The case of Alaa Abd El Fattah is a journalistic failure as well as a political one

The coalition in support of Alaa Abd El Fattah was striking. MPs from across the political spectrum raised the case repeatedly. Major NGOs amplified it. A-list actors, writers and television figures added their names and reach while media platforms provided sympathetic coverage. Andrew Marr even hosted a high-profile London event featuring Alaa’s sisters, Mona and Sanaa Seif, organised by Amnesty International UK and English PEN. The media message was that this was a moral cause, beyond complication.

But there were complications. Alaa Abd El Fattah’s social media posts have long been controversial. In August 2011, he posted in reference to the UK on what was then Twitter: “Go burn the city or downing street or hunt police u fools.” In 2012 he posted, again on Twitter: “there is a critical number of Israelis that we need to kill and then the problem is solved.” That post, now deleted, was one of many cited by the Times of Israel in 2014 in their reporting on his nomination for the European Parliament’s Sakharov Prize, a nomination that was later withdrawn. This information failed to make it into recent articles from BBC News, Sky News or the Guardian and others when they cheerfully reported that he was coming to the UK. It was all a mere Google search away if only they’d bothered to look.

Alaa has since apologised for what he described as “shocking and hurtful” tweets as well as claiming that they have been “twisted of their meaning” and adds “I must also stress that some tweets have been completely misunderstood, seemingly in bad faith”. But the fact remains that many of his posts relate to violence and the killing of people including Zionists, police and many others.

When the media reported the political push to bring Alaa Abd El Fattah to the UK much of the coverage presented the campaign as a straightforward struggle between authoritarian cruelty and liberal conscience. That framing required omission. His posts were in the public domain, in some cases they had already been reported on but they were forgotten or perhaps ignored, not quite right for the narrative of a human rights warrior unjustly imprisoned and deserving of our help.

Many feel that there is an informal lobby in our society, a consensus of powerful people who decide which causes are “worthwhile” and which are to be set aside. To question this consensus is to risk being cast at best as indifferent to injustice, at worst as a supporter of it. Journalists are supposed to cast aside such pressure, but do they? Perhaps this is why we have Gaza thrust in our faces several times a day but seldom hear a word about the unfolding genocide in Sudan. Or why we’re treated to articles about rising antisemitism that don’t interrogate the anti Zionism responsible for this situation. In the case of Alaa Abd El Fattah, we weren’t just let down by our government and civil service, we were let down by the people who are supposed to be professionally curious, journalists who we’re supposed to be able to rely on to tell us the truth no matter who it offends.

The story of Alaa Abd El Fattah isn’t only about repression in Egypt. It’s about a media that has forgotten it is supposed to speak truth to power, even when that power is an NGO or a famous actor or even a movement to bring to Britain a man imprisoned without a fair trial by a dictatorship. In this they manifestly failed.

Marc Goldberg is a British-Israeli citizen and author