كتب : عمرو حسن | الأربعاء، 04 مارس 2009 - 20:22

The orientation of Egyptian media

The objectivity of Egyptian sports journalist was once again questioned when ENPPI coach Anwar Salama accused a reporter of making a pro-Zamalek statement rather than ask the former Ahli tactician a press conference question.

In the Zamalek vs. ENPPI post-match conference, Salama made clear of his feelings towards the game's referee. The surprise came when instead of asking any questions about the clash, a journalist accused the coach of wiping his hands off the result by blaming the ref.

Now, that is a behaviour I'm sure no coach in Europe has to deal with. Coaches receive all sorts of questions about their tactics and selections, but when a journalist is bluntly telling a coach that his team deserved to lose a game and that the opposition outclassed him, I think this is just too opinionated for a press conference.

We all know and agree that the whole Egyptian population is divided between Ahli and Zamalek fans, and journalists are no exception.

However, the problem is that Egyptians are very temperamental and never professional enough. Some journalists don’t even try to separate their work from personal preferences.

If a journalist wasn’t patient enough to blame a coach in a press conference, then many others would do the same through their writings and also according to their club orientation.

This is a very dangerous phenomenon in the Egyptian media and I know that some would say that tabloids do exist all over the world. However, tabloids can write anything to create controversy and increase their revenues, but they never publish stories because a journalist wants to praise or attack his favourite or most hated club.

I'm not asking our journalists to stop following clubs, but at least they can be objective and put their love to their clubs aside when they write about football.

The other thing is that when a reporter indulges himself in a similar conversation with a coach, the audience miss out on all the information they could get out of a conference.

Rather than talk about what happened in the game, the coach himself will lose focus and will be hitting back at the journalist and that's what unfortunately happened on Tuesday.

مقالات أخرى للكاتب
التعليقات