Editorial: On Bikyamasr.com’s coverage of the “cucumber sheikh”

Bikya Masr

The past week has seen unprecedented scrutiny of our work here at Bikyamasr.com. The responses, comments and emails we have received over the article, “Islamic cleric bans women from touching cucumbers, bananas for sexual resemblance,” have been numerous. As a young news organization striving to report the news in the most honest, straightforward and timely manner possible, we are concerned over the manner of both our reporting on this issue and the way our article was used by a number of global organizations to promote their own partisan agendas.

Looking back, it was my own editorial oversight that failed in allowing this story to be published. Editorially, it was my duty to not publish this story before we could gather independent verification about the details behind the original Arabic article from Assawsana.com, the article that we referenced in writing our piece. Furthermore, I originally and mistakenly quoted Assawsana.com as “El-Senousa.com,” only furthering the confusion and mistakes involved in this report.

As Editor of Bikyamasr.com, I am disappointed that I did not catch and hold this piece. The “Islamic cleric bans women from touching cucumbers, bananas for sexual resemblance,” article should not have run when it did. Arguably, it should not have been run at all. We should not have published about an “unnamed sheikh” in an unnamed European country unless we were able to garner more information on the issue, both on the sheikh himself and the news website the information was gathered from, independently.

We realize that as a growing news organization with a growing reputation and readership, we have an increased responsibility to not only verify our own material at the highest levels, but further investigate the quotes and articles of other news organizations before referencing their work.

This is our error. We apologize for the poor judgment on the matter. It is inexcusable. While the exact quote reported by Assawsana.com may well have been exactly what it was reported to be by that website, without a name and location behind this person and comment, it is difficult to find the information credible.

We recognize our pitfalls and their repercussions. The fact that this story was quoted by a large number of news organizations across the globe shows that our error in judgment can have serious, detrimental effects. For this, we would like to apologize to our readers for the inadequate editorial judgment I, as Editor and Founder, made in this instance.

This said, we will learn from our mistakes, as larger and more established news organizations have learned and continue to learn from theirs. Journalism has a steep learning curve, and as a news organization grows, the costs of learning become more difficult to bear. The repercussions of our lessons learned are becoming more serious and are imposing a higher cost on our readers.

The reality, in this circumstance, is that we should not have sourced a piece published by a small website based on such limited, unverifiable information. We accept responsibility for doing so and are working to correct the aspects of our organizational culture which allowed this mistake to occur.

We view this mistake as a significant learning opportunity for us; a chance to grow and improve the work we do here at Bikyamasr.com. As such, and as part of a greater expansion plan we have been developing for the past few months, we are working hard to expand our operations and bring a number of new, experienced editors and writers to our small editorial team. Despite this mistake, we will continue to maintain our independence and provide the best and most credible news possible to our readers.

Reporting in a fair and accurate manner on Islam is a difficult process, and one that Bikyamasr.com takes very seriously. We will continue to push for more information on this story, from Assawsana.com and other sources, in order to interrogate the accuracy of their original article. If we cannot uncover more information, then we take it as our duty to make this clear and do everything in our power to spread that revelation to those who have sourced and quoted us this past week.

At the end of the day, we employed poor judgment on this article, for which we apologize. We are working to correct our mistake and guarantee that the potential validity or invalidity of this story is quickly verified. We apologize to our readers for letting them down, and will strive to assure them with our future work that we are making fundamental, institutional changes to assure that mistakes like this do not happen again.

BM

Tags: Cucumber Sheikh, Editorial, Islam, Reporting

Section: Media, Op-ed