We didn't make this headline up, it is a part of article 31 of law 96/1996 which regulates the profession of journalism in Egypt. It's a clear cut text and it cannot be annulled unless by a new law or the constitutional court, but this text is ineffective not due to a new text or by the constitutional court but due to a de facto practice made up by a number of newspapers.

Q: Does custom or tradition abolish a legal text in any country in the whole world?
A: No.

Q: What is the case in Egypt?
A: On hiatus.

Q: What is that custom or tradition that made a legal text ineffective to publish under such pervasive headlines as "Tunisa exclusive" or "Tunisia-exclusive Ahram" or "exclusive report" or "Tunisia exclusive news" or nothing is mentioned at all?

A: Karim Yehya said, (14) "The ad has to be distinctively separated from the editorial by a zigzag or a distinctive frame to make it look different than the editorial in the rest of the page if the nature of the published material in the same page is related there must be a clear distinction and there must be an indication that this material is an ad."

Among 25 ads the Egyptian newspaper and magazines published, the Arabic Network recorded, only some of them totally broke the rules: Ahram, Ahrar and Jomhoria; some applied the logic of "the customs supersedes the law"; some hold the stick from the middle by placing a zigzag only, like Ahram and Akhbar, or using a simple frame, like Ahram Araby and Ahaly; or placing the phrase "exclusive Tunisia" or "Tunisia exclusive" like Rosa Alyosef, Akhbar, Ahram, Ahaly; or using the headline "exclusive reports" on top of the page without referring to the report itself" as the weekly Al-Osbou does.

Some would say that a number of them adhered to those rules and standards, yet we say that an ad is an ad and the reader's right to be aware that it is an ad. The incident of Alahram and the Kuwaiti ad is a good example as the Kuwaiti journalist Mohammed Alwasheehy commented on the ad because he thought it was an essay.(15)

It is quite obvious that the journalist has more experience than the regular reader yet when a journalist is deceived by this kind of ad it's very possible that the regular reader won't pay attention to this kind of ad published in the same way to look like a report or a news story.

Badr Ben Saoud says, "If you read a news story or a report in a newspaper talking about matters unworthy of publishing, rest assured that these materials are paid for by an advertiser."(16)

Anna Forecelle, the executive editor of the Australian Courier newspaper, wrote (in 1996), "Making the ad look like a news story eliminates the line between impartial news and ads."(17)

In addition to those ads, some newspapers and magazines didn't indicate that they are ads when it was clearly posed in a perverse manner using words that precedes the ads like "Tunisia exclusive" or "exclusive reports" or the zigzagged line is definitely a deception.

*Tunisia exclusive:
Most of the newspapers mentioned participated in that deception by using this phrase "Tunisia exclusive". Akhbar, Ahram, Ahaly and Rosa Alyosef were asked whether the phrase "Tunisia exclusive" placed on top of these ads is enough to make it clear that it is an ad?

Khalid Sergany says, "No, because these ads will give the assumption that they are edited by the newspaper's correspondent in those countries and using the phrase Tunisia exclusive will give it the credibility by looking more like and editorial not and ad. " (18)

*Special reports:
This is the title of a page the independent Al-Osbou published in which it repeatedly promoted Tunisia as an oasis of democracy with the Tunisian president's photo in the middle without an indication that this subject is an ad edited by Osama Romdhani, the managing director of the Tunisian foreign communication agency or edited by the Tunisian embassy in Cairo.

* The zigzagged frame:
A frame that surrounds the ad with Ben Ali's photo in the middle and nothing else that was published in Ahram Akhbar many times but inside the Arab-affairs page when the reader reads that news story (ad) next to news about Algeria, Palestine or Syria he or she won't notice that most of the time that this news story is different than the other news stories in a significant way.

* Frame:
When we read any page we will notice many news stories surrounded by this frame so when these papers published these Tunisian ads they didn't do anything to warn the readers that what they are reading is an ad, how could the readers think that this ad is different while they read in the same page other news stories that were also surrounded by a frame too? What would the reader understand from Ben Ali's statement about putting an end to the deterioration of the conditions in Iraq and the settlement of the Lebanon's conflict inside a frame and in the same page there was a news story about the biggest military preparation in the history of Israel. (19)

Glenn Cameron and his colleagues wrote (in 1996), "Ads are a group of paid commercial messages that promotes products, people or organizations and is compatible with editorials in visual and textual structure and content."(20)