During a formal gathering for retirees from the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, the organization’s head said that he was worried that the new generation would hate the committee members. He gave as the reason for his concern the media’s constant coverage of mistakes made by commission members.
He went on to say, “Everyone who works (for the commission) has enemies. The commission prevents people from succumbing to their desires and it is those same people who hate our work and look hard to find mistakes so that they can magnify them for the public.” The director also stated that he was demanding a 20 percent increase in the salaries of commission members in order to compensate them for the dangerous nature of their jobs.
What we conclude from the director’s speech is that he considers anyone who points out a mistake or complains about an injustice perpetrated by the commission members to be an enemy of the establishment. He specifically addressed the members of the press who were present at the meeting and told them to be more careful when covering such news so that they would not create “negative feelings in the minds of the young generation.”
The direct accusation that the media creates a bad image of the commission is exaggerated, even if some newspaper reporters jump to conclusions drawn by the absence of investigation. Looking at what the media has reported, one must say that it has played a positive role in presenting genuine cases in which commission members made mistakes and were in the wrong. What the director is in fact asking for is that the media should tread gently around those issues or maybe even divert its attention from them. At this point we must state clearly that we have done exactly that for a very long time indeed — and further, now is not the time to backpedal.
The media has a role to play and if it makes mistakes, the affected agencies or groups have every right to complain and ask for clarifications to be published. But to say or imply that media coverage is defaming the commission is taking things a giant step toward frightening away all critics. What the director fails to note is that most of the media criticism has been the result of real cases of the misuse of authority and abuse, and yet there has been no admission of any responsibility for the incidents the media reported.
What we are witnessing here is an attempt to deny responsibility for cases that provoked public outcry; some of them involved possible murder and serious abuse. The director blames the media for defaming commission members and yet, he does not even attempt to look at the situation from the standpoint of critics and understand why they wrote and said what they did. After all, when a man dies during an investigation or a when women are treated like criminals for a crime that does not exist, it is surely the right of the public to know what is happening and to make its own judgment in those cases. When newspapers covered cases in which people were beaten by commission members and hospitalized, we never saw a statement from the commission admitting the actions of its members; on the contrary, we always read denials of the accusations and statements accusing newspapers of fishing for mistakes — the truth is that the statements did their best to defame the victims of those attacks.
To gauge people’s reactions to the director’s speech is very interesting. People posted different opinions on the Al-Watan newspaper website which carried the director’s comments. Some people wondered if people could get 20 percent compensation if they were harmed by the commission.
Others pointed out that the director was concentrating on the younger generation as if the older one has no complaints about the commission. In the comments there is of course the side that supports the commission all the way and thinks that it can do no wrong and that is of course legitimate as some people look at the commission as playing a pivotal role in the necessary disciplining of society.
The debate continues and among the points which need clarification are the responsibilities of each side, the limits to which any official body can go in defense of its members and, at bottom, what society genuinely needs.
