CAIRO: A once established publishing house, Rose Al-Youssef is wasting large sums of public money every morning, suggests a report released by the Central Auditing Agency. Earlier this week, independent newspaper Al-Fajr published a summary of the report which states that Rose Al-Youssef daily prints 3,508,000 copies annually, 2,587,000 copies of which are returned, which amounts to 74 percent. Of the 9,600 copies published daily, said the report, only 2,486 copies are sold - the majority of which go to subscribers including ministries and other organizations. In his column on Thursday, Magdy El-Gallad, editor-in-chief of independent daily Al-Masry Al-Youm, commented on the report saying that Rose Al-Youssef, which is funded by taxpayers, wastes millions of pounds of public money every morning. "Personally I haven't been reading Rose Al-Youssef newspaper for a while, maybe because I don't like indecency or intrusion in people's private lives or maybe because I haven't been following up on Abdallah Kamal [the newspaper's editor-in-chief] ever since we were in journalism school together, said El-Gallad "What made me write about the report . is the horrific and weird silence of officials after the release of the report as if taxpayers' money that goes into this newspaper is of no importance, he wrote. According to the report, each copy of Rose Al-Youssef daily loses LE 1.62. "The crime is when officials are entrusted with the people's money and they waste it on a state-owned newspaper selling only 1,450 copies so that it wouldn t insult respectful figures in the country and diminishe the standards of journalism, said El-Gallad. He also notes that there has been no reaction from the Higher Press Council, the Shoura Council or the National Democratic Party (NDP). At the end of his column, El-Gallad asks, "When will the leaders of that Secretariat realize that this newspaper is insulting them every morning and is inciting hatred against them? Journalist Mohamed Abdel Qoddous, whose grandmother pioneered the weekly Rose Al-Youssef magazine, told Daily News Egypt, "We are sorry that Rose Al-Youssef reached this state; it is no longer a forum for free expression and great journalism, nor does it represent the liberal ideology it followed when it was founded.
