Egyptian press feels the backlash against liberalisation

Cairo: With lively independent newspapers and rollicking TV political talk shows, Egypt's journalists in recent years have pushed the boundaries of what you can say about the government in this nation — so much so that they grew confident that growing press freedoms were irreversible.

Now the backlash has come, with a media crackdown in this country that included the ousting of a prominent, muckraking editor.

And journalists have discovered that the foundation of their greater freedoms — the millionaire businessmen who opened up a generation of private media, full of criticism of authority — are just as vulnerable to government pressure as their predecessors.

The removal of Ebrahim Eisa as editor of the Al Dustour newspaper and the silencing of several TV programmes comes at a particularly sensitive time for the normally sclerotic Egyptian politics.

Bruising parliamentary elections are just a month away, and the country is gripped by uncertainty over who will succeed 82-year-old President Hosni Mubarak, who has yet to announce if he will run in next year's presidential contest.

Authorities want "calm and obedience to pave the way for parliament and presidential elections and achieve a quiet transition of power," prominent columnist Salama Ahmad Salama wrote about the crackdown.

"They want the loud, blaring voices to stop upsetting the seats of power," he said.

For nearly 50 years, media in Egypt was monopolised by the government. Staid state newspapers and television trotted out the daily activities of the president, fed a stream of state propaganda and, more broadly, were met with yawns by the public. The only alternative were the mouthpiece newspapers of the state-sanctioned — in fact, state-financed — opposition parties, which stayed within strict boundaries.

New media

But in the early part of the decade, businessmen were allowed to start founding their own newspapers and satellite TV stations, part of the government's economic liberalisation programme. The new media outlets brought a fresh approach and professionalism, tackling controversial issues and doing investigations that held officials to task.

Journalists are barred by their own union's bylaws from owning their own papers — or else they lose union membership — so businessmen seemed a perfect alternative. With the strengthening private sector behind them, journalists began to believe the genie of press freedom could not be put back in the bottle.

But Eisa's dismissal — soon after Al Dustour was bought by two businessmen, including the local manufacturer of Viagra — showed how wrong they were. It served as a reminder that the new wealthy class of financiers created by economic liberalisation ultimately owe their success to the government and are leery of challenging it.

"Businessmen are not free politically and economically, so how do we expect them to protect freedom of the press," Eisa told The Associated Press. "Everybody is under the ruling regime's fingers."

Off air

Television talk shows have also felt the pressure. Orbit TV's 12-year-old Cairo Today went off air last week, followed soon after by the entire network itself.

Ten other TV networks, most with religious programming, were shut off the air and 20 others received warnings of closure by Egypt's main satellite operator. Officials accused them of spreading Islamic extremism, though critics say the move was timed to cover up the crackdown on political talk shows and newspapers.

The country's telecommunications regulator also cancelled permits for companies providing direct satellite news feeds from Egypt, requiring them to reapply for them in apparent effort to control who broadcasts live from streets. The regulator set new rules limiting the sending of mass text messages, a tool often used by activists to mobilize their followers.

The businessmen themselves freely admit they are no defenders of the press.

"If I get a phone call telling me to shut Dream TV down, I will do so. Am I going to fight the state? I can't," real estate tycoon Ahmad Bahgat told the daily Al Masri Al Youm, a daily whose 2004 founding sparked the wave of new independent publications.

Bahgat is one of the major shareholders in the newspaper and owns Dream TV satellite channel, whose widely popular political talk shows earn much higher ratings than anything on state television.