Ahmed Abdel Meguid presents a research paper entitled "The investigative journalism addressing of terrorism issues"
Researcher Ahmed Abdel Meguid, assistant teacher at the Department of Journalism at the Faculty of Media and Mass Communication presented a research paper entitled "The investigative journalism addressing of terrorism issues" in Sharm el-Sheikh conference on terrorism organized by the Faculty of Arts, Tanta University.
The conference entitled "The role of human and social sciences in combating extremism and terrorism" was held under the patronage of the Minister of Higher Education, Dr. Khaled Abdel Ghaffar and the President of Tanta University Dr. Magdy Saba.
The research addresses the seriousness of the issue of terrorism and the importance of confronting it at home and abroad, especially at the intellectual and cultural levels.
"Culture, ideas, visions, perceptions and objectives on which terror groups and organizations are based are the greatest threat, as it would be applicable to arrest or destroy all armed groups, but the risk will always remain in the visions and perceptions of those who could motivate and perpetuate the continuation of terrorism and extremism", Research added.
This leads us to need an in-depth and comprehensive investigative analysis to determine the origins of extremism thoughts, research emphasized.
The need of investigative press is increasing to focus on the society's general problems as well as the phenomenon of "terrorism and related issues", in order to raise public awareness about risks of terrorism and provide an opportunity to eliminate them.
"2017 was ranked first in covering terrorism incidents and the operations undertaken by the Egyptian army to combat terrorism attacks, as the production of the sample newspapers concerning investigative report reached 80% comparing to previous years, which corresponds to the statistics of The Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy that 2017 witnessed terrorist incidents recorded as the most violent in the history of modern Egypt" the Research concluded.
In addition, local investigative reports about terrorism and extremism came first, then international investigations were the second by 40% of reports, as the international investigative reports included investigations about some Arab, European and African countries, such as "Desert Puerto", and "Kornet".
Research also addressed the content of investigative reports about terrorism issued by the Egyptian newspapers, as security reports were ranked first by 50%, followed by political issues by 25%, and economic and social issues by 12.5%.
The study recommended the need to expand the production of investigative reports about terrorism issues, especially reports that provide solutions to reduce and root out terrorism, as well as encouraging newspapers and websites to carry out their investigative role in detecting corruption and terrorism by state institutions and civil society organizations.
"State institutions and civil society organizations should create survey units or centers with the participation of all Egyptian newspapers with a main purpose of uncovering "terrorism and corruption" issues", Research added.