Our democracy

Yellower than thou...

by Andrew Hammond 

Why oh why, he wondered, should the government want to make the repressive air in the country at the moment any worse? "The parties are cornered, the elections are rigged, parliament is empty, [Fathi] Sorour is still 'master of his decision', protests are banned, the rotation of power has gone 'boi-boi', television is cheesy, a lemon costs 20 piastres, and about the only thing that makes up for it is press freedom." Whatever you think of them, he said, "people like the imprisoned Magdy Hussein, the transferred Adel Hamouda and the closed down Ibrahim Issa deserve credit for giving people some belief at home and abroad that there is freedom of the press here and that the government was serious about fighting corruption." In Al Gomhoriya of 12 March he continued his attack on the state's press offensive: "In free societies the individual chooses his opinions and his values, and respects the freedom of others to choose their own opinions and values. People read the scandal-rags for entertainment, and even if they believe what they read, it doesn't affect their evaluation of their ability to do their job."  

In Al Shaab of 13 March, a short poem by popular poet Ahmed Fouad Negm -- normally published in the now banned Al Destour -- said much the same. "Banned from travelling/Banned from singing/Banned from talking/Banned from loving/Banned from resenting/Banned from smiling," it began. "Every day I love you/The forbiddens increase/Every day I love you/More/Than yesterday," it ended. The lover? Egypt, probably.  

What rubbish, stormed the big fish of the papers in response. Ibrahim Saada, editor-in-chief of Akhbar Al Yom, tried to challenge the idea that the president is leading a major assault on the freedom of the press. The opposition have been able to depict it this way because the state media kept silent about Mubarak's meeting with the Higher Press Council on 14 March, he wrote. The president did not lauch a "new attack", he said. What he did was to quote chunks of articles written by writers such as Said Abdel Khalek and Wafd editor Gamal Badawi, Saada said, that talked of uprooting the "poisonous weeds" and "cancerous moles" in the Egyptian body journalistic.  

The state press seemed to be afflicted with an illness itself. In an attempt to ram home the message that there is a "yellow" -- i.e. cheap-skate-press out there, October Weekly and Al Mussawar splashed the sickly color all over their front covers. "We are in dire need of keeping to the principles of the profession so that mixing news with gossip doesn't become a new principle," proclaimed Makram Mohammed Ahmed in Al Mussawar of 13 March. The effectiveness of the press has fallen under the influence of those "who seek to transform our democracy from a responsible one like those in the West, to one just left with no control under the banner of 'freedom of the press,'" espoused historian Abdel Azim Ramadan in October Weekly of 15 March.  

Gamal Badawi, editor-in-chief of Al Wafd, spent all week basking in the glory of presidential praise. He repeated the same slogan again and again: "We fight for freedom of the press. We will not fight for freedom of prostitution!" Those lines of Badawi's had been singled out for commendation by Mubarak in his speech to the Higher Press Council on 7 March. Whether Badawi's staff journalists agree with him is another matter. One cartoon that ran next to a lead article of his entitled "Freedom of the press" showed journalists standing outside a WC peeking through the keyhole. One of them says to another: "See, the editor is set on writing the main headline himself."