CAIRO: Even though they are exercising self-censorship, the emergence of the independent, privately-owned newspapers has pushed the limits of press freedom for various publications, including state-run newspapers, a recent study comparing Al-Ahram, Al-Masry Al-Youm and Daily News Egypt revealed.
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, Kenneth J. Cooper published an article early October analyzing the local press in Egypt.
He conducted the study during his stay in Cairo last spring as a Fulbright Scholar at the Faculty of Mass Communication, Cairo University.
“Politics and Priorities: Inside Egyptian Press is a content analysis of state-owned Al Ahram daily and independent dailies Al-Masry Al-Youm and Daily News Egypt from mid 2005 to the end of 2007. The study was limited to the local news coverage of the three papers.
The study included interesting findings on the newspapers’ different styles in covering local news and their selection of front-page stories.
According to the study, government news was Al-Ahram’s priority and always made the front-page. Its local coverage mainly focused on six subjects: education, health, housing, Islam, labor and culture/lifestyle.
Al-Masry Al-Youm’s front-page stories mainly covered local politics. Of all three papers, Al-Masry Al-Youm had the highest level of local news coverage, which mainly focused on six subjects: corruption, crime, local politics, protests and sports.
“Al Masry Al-Youm’s attention to corruption, domestic politics and protests also suggests the paper interprets journalists’ mission more as a government watchdog, as American journalists do, than as a nationalistic advocate in the Al-Ahram mold, Cooper wrote.
Human rights stories make the Daily News Egypt’s front-page on the other hand, and the prime subjects in the newspaper are business, the Gaza border and human rights.
Throughout the course of the two years over which the study was conducted, Al-Masry Al-Youm and Daily News Egypt presented their readers with more news about domestic politics and human rights as opposed to Al-Ahram.
However, all three papers had little coverage of crucial subjects including poverty, illiteracy and job training and a lot of coverage of business news.
“The dearth of coverage indicates none of the papers consider Egypt’s poor an important part of their audience and their problems as of much interest to relatively prosperous readers, wrote Cooper.
Another point of difference between the three newspapers is the sources used.
Fifty-four percent of the sources quoted in Al-Ahram’s domestic stories are government officials. They count for 39 percent in Al-Masry Al-Youm’s overall coverage and 52 percent of its front-page stories. The Egyptian public count for 52 percent of its sources.
On the other hand, government officials count for 32 percent of Daily News Egypt’s sources while activists, foreigners and the Egyptian public count for the majority of their sources.
The study explained how the presence of independent newspapers in the market has influenced the press in Egypt.
“The emergence of the private and independent press in the last four to five years has raised the limits of the press freedom we are practicing in the Egyptian press, Hazem Abdel Rahman, managing editor of Al-Ahram, was quoted as saying in the study.
He also said that the state-imposed limits on Al-Ahram specifically are “much higher.
The study however suggested that both Al-Masry Al-Youm and Daily News Egypt practice self-censorship.
“The paper [Al-Masry Al-Youm] had never heard from the government’s unofficial censors before publication, but has received ‘reactions’ afterwards. But we are our own censors . to uphold high journalistic standards and avoid breaking laws or taboos, Mohamed Samir, managing editor of Al-Masry Al-Youm, said in the study.
There is currently a growing wave of independent journalism in Egypt; with the Higher Press Council issuing licenses to five privately-owned newspapers last June.
Media analysts say the move will help tip the scales of the market in favor of the independent press and will raise the standard of journalism in Egypt, to the detriment of the state-owned press, which may be on the wane.
“The emergence of independent newspapers has definitely influenced state-owned press because to begin with from a business perspective it is competition and Al-Masry Al-Youm in particular has done quite well, [in addition] they made state-owned papers cover news using more different angles than they did before, explained Naila Hamdy, chair of the Journalism and Mass Communication department at the American University in Cairo.
“After an absence of 50 years, the reemergence of a private, independent press in Egypt has expanded the variety and volume of news its citizens can read, bringing along for some distance the biggest state-run newspaper, Cooper wrote in his conclusion.
“But without the repeal of repressive media laws and lifting of taboos around important but forbidden subjects, the country’s newspapers will not – and cannot – be a truly free press that speaks uncomfortable truths to authoritarian power and holds it accountable before the Egyptian public.
