an end to his career in semi-official journalism; the first workshop -- at the American University in Cairo on 24 and 25 February -- will be on investigative journalism. But neither of these decisions has been the subject of attack. The criticism, rather, has focussed on the choice of the renowned journalist Seymour Hersh being the inaugural speaker at that first event; ignoring his Pulitzer Prize and many honourable contributions, including pieces on US abuses in Iraq, the peevish critics, targeting Heikal, took issue with Hersh having been born to a Jewish family in the late 1930s. Shukrallah was hardly interested in responding to such attacks, reiterating the need for "the advancement and refinement of Arab journalism" at the present time, the Arab journalist being the primary target, since he or she "holds the key to empowering the Arab media to play an effective and constructive role". Established as a public service trust fund, the foundation has a capital of $5 million, whose annual interest will train around 150 Arab journalists through seminars and training courses in the region and beyond, with the aim of exposing journalists to the latest skills and challenges -- the standards of best practice, in the hope that they will apply them; those under 35, says Shukrallah, are "where you can make a difference". It is not merely a question of training but also debate, he adds, and doesn't concern only journalists but equally managers and administrators. There will be an attempt to break the north-south mould, capitalising on success stories outside the West. Shukrallah says the idea of the foundation has been on Heikal's mind for a long time, because of his attachment to the idea of journalism as a legacy of his. The foundation's activities are decided by Heikal, an impressive board of trustees and Shukrallah, who says the choice of investigative journalism was not a hard one to make, since it is "almost a lost art in the Egyptian and largely the Arab press". The foundation has yet to find headquarters, having abandoned the plan to rent offices at the Press Syndicate; the headquarters should display Heikal's voluminous library, including some hand-written documents of Nasser's. The foundation will be financed exclusively by the renewable trust fund, safeguarding independence -- it may subsequently accept contributions to specific activities, "in full transparency". Still, there remain queries: Are the failures of Arab journalism to do with skills or lack of freedoms including access to information and accountability? What would be the use of skills in authoritarian newsrooms with predetermined editorial policies? How far can we go training no more than 200 journalists a year? And how will the foundation interact with media learning institutions? For Shukrallah these are rather expressions of the challenges lying ahead -- an uphill battle not only against state-oriented publications but partisan and sensationalist journalism as well. "What we hope to achieve is to help journalists who work within different and varying editorial lines to present their readers with credible facts in context and with a human face," he said; this has proved possible and networking including apprenticeship could render it viable. With the Internet revolution and expanding horizons, "there is a volatile readership and a state of flux"; the idea is to channel that in a positive direction. He referred to 15 successful years of Al-Ahram Weekly to substantiate the claim that "against the odds you can create a respectable newspaper that is worthy of the interest and support of its readers". To this end the foundation will deal with all parties, including schools and press organisations. The launch should sound an alarm for the state of the press in Egypt. Coming against a backdrop of debate about privatising the state- owned press papers and widening the scope of independent journalism, the foundation should emphasise the need to retrieve long lost journalistic practices. "Essentially newspapers, notwithstanding political lines, should aim first and foremost to information, to reveal the truth," commented Hassan Abu Taleb, editor of the opinion pages in the daily Al-Ahram. Most Egyptian papers, said Abu Taleb, have been selling due either to their high-calibre commentators or very sensational headlines. "This is not what journalism is about and this is where an establishment like the Heikal can make a difference." Like other commentators, Abu Taleb is convinced that the scope of liberties is not the only or the main handicap in the way of advancing the quality of Arabic journalism: "There is certainly a room for improving liberties but there has also to be an end to the confusion between news stories and opinion articles that we see so much of in the independent press." There should be an end to one-sided reporting, telephone interviews, unchecked facts and news based on official press releases. Abu Taleb added that whether they like it or not all news organisations will have to rise to the challenge once the high-quality parameters are re-introduced. "The Heikal Foundation for Arab Press by itself will not revolutionise the quality of Egyptian or indeed Arab journalism, but it may well be able to carry the beacon."
