Backbiters

Backbiters, n. Muckraking journalists.

Journalism is tangentially relevant to my interests. IRL's Progressive Era saw the golden age of the muckraker - and of pulp fiction, in which journalism was significant as one of the only acceptable heroic roles for a female character. (Lois Lane, reporter for the Daily Planet, is the exemplar of type, dating back to the Golden Age herself - which was at the tail end of the pulp era.)

In Andalusada, of course, it'd be too convergent to call them muckrakers. They're called "backbiters" instead, and the role is recognizable but recognizably different.
The term "backbiter" is a specifically Islamicate one, going back to the Qur'an, where (49:12) it's considered a sin on par with cannibalism. (Although I'm not up for looking for it just now, there's a lot of literature to that effect, saying that backbiting is worse than adultery, that backbiting passes all of your good karma to the victims of it while you inherit the guilt of their sins, and so on and so forth.) It's a damning sin - and a very potent one, because it's the sort of thing that invalidates your legal witness.

A brief history of backbiting

Traditionally, the first person to call reporters "backbiters" was Sufyan. It was a name given in anger. The press loved to pay attention to him, his four wives (and speculating journalists are why it's traditionally counted as "or possibly nine?"), his four or five mistresses, the bastards, and the pair of identical twins he adopted - and he hated their attention. It didn't help that Yusuf I did nothing to sort out the UCNA's lese-majesty laws, as long as the attention was focused on his son.

The name stuck.

Through the reigns of the six weak caliphs, backbiting became even more significant. In his power struggle with Ilyas I, Don Musa consciously leaked information to the press, setting the precedent that even caliphs could have their dirty laundry aired in public. [details?] There was no effective way to fight it: one of the weak caliphs [who?] did successfully sue for libel on lese-majesty laws, but the case was as tied to his legacy as Nixon's "I am not a crook," so he really may as well not have bothered.

By the time Don Ibrahim ascended to Secretary of the Caliphal Household, however, the UCNA had found an effective countermeasure against backbiting journalists: character assassination. Rather than trying to suppress criticism, attacking the credibility of journalists could effectively end their careers. It was a dirty thing to do, of course, but it could be rationalized as self-defense, and it triggered a wave of scandals through the reign of Yusuf II. [details?]

So of course it's going to get applied to any kind of investigative reporting that talks about people instead of abstractions. It doesn't help that the aristocratic nature of the UCNA (and of the New World more generally) cover a lot of the most wonderful headline-makers with lese-majesty laws, nor that (certainly by the turn of the century) the UCNA rejects photographic evidence as pertains to hudud law, and possibly some other things.

Muckraking in Andalusada is dangerous, and as dirty as politics itself.

• Any journalist who wants to do more than puff pieces (or even those; celebrity reporting is a bloodsport) will, in the end, be accused of "backbiting" - i.e. libel. There are several responses to this accusation, none of which will make life any easier.
• Seasoned reporters are backbiters. All too many are involved in blackmail; some are involved in covering up the secrets of the rich and powerful, specifically because if anybody leaks their treasured secrets they'll lose their power.

It's a sleazy job, but it makes for interesting stories (and characters) all around.

This is a work in progress. It will be expanded upon.