In this article, Hughes talks about the importance of including social issues into theatre and how people from journalism has perfected it and used it as a tool to address the issues of journalism more effectively. It tells the story of twin sisters Margaret and Allison Engel’s venture into documentary theatre. Their opinion about theatre is quite contrary to what we would believe. “Writing for the stage isn’t really so different from writing for a newspaper. You’re telling a narrative.” says Allison. The elements of journalistic excellence – Research, reporting and storytelling – is also essential in writing for the stage. Many a times a play has been written based on real life incidents which has a social perspective to it. For example, …show more content…
This article, as the title suggests, is about young Egyptian reporters developing innovative journalism and business models amidst political arrests and censorship. The article starts with the incident involving Egypt’s Justice Minister Mahfouz Saber. Saber expressed the opinion on National television that a law graduate whose father was a garbage collector could never become a judge because “a judge must come from a respectable environment, materially as well as morally.”
Within minutes, social media was buzzing with calls for Saber to step down. Even the mainstream media joined in. Less than 24 hours after the interview aired, Saber resigned, an unprecedented outcome in a country where just a few years ago ministers were immune to public opinion and accustomed to remaining in office for decades.
This is only one of the new incidents which showcases the rise of public opinion in a country where state and corporate media rules large. The state-run media empire alone is made up of newspapers, radio stations, and TV networks that employ some 74,000 staff. State-controlled outlets have little or no credibility among Egyptians but remain on autopilot, with millions of dollars of government money keeping them
In 1919, when Langston Hughes was seventeen years old, he spent the summer with his father, Jim Hughes, in Toluca, Mexico. Langston had not seen his father since he was a small child, and he was excited about making the trip. However, during this visit, no affectionate bond would develop between Langston and Jim. Jim Hughes was a cold, difficult man, who was driven by ambition to make money and achieve respect. He had moved to Mexico to avoid segregation and racial injustice in the United States. As the manager of an electric company and owner of a ranch and mines, Jim expressed contempt for black Americans who continued to submit to segregation and live in poverty.
Langston Hughes was one of the great writers of his time. He was named the “most renowned African American poet of the 20th century” (McLaren). Through his writing he made many contributions to following generations by writing about African American issues in creative ways including the use of blues and jazz. Langston Hughes captured the scene of Harlem life in the early 20th century significantly influencing American Literature. He once explained that his writing was an attempt to “explain and illuminate the Negro condition in America” (Daniel 760). To fulfill this task, he wrote 15 volumes of poetry, six novels, three books, 11 plays, and a variety of non-fiction work (Daniel 760). He also edited over 50 books in his time (McKay).
Langston Hughes’s writing showcases a variety of themes and moods, and his distinguished career led his biographer, Arnold Rampersad, to describe him as “perhaps the most representative black American writer.” Many of his poems illustrate his role as a spokesman for African American society and the working poor. In others, he relates his ideas on the importance of heritage and the past. Hughes accomplishes this with a straightforward, easily understandable writing style that clearly conveys his thoughts and opinions, although he has frequently been criticized for the slightly negative tone to his works.
Langston Hughes was one of the first black men to express the spirit of blues and jazz
One approach to change the system may be to incorporate into criminal justice the objective of restoration – repairing the harm done by the crime itself. “Repairing harm may be a more appropriate response to crimes, and may be the only way to truly address the needs of victims of crime.” (Peter Merideth, May 1, 2009). In our traditional system of criminal justice, the victim has little to no role to play other than as witness for the prosecution. “This is the greatest complaint of most victims and victim advocacy groups” (Peter Merideth, May 1, 2009). After the victim reports the crime they are rarely notified or informed of the proceedings unless they are called upon to act as a witness. In order to implement a restorative approach, there
Langston Hughes clearly connects with a wide range of audiences through the simplicity that surrounds his poetry. The beauty of this manner in which he wrote his poetry, is that it grasp people by illustrating his narratives of the common lifestyles experienced by the current American generation. His art form expresses certain questionable ideologies of life and exposes to the audience what it takes to fully comprehend what being an American truly means. Each individual poem describes and illustrates the strength and hardships the African American community was experiencing. Through his literature art form of poetry, Hughes was able to convey the common assertions of
Throughout history, Rome’s military was admired and respected by all other adversaries. But during the downfall, the structure of the legions was altered. Emperors began hiring foreign mercenaries to add more men to their armies due to the fact that no Roman citizens were willing to fight. The taxes became high and Romans no longer cared to be legionnaires. The legions were eventually made up of many barbarians so that Rome’s army didn’t decrease in quantity. These soldiers may have proven to be rough warriors, but they had no loyalty to Rome. Many of the officers would turn against the Empire in search of power. In turn, many of the barbarians who fought to attack the borders of Rome and bring down the Empire had been part of the Roman legions.
In our lives, we are surrounded by moments of tragedy that drives our will to keep moving forward. Our daily lifestyles are no different from the famous stories that playwrights have written throughout history. Playwrights are masters at combining theatre elements of tragedy, religion, violence, and numerous relative elements that the audience embrace faithfully. Today, Greek and Roman influence is the main topic since they have inspired the famous plays Desire under the Elms and The Glass Menagerie.
After the 25th of January revolution in Egypt, the media started to be the backbone of the Egyptian social political lifestyle. The media forms the people’s opinions towards a certain candidate, propagate against an ideology or a movement. Before the presidential election in Egypt, each political party started to open its own TV channels publicizing their own agendas and thoughts on certain issues and problems that faces the Egyptian at the time, for example, a writer by the name Abdel Moneim says “in 1997 when the Egyptian Radio and Television Union asked me to host a program titled Behind Events. I agreed on one condition: I would operate with complete independence,” which means that to be independent, it was a very hard task and a
In order to achieve a revolution, as the Egyptian people were attempting to do, much protest is needed. However, the Egyptian military immediately suppressed the protesters in order to keep the movement at bay. Freedom of speech was practically eliminated from Egyptian society. In order to keep activists from speaking their mind over the Internet, bloggers were always at high risk to be summoned to tribunals. Online protester Maikel Nabil Sanad, 26, was found guilty of “insulting the military” and “disturbing public security”
The transition from dictatorship to democracy will not be a smooth one, particularly for a country who had been ruled by the same president for more than twenty years with strictly controlled freedom. Thus, it will be a challenge for the people to relive the democratic establishments of Tunisia under their former president, Habib Bourguiba. It is important to note that Tunisia was democratic when it gained its independence in 1956 but descended into dictatorial rule after the coup. The experience of democracy had familiarized Tunisians with rebuilding the country on the liberal foundations. The freedom of expression particularly among the members of the media gradually improved after 2011. On 26th August 2016, Tunisia signed the Declaration of Media Freedom in the Arab World, being the second country to sign the declaration after Palestine. This is a major breakthrough for the silenced journalists and activists throughout Ben Ali’s dictatorship. The early democratic establishments paved the way for Tunisia to recover from
Presently, corruption is corroding the government and Prime Minister Erdogan’s reputation. Last month, the Turkish government blocked websites such as YouTube and Twitter. Yet, censorship of social media platforms is but a fraction of the abuses in Turkey – a nation where journalists are routinely arrested and incarcerated for criticizing the party.
Significant efforts to develop a journalistic identity and media freedom have stumbled badly in Central Asia, primarily Turkmenistan. The state controlled media system that is currently in place has prevented any citizen voice in Turkmen media. Since 1992, journalism and free media in Turkmenistan have been on a downward spiral. Unfortunately, prospects for developing a believable, fact-based journalism look grim for this region. Thus, the citizens of Turkmenistan are forced to be unaware of the world around them and to accept that all information is altered by the state.
Conversely, Iran’s state-run broadcast media, managed by pro-regime loyalists, is a dominant source of news for Iranians and the only media that hosts presidential debates. Yet, Iran’s print media culture offers a greater spectrum of information and opinions from across the political gamut. The press has traditionally been considered one of the most important campaign tools for candidates, both reformists and conservatives, but also as key resources for access to diverse election news, debates and analyses for Iranian citizens. While the print media generally operated with far greater editorial freedom than the heavily controlled state broadcaster, Iran’s print journalists came under government scrutiny and monitoring during the 2013 election season. In addition to security forces applying direct pressure — in the forms of arrests, and imprisonment for example — on the news organizations to support pro-regime candidates, editors and journalists were also warned by intelligence officials against covering banned topics, such as Iran’s economic troubles, the possibility of international sanctions on Iran’s nuclear program, negotiations with the United States regarding Iraq and unrest among Iran’s ethnic minorities. These restrictions on editorial freedom were not just placed on the reformists though; conservative news outlets also received these constraints. Many of the websites, blogs and news portals aligned with Ahmandinejad, and therefore considered conservatives, were
In the last decade of the 20th century, Al-Jazeera is constructing a new imperative of competition in the news industry (Radsch, 2007: 1). Ever since Al-Jazeera assists system changes in situation where political movement are dynamic and political transformation process begun to unfold, there is increment of audiences who turn to Al Jazeera as their first news choice (Jamal, 2009 & Radsch, 2007). In 2008, Boyd-Barrett and Xie claimed that Al-Jazeera has an estimation of 50 million audiences worldwide from its various channels such as the original international service, a news channel broadcasting 24-hours in Arab language; Al-Jazeera Sports 1 and 2; a children’s channel; a documentary channel, and Al-Jazeera Mobasher, a live political and public interest channel similar to C-SPAN or BBC that broadcasts conferences in real-time without editing or commentary. Moreover, Al-Jazeera has soon open up a vast array of medium for news such as online press, social media, and citizen journalism on Internet which emerged as an alternative to mainstream press (Radsch, 2007; Hafez, 2008: 333; Nötzold, 2009: 4). Not to forget its first privately own satellite TV. Thus, this has eventually intensified the competition among news producers whereby the journalists aim to tailor a better coverage especially on satellite stations to attract audiences who have short attention span (Radsch, 2007: 7). For instance, the Egyptian government launched Nile News after seeing the appearance of