Egypt The Political Role of the Media
Government television building, Cairo
Courtesy Embassy of Egypt, Washington
Under Nasser the media were brought under state control and
harnessed as instruments of the revolutionary government for
shaping public opinion. Radio and television, in particular, began
to penetrate the villages. Nasser used them to speak directly to
Egyptians in their own language, and they were major factors in his
rise as a charismatic leader. Radio Cairo was a link between Nasser
and his pan-Arab constituency in the Arab world and was regularly
used to stir up popular feeling against rival Arab leaders. In the
print media, however, the government did not speak with one voice.
There were identifiable differences in the government-controlled
press between those on the right of the political spectrum (Al
Akhbar, The News), the center (Al Ahram, The Pyramids),
and the left (Ruz al Yusuf). Nasser, a voracious reader,
appears to have been influenced by the views expressed in the
prestigious Al Ahram, headed by Muhammad Hassanain Haikal.
Criticism in the left-wing press played a role in the drift of his
policies to the left in the 1960s. Thus, the press had a certain
role in transmitting opinion upward.
In the post-Nasser era, the broadcast media remained government
controlled. Fairly developed radio and television facilities
existed. Egypt had sixty-two medium-wave (AM--amplitude modulation)
radio stations, representing at least one for each major town in
the country, and three short-wave transmitters that relayed
programs to listeners in Egypt and overseas. Domestically, stations
carried a number of national programs as well as regional programs
designed for different parts of Egypt. In its foreign programs,
Egypt broadcast in thirty-three languages, including the most
common European languages in addition to such African languages as
Amharic, Hausa, Wolof, Swahili, and Yoruba and such Asian languages
as Bengali, Hindi, Indonesian, and Urdu. Egyptians were estimated
to own 14 million radios in 1989 and about 3.5 million television
sets. Television had two national networks, an additional channel
in Cairo, and a regional "Sinai network"; programs were televised
in Arabic only. The broadcast media permitted the government to
blanket the country with its messages. For example, the government
enjoyed a virtual monopoly at election time. To placate Muslim
opinion, television programming was increasingly Islamized, and
several popular preachers in alliance with the government used the
electronic media to broaden their followings.
Newspapers were scarcely more autonomous: government-appointed
editors were still expected to "self-censor" their product and were
subject to removal when they did not. Generally, Sadat used his
prerogative of editorial appointment to eject editors and
journalists with left-wing views and to foster conservative voices.
For example, the anti-Nasser Amin brothers, Ali and Mustafa,
reappeared in the journalistic establishment, and Ibrahim Saada was
permitted to turn Al Akhbar into a vehicle of anti-Soviet
and anti-Arab propaganda. The fall of Haikal at Al-Ahram for
allegedly trying to turn the paper into a "center of power" showed
Sadat was no more willing than Nasser to tolerate a major
journalistic voice at variance with his policy. On the other hand,
Sadat permitted the founding of an independent opposition press
that reached far fewer readers but expressed much more diverse
views than the government press. Al Ahali (The Folk) spoke
for the left, Al Ahrar (The Liberals) for the right, Ad
Dawah (The Call) and later Al Ihtisan (Adherence) for
the Muslim Brotherhood, and Ash Shaab (The People) for the
center-left Labor Party. The government party published Al
Mayu (May). Opposition newspapers were sometimes joined by
government papers in investigative journalism that uncovered
scandals embarrassing to the government. The left-wing press, in
particular, carried on a campaign against the infitah and
Sadat's foreign policy that led to the closing of Al Ahali.
Mubarak restored freedom to the secular press, allowed the New
Wafd Party to publish Al Wafd (The Mission) and Nasserites
to open Sawt al Arab (Voice of the Arabs), while repressing
the Brotherhood's Ad Dawah. The rise of Islamist sentiment
was nevertheless reflected in the proliferation of Islamist
periodicals put out by the various parties, such as Al Liwa al
Islami (The Islamic Standard) by the government party and An
Nur (The Light) by the Liberal Party (Ahrar). One sign of the
growing independence and influence of the press under Mubarak was
the 1987 trial of police officers for torturing Islamic activists,
a milestone in the protection of individual rights that resulted
largely from public pressures generated by the press. But there
were limits to the influence of the press: the circulation of the
main government dailies did not exceed 1 million each, and except
for Al Wafd, the opposition papers were all weeklies lucky
to get a tenth of that figure.
Data as of December 1990
|