Sunday, May 5, 2013

Brotherhood Infiltrating, Shutting Down Egypt's Independent Media

 

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Brotherhood Infiltrating, Shutting Down Egypt's Independent Media

By Emily

Created 2013-03-10 07:37

Independent newspapers in Egypt are increasingly reporting attempts by the Muslim Brotherhood to infiltrate and sabotage their publications and hamper their operations.

Since the Muslim Brotherhood came to power with the election of President Mohammed Morsi in February, attacks on the independent press as well as attempts to control the press have been reported daily.

The strategy appears to be working.

Hassan Badih, acting director-general of the daily independent newspaper Al-Doustour, released a statement announcing that the chairman of the newspaper’s board, Rida Edward, had decided to shut the newspaper down.

He explained the reason for the closure was result of the Brotherhood’s "infiltrating" the ranks of the newspaper’s staff, undermining its editorial policy and funding protests against it.

Badih said that a number of newly hired journalists were in reality members of the Brotherhood whose aim was to pressure him to sell or to drive his opposition newspaper out of business. In an interview with the newspaper As-Safir, Badih said that the journalists in question had recently joined the newspaper’s staff, falsely claiming to oppose the Brotherhood’s policies.

After some time, they began encouraging their co-workers to organize sit-ins and go on strike. At the same time, Brotherhood-affiliated businessmen attempted to purchase the newspaper.

A similar scenario is being played out at As-Sabah, a daily newspaper, whose employees are organizing and staging demonstrations. Lawsuits have been filed against its editor-in-chief, Wael al-Ibrashi.

As a result, the owner of the newspaper, Ahmad Bahgat, had decided to shut down the newspaper. But after intervention by the press syndicate, he changed his mind. An article by Ahmad Younous, a journalist at As-Sabah, asserted that all the problems at the newspaper were all caused by the Brotherhood, who had attempted to infiltrate the newspaper’s ranks and were exercising tremendous pressure on their owners and advertisers.

A different form of pressure was placed on the opposition newspaper Veto. The Brotherhood set up an identical site on the web, mimicking the paper’s name, logo and look. On the fake site, pictures of nude women were posted along with pro-Brotherhood articles.

The Veto’s managing editor blamed the Brotherhood of trying to tarnish the newspaper's image. "The Brotherhood’s cyber-warfare teams designed the website and utilized sophisticated ways of adding the fake site to any search results conducted on Google," he said.

Brotherhood has consistently accused state media outlets of adopting a hostile line towards it. Some members of the Brotherhood recently claimed that state-owned media were seeking to undermine the new president. When Salah Abdul Maqsoud, a Brotherhood member and Morsi’s spokesman during the election campaign was appointed information minister, it was an indication that the Brotherhood wanted to wrestle control of the state media from supporters of Mubarak and the military.

As information minister, Maqsoud controls the editorial line of all state TV channels, disappointing many who had hoped the ministry would be abolished and an independent media regulator established instead.

Maqsoud's appointment came at a time when the Brotherhood was already being accused of trying to control state-owned newspapers through subtle infiltration. Now the infiltration appears anything but subtle.

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