[caption id="attachment_55231473" align="aligncenter" width="620" caption="A man reads Al-Ahram newspaper in a backstreet cafe just off Cairo's Tahrir square"]
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Why let facts get in the way of a good story? Well, there are a couple of plausible reasons. Though none of them trump the ultimate, irrefutable rejoinder - that a good story should be, well, factual.
It stands to reason doesn’t it? Yes – and no. Because every now and then there is a story which appears so eye-popping, jaw-dropping or breathtaking in its brilliance, that to check whether it is true could lead to the cruel realisation that it is not. That means no scoop, no front-page and no exclusive byline.
It’s easy to see why some unscrupulous journalists would rather not bother.
So to Egypt, where last week the state-run newspaper Al-Ahram ran a comment piece which made a breezy reference to legal proposals for allowing a husband to have sex with his wife for up to six hours after her death.
The same article also mentioned a letter which had supposedly been sent by the National Council for Women (NCW) to Dr Saad al-Katatni, the speaker of Egypt’s parliament, detailing the group’s various political concerns.
Although the original Al-Ahram article was written in a confusingly cryptic style, at no point in the piece did the writer explicitly say that the NCW’s letter contained any reference to the so called “farewell intercourse” law.
No matter. Within the space of a few days – and after a misleading feature on Egypt’s ONTV channel – stories were appearing around the world detailing the NCW’s supposed opposition to the law.
Al-Arabiya ran a headline on its website saying: “Egypt’s women urge MPs not to pass early marriage, sex-after-death law”. It was only in the article below that readers could find reference to the original Al-Ahram piece, but even then much of the conjecture was reported as clear cut fact.
Following this there was a global feeding frenzy, as webpage after webpage picked up on the story.
Even Britain’s Daily Mail newspaper – never a publication known for its probity with the truth – ran a piece about the “outrage” which had greeted the sex-after-death legislation.
It was only later that editors began backtracking. Al-Arabiya published a second piece on how Egypt’s MPs were now denying the existence of the “farewell sex” law – conveniently glossing over their own role in the hysteria.
For its part the Daily Mail published an updated version of its article. It cited London-based “Egyptian embassy sources” as saying the law was “complete nonsense”.
MPs from across Egypt’s political spectrum were equally scathing, noting how such a law would be forbidden under Islam and that in any case, no legislation of the kind had been submitted for discussion.
It was all very unedifying. Though if one thing has been illuminated by the past week’s madness, it was Mark Twain’s famous witticism: that a lie can get half way around the world before the truth has even got its boots on.
When it comes to the farrago of Egypt’s sex-before-death law, never was a truer word spoken.
