Egypt’s State Information Service (SIS) criticised on late Sunday the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) Cairo office, for its recent coverage on Egypt, accusing the international media outlet of “promoting the lies” of the Muslim Brotherhood.
The SIS said that the BBC Arabic website published “an inflammatory and offensive article under the title ‘Be assured you are not alone campaign renews its calls for protests against Al-Sisi’.
The SIS added that the content posted on 22 March, 2019 “not only breaches the most basic codes of conduct, it actually surpassed that and reached the level of fabricating events that never took place, by that literally turning themselves into a propaganda tool of media outlets directly affiliated with the Brotherhood.”
The SIS asserted that the Brotherhood is considered a “terrorist group” in Egypt and other countries including The UK and Northern Ireland.
“The article dedicated 16 lines to the fake protests and their hashtag, while covering the opposing hashtag “Be assured Sisi you are not alone” in only 6 lines, the SIS stated. It added that the article “included seven pictures of twitter of pro-Brotherhood twitter accounts and only three pictures of accounts supporting the pro-Sisi hashtag.”
The SIS called on all Egyptian officials and the intelligentsia to boycott the BBC and refrain from giving any interviews or statements to its correspondents until it officially apologises for posting the report and “takes the necessary administrative and professional measures to undo the violations it has committed.”
For the BBC, it maintained its commitment to Egyptian laws, revealing that it enjoys constructive relations with Egyptian authorities and it will seek a dialogue on this issue.
Earlier this week, the BBC trended a published a report on the hashtag “Be assured you will not be alone,”’ which has been trending for a while on Twitter among users in Egypt.
The hashtag was launched by a number of dissents against Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi nearly two months ago, the BBC said. It noted that its website also mentioned other hashtags in support of the president against those calls for protests within its report.
Over the past few days, the media scene observed controversy over the penalties’ list issued by the Supreme Media Council (SMC) for media and social media platforms.
The SMC blocked Al-Mashhad newspaper for six months and fined it EGP 50,000 over “violating media standards and public morals,” by publishing “inappropriate photos” which Al-Mashhad denied. In response, Al-Mashhad filed a lawsuit on Sunday in the Administrative Court to appeal the SMC decision.
Meanwhile, the council suspended the broadcasting of Al Zamalek Alyoum television sports show on Al-Mehwar for a month starting from last Sunday. The SMC gave the TV channel two-months’ notice to regulate the status of its TV shows.
