When we used to visit Egypt in the past, we used to always see that line “where to go this evening” on Egypt television, and it used to give us information, as tourists, about places that we could go to without any problem. If we look at the West, we find a newspaper designated for this in every foreign country, and it is not limited to places, but some of them analyze shows and offer suggestions to make it easier for the person to choose where to go. We find that they all lead to one direction, which is information, and not advertisement as some people believe. The advertisement is paid for a single promotion, but what we are focusing on today is the role of information and projecting places of entertainment, culture and art for the society, as many art and culture shows are being held here and we do not hear or know anything about them until they are over through some media coverage, so we ask: Are not these activities being held for the society to educate and entertain it?
We start by a question in the form of a suggestion: Why does not the media speak about state activities beforehand? For example, the Qurain Cultural Festival
is now being held, so why a program explaining the occasion was not held before the event to speak about its activities, guests and bands? Such introductions give the receivers (listeners and viewers) an idea about what is being presented and gives them a motive to attend. In fact, when we give them more than a choice, they can go to what interests them, but what happens in our society and a lot in Gulf and Arab societies is “surprise information”, and hear its impact afterwards through media news. The information we get is in the past tense, and what we are asking for are programs and news in future tense - we do not want information about what happened but we want to know “where to go this evening”.
— Translated by Kuwait Times from Al-Anbaa