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Egypt Takes on the New Media

[Mideast Monitor] David Stanford - The Egyptian government has been preparing a bold new initiative to regulate satellite television and the Internet that circumvent the government's grip on conventional media. The state of emergency in place since 1981 gives the government wide-ranging powers to restrict freedom of expression in the name of national security. Even the regular penal codes can be used to jail citizens for such infractions as "insulting the president." However, the Internet and satellite television pose special problems for the government because it does not control the broadcast sites. Information Minister Anas al-Fiqi, a close ally of Gamal Mubarak, son of the current president, seeks to establish a supreme censorship authority in Egypt with jurisdiction over broadcasting and the Internet. Whatever the fate of the draft law, most Egyptian analysts are confident that Egypt's media community will continue to defy government attempts to impose censorship. "The genie is out of the bottle," says Naila Hamdy, a professor of journalism at American University in Cairo, "so it is difficult to imagine that new laws are really going to cause Egyptian journalists to give up their newly gained freedoms."
2008-12-26 06:00:00
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