The severing of the Internet posed for Egypt's e-journalism its first big test, Nader Habib reports With the beginning of the last decade, the press gave birth to what was called e-journalism, the outcome of the merging between computers and information technology. But the January revolt forced this newborn technology in Egypt to tackle a problem it was not equipped to deal with. E-journalism can fly with the speed of light in the transfer of news, as seen in the few days before the 25 January protests erupted. That day witnessed comments, video clips and citizen journalism, which helped to circulate as much information as was humanly possible. Citizens, it should be said, especially the poor, had no ulterior motive to hide or alter the truth. On the night of 28 January, the Internet and telecommunication services were unplugged by the Egyptian authorities. The websites of some national newspapers, including Al-Ahram online and Al-Badeel, stopped. These electronic newspapers were blocked because they apparently unveiled both the weakness of the regime and the fragility of an Egyptian media which failed to uncover the truth. Egyptians, thus, found themselves forced to read, watch and listen to their traditional media which was charged with not giving the complete picture. State run TV news refused to announce that a million-man demo in Tahrir Square was being planned and when the protesters did show up en masse, the TV cameras preferred to either train their cameras up on the Tahrir sky or at a handful of pro-Mubarak demonstrations down the road. Al-Ahram Weekly talked to Sherif El-Labban, professor of press and information technology and manager of the Printing and Publishing Centre at Cairo University, who said that stopping all Internet services plus the three mobile companies in Egypt was unprecedented in the history of Internet and cell- phone companies. "This action, not taken by almost any other country, led to demolishing the concept of 'freedom of expression'. And when the Egyptian authorities stopped almost all means of getting information, Egyptian channels also seemed to be in the dark, while other satellite channels would take the opposite direction, heating up the viewer and revving up the tension by bringing in a stream of political analysts whose seemingly sole role in life was to see Egypt collapse in a heap. Demonstrators seemed to be able to circumvent the Internet cut by coordinating with each other through telephone calls, circulating publications and using loudspeakers. Some young people circumvented the matter, creating the "talk to tweet" new service, which enabled them to keep in touch through Google and Twitter using international telephone cables. "In the first test of a real democracy," El-Labban said, "the state gave up the economic profits it harvested from using both Internet and cell-phone services in Egypt. This, no doubt, led to economic problems. "For journalists like us who depend totally on the Internet, we were paralysed," Hani Shukrallah, editor-in-chief of Ahram Online which was launched just two months ago, said. "But it did not prevent us from covering the theatre of events. "The security situation was bad; journalists were given a holiday. Some journalists were protesting in Tahrir Square, while others were guarding their homes as was being done by most of Egyptians in the absence of a police force. Because we have among our staff some foreigner journalists, they were concerned since some Egyptian officials believed that foreign hands were behind this revolution. "Even when we regained Internet service, there was another problem: although our website has just been launched, the success it had accrued lessened when we were unable to come out. So regaining the trust of our readers was another challenge facing us. "The Egyptian government thought that stopping the Internet would help it stop the riots and demonstrations," Shukrallah said. "But that had no influence on the demonstrators or their numbers. Such action was just a decision taken by tyrannical minds." So agreed Khaled El-Balshi, editor-in-chief of Al-Badeel electronic newspaper, who said the Internet service was not just a means of communication, but an economic system on which many other systems are based: the stock exchange and banks, naming a few. Stopping the Internet was just an emergency, which lasted for just a few days. "As a newspaper," El-Balshi continued, "we cannot talk about any losses since a great part of the paper's work depends on volunteers. In the meantime, the number of our hits abroad has markedly increased. "When the Internet resumed five days after it was cut, the events were on the crest and we were in the scene of the events, but we had a hard time playing catch up with all the news we had missed. Al-Badeel reporters were given upload passwords which they could use to update their website. If one reporter was arrested or detained, the others could continue with the update.
