Freedom of the press in Egypt laced with, interventions, deals and orders

Freedom of the press in Egypt laced with, interventions, deals and orders

While some countries’ press celebrates freedom of opinion and expression, Egypt ‘s press suffers from a state of decline and repression.

The 2009, Arab Network for Human Rights report, revealed that Egypt is ranked first in repressing the freedom of internet activists, bloggers and press

Problems include the crisis of transferring journalists to different cities if they refuse to publish false news, similar to measures taken by the Rose al Youssef magazine’s administration. Government owned newspapers such as Alwattany Alyawm and the refusal to renew contracts for 35 journalists who had worked for the newspaper for four years and registration issues for Al-Ghad newspaper due to internal problems of the party are among the problems that need to be solved.

The level of journalists’ work has severely declined during the last year as many journalists are burdened with registration, payments, training and housing problems. In addition to this, retired journalists suffer from the decline of pension rates.

The Journalist Syndicate’s slogan, “Syndicate of freedom of opinion and expression” is a slogan that doesn’t apply any more to the syndicate. It is completely surrounded by security forces and rights activists are prevented from protesting there and its members are banned from entering to protest the decline in salaries.

Gamal Fahmy, a member of the Syndicate’s Bureau denounced this decline and described the freedom of journalism in Egypt as “the freedom of screaming” stressing that there can not be freedom while information is restricted.

Fahmy told Ikhwanweb that most journalists do not even receive the minimum wages. He stressed it was unfair to expect them to work to full capacity while there is no freedom of the press. Fahmy added, “Journalists are prevented from their union’s rights and the government intervenes in the affairs of the syndicate and elections there in an unprecedented manner, each year is worse than the year before as we are a segment from the Egyptian society and the overall decline in the society affects us all”.

Members, of the syndicate agree, that, the decline of their profession is attributed, to the decline of the syndicate’s role  in supporting the rights of journalists in addition to the many crisis journalists face as the law, permits the arrest of journalists in Egypt .