Media freedom has not just taken several steps back in Egypt after the June 3 military coup but has gone down the slope of destruction, for two reasons:
First, the persistent state of political polarisation in Egypt has made the media a part of the conflict.
Second, honest media professionals have been excluded from the scene for unprofessional practitioners to take their place and utilise every ugly tool to fight their opponents. Worse still, some mean-spirited individuals now rule the media scene in Egypt.
The deterioration of the media scene is symptomatic of the political deterioration in that country.
The Arabic saying, “Similar birds befriend each other”, has come true in the Egyptian context. This has also shattered the image we had in our minds of the Egyptian military: images formed over the years through tales told to us by our parents and grandparents.
Egypt has mesmerised poets for long and was the subject of beautiful lyrics sung by memorable vocalists like the Egyptian diva Umm Kulthoom. The military of today, however, has changed all that. It wants to convince us that brute power is the only meaning of manhood and nobility.
The coup in Egypt cost several journalists their lives and put many in jail. The authorities hacked into a number of social media websites and closed down the airwaves when they stormed a number of satellite broadcasting stations and detained their workers.
The authorities are still pursuing those who work for satellite broadcasting stations, in an unprecedented situation that masquerades as a revolution.
You may be charged in Egypt just for carrying a camera, a pen or a smartphone. In today’s digital age, carrying a camera has become a criminal offence in that country.
Three journalists have been killed in Egypt so far. Several foreign journalists were beaten. Ten journalists were put in police custody, including six who work for Al Jazeera network. They include cameraman Mohamed Badr and correspondent Abdullah Al Shamy. This is not to mention a team working for Al Jazeera. The team includes correspondent Wyne Hay, cameraman Adel Bradlo and producers Ross Fin, Baher Mohamed and Metn Touran from TNT. They were all put in custody without any charge.
Some people from French channel France 2 were also arrested, as was an independent German journalist and others who were later released.
The offices of several other media institutions were stormed by Egyptian police. The chief of Ahram newspaper’s bureau in a Nile Delta province was also killed by the authorities, who kill people indiscriminately, when they thought that the journalist had broken a night curfew imposed by them on several Egyptian cities.
The Egyptian state information service issued a statement in which it lashed out at foreign media for its coverage of events in Egypt, without any professional or ethical justification. The state information service only wanted to scare away whoever wanted to express a different point of view.
The Ministry of Communication and Information Technology issued a statement on August 28 in which it said Al Jazeera Mubasher Misr was a banned channel. The ministry issued the statement after it saw the attitude of the military against the channel.
Al Jazeera Channel defended its journalists detained in the Guantanamo of the Arabs, referring to Article 19 of the International Declaration of Human Rights.
The International Federation for the Protection of Journalists and Reporters Without Borders got fed up. The Egyptian Correspondents’ Union, which is yet to be licensed, denounced the jailing of journalists. The union issued a statement titled “No to the jailing of journalists while they do their work”.
Egyptian journalists recently staged a protest outside the Journalists’ Syndicate. They denounced the criminalising of journalists for carrying cameras.
“They said freedom, they said laws, but journalists are in jails,” the journalists chanted during their protest.
“Mohamed isn’t a thug,” they chanted.
The protesting journalists also held a banner saying: “Mohamed is accused of carrying a camera”.
What is happening in Egypt is not only violation of the freedom of the press, but also violation of ethics and values. Whoever opposes the military or has a different point of view is thrown behind bars.
The International Committee for the Protection of Journalists has prepared a report titled “Freedom of the press in danger in Egypt”. The reality, however, is that it is codes of ethics that are in danger in that country. These codes of ethics for humans, politics and the media became endangered when they were left at the mercy of unqualified people.
