In Columbia Journalism Review, August 14, 2012:
Egyptian journos wary of recent government action
Blank columns appear in Egyptian newspapers to protest government actions, August 9, 2012. Photo: Jared Malsin
Egyptian journalists are outraged over a pair of government decisions last week which they say curb media freedom and independence.
In the first of the two moves, the upper house of Egypt’s parliament, under the control of the Muslim Brotherhood, appointed new editors of the state-owned newspapers, sparking outrage among journalists opposed to both the appointment process and the selection of figures seen as unqualified for chief editor posts.
Angered over the appointments, journalists at several privately-owned papers, which were not affected by the appointments, ran blank spaces in place of their columns on August 9 in solidarity with their colleagues in the state-owned press.
Then, on Saturday, a court ordered the confiscation the day’s edition of Ad-Dustournewspaper after it ran a rambling front-page editorial denouncing Brotherhood-affiliated president Mohamed Morsi for “fascism” and calling on the army to “defend the civil state.”
But both incidents were swept out of the headlines by Morsi’s stunning announcement on Sunday that he removed key generals, including defense minister Hussein Tantawi, from positions of power in the government. The preceding week’s skirmish over the newspapers joins the removal of generals in the ongoing battle for control of major institutions in Egypt in the wake of last year’s uprising that toppled former president Hosni Mubarak, of which the struggles over the role of the military and the drafting of the constitution are the most consequential.
For the journalists employed by the state-owned newspapers, last week’s appointments were the latest blow in a struggle for independence that dates back at least to the three-decade Mubarak era. Newspapers were nationalized under former president Gamal Abdel Nasser, creating a system in which the ruling party selected editors of state newspapers. That led to a system where editor appointments were political rather than based on journalistic experience. Appointments today are effectively controlled by the upper house of parliament, which is dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party.
But many journalists at state media would like to see the properties managed on the so-called BBC model, in which publicly owned institutions retain complete independence in editorial matters.
“We have long fought for such independence. They’re getting us back to square one,” said Yehia Ghanem, a senior journalist and editor at the flagship daily Al-Ahram. “That’s why the majority of journalists are very much opposed to the way those appointments have been handed down.”
Sitting in a cloud of cigarette smoke behind his desk in a grey-walled office adjoining Al-Ahram’s downtown Cairo newsroom, Ghanem said he does not challenge the legal power of the upper house of parliament, also called the Shura Council, to appoint editors, although he, like other journalists, objected to the fact that the process was overseen by politicians, not professional journalists.