The internet, ham-fisted censorship and an outspoken young generation are combining to redraw the media landscape
Jack Shenker
guardian.co.uk, Thursday October 09 2008
"......The big news has been the presidential pardon of the controversial editor and outspoken regime critic Ibrahim Eissa, who sits at the helm of al-Dostour newspaper. This phenomenally popular daily has been a constant thorn in the government's side since it reopened in 2005 – seven years after being shut down for publishing an Islamist statement. In August last year, as whispers regarding Hosni Mubarak's health swirled through the streets, Eissa had the mendacity to write:
The president in Egypt is a god and gods don't get sick. Thus, President Mubarak, those surrounding him, and the hypocrites hide his illness and leave the country prey to rumours. It is not a serious illness. It's just old age. But the Egyptian people are entitled to know if the president is down with something as minor as the flu.
In an Orwellian doublespeak world where the president declares his belief in press freedom to be "unshakeable" and promises that no journalist will go to jail for doing their job, that paragraph was enough to land Eissa in court, where he was accused of single-handedly undermining international confidence in Egypt's stability and wiping $350m off the stock market.
The protracted legal drama that followed finally came to an end this week, when Mubarak used the occasion of Armed Forces Day to publicly revoke Eissa's two-month prison sentence, a sentence which Eissa had warned would "open the gates of hell for the Egyptian press." The blogosphere was underwhelmed by the president's generosity. "Mubarak is most misericordious and most merciful, is He not?" commented a particularly earnest fan.......
Despite the bitter setbacks faced by journalists across different formats trying to expose injustice and improbity at the heart of the Arab world's largest country, the government's suffocating grip on the media here is slowly weakening. There is nothing linear about this process: writers and activists whose work is channelled through the net are routinely rounded up; the explosion of foreign satellite channels in recent years has been accompanied by police raids on programme-makers; the rise of independent ownership within the Egyptian newspaper industry is undermined by court cases against non-compliant editors......"
Jack Shenker
guardian.co.uk, Thursday October 09 2008
"......The big news has been the presidential pardon of the controversial editor and outspoken regime critic Ibrahim Eissa, who sits at the helm of al-Dostour newspaper. This phenomenally popular daily has been a constant thorn in the government's side since it reopened in 2005 – seven years after being shut down for publishing an Islamist statement. In August last year, as whispers regarding Hosni Mubarak's health swirled through the streets, Eissa had the mendacity to write:
The president in Egypt is a god and gods don't get sick. Thus, President Mubarak, those surrounding him, and the hypocrites hide his illness and leave the country prey to rumours. It is not a serious illness. It's just old age. But the Egyptian people are entitled to know if the president is down with something as minor as the flu.
In an Orwellian doublespeak world where the president declares his belief in press freedom to be "unshakeable" and promises that no journalist will go to jail for doing their job, that paragraph was enough to land Eissa in court, where he was accused of single-handedly undermining international confidence in Egypt's stability and wiping $350m off the stock market.
The protracted legal drama that followed finally came to an end this week, when Mubarak used the occasion of Armed Forces Day to publicly revoke Eissa's two-month prison sentence, a sentence which Eissa had warned would "open the gates of hell for the Egyptian press." The blogosphere was underwhelmed by the president's generosity. "Mubarak is most misericordious and most merciful, is He not?" commented a particularly earnest fan.......
Despite the bitter setbacks faced by journalists across different formats trying to expose injustice and improbity at the heart of the Arab world's largest country, the government's suffocating grip on the media here is slowly weakening. There is nothing linear about this process: writers and activists whose work is channelled through the net are routinely rounded up; the explosion of foreign satellite channels in recent years has been accompanied by police raids on programme-makers; the rise of independent ownership within the Egyptian newspaper industry is undermined by court cases against non-compliant editors......"
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