Eulogising a Friend On Air
Eulogising a Friend On Air Ahmed Husam | Senior Producer, Al Jazeera Mubasher
Since I started working on Al Jazeera Mubasher’s online platforms in 2010, I have received news from all over the world. The volume doubled with the inception of the ‘Sharek’ (meaning Share), which was intended to galvanise ‘citizen journalism’. A dedicated account was created on Skype to receive the Sharek contributions. Every day, we were flooded with thousands of video clips from events all over the globe; which would then go through the due process of verification before being aired or posted. Nowhere did ‘citizen journalism’ play a more critical role than Syria. Not deterred in their struggle against a brutal regime, Syrian revolutionaries grabbed their phones to show the world what they were enduring and to document the crimes perpetrated against peaceful civilians. Armed with exceptional creativity, Syrian citizen journalists stormed the field; knowing that they would be detained, tortured or even killed. They were true heroes, with one aim: to tell the world the truth. In my mind there remains one indelible memory. In 2012, I was in contact with Anas Al Tarsheh, a 20-year-old Syrian student. He was spirited and, above all, fearless in his endeavours to cover the events in his neighbourhood in Homs. Anas went
everywhere at any time of the day, following stories and paying out of his own pocket to do so. I received a phone call from Anas one day. “Can you go live in a while?” he asked me. A nearby area was being bombarded by the regime, he explained. “You do not have to risk your life, Anas, if the shelling is still going on,” I replied. Then the line was disconnected. I tried to call him back, but couldn’t get through. I felt fear and anxiety. Shortly after, I received a Facebook notification message. It was a photo of Anas’s body. It had been ripped apart by a regime shell. Till this day, that image has remained carved in my memory. With a heavy heart, I hurried to the Al Jazeera premises, fighting back my tears as Anas’s last words echoed in my ears. This bitter memory has made me more adamant about sparing no effort to advance Al Jazeera’s mission: telling the untold stories and being the voice of the voiceless.
I have witnessed many examples of how Al Jazeera is achieving this mission. The attack on Coptic Christians in a church in the Egyptian city of Alexandria in 2011, was a scoop. Documented as it happened by one of our associates, it was aired on Al Jazeera before any other media outlet or news agency. As the Arab Spring ignited in Tunisia, we all camped in the newsroom, working day and night. We rested only when we aired footage of the former president’s plane taking off as he fled the country. A few days later, that spark spread to Egypt. As the Mubarak regime disconnected the internet, Egyptian youth devised creative solutions to continue feeding us footage. These are just a few examples of how Al Jazeera made a difference. Al Jazeera has won the minds and hearts of viewers all over the world with its bold, honest reporting while upholding the core values of journalism: accuracy, independence, impartiality and humanity.
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