The Listening Post

Has Morsi borrowed Mubarak’s playbook?

The new Egyptian president’s media strategy may be echoing that of his predecessor, but Egypt’s media is fighting back.

Tahrir Square has once again been awash with protestors and this time it is all about the actions of the man Egypt voted in as president just five months ago. Mohamed Morsi’s move to grant himself sweeping powers were seen as tactics pulled straight out of former President Hosni Mubarak’s playbook. His media strategy echoes Mubarak’s as well – state TV has been commandeered to broadcast Morsi’s message.

However, there are some big differences – the head of Egyptian state TV has resigned in protest and private media in Egypt have been unafraid to attack Morsi. Then there is the coverage on the outlet that was seen as one of the channels of the revolution – the Egyptian arm of the Al Jazeera network – Al Jazeera Mubasher Masr. Once celebrated by the crowds at Tahrir, it has come under fire from Morsi’s opposition for their coverage of the president and the protests.

Shining a light on these issues will be media scholar Adel Iskandar, Ahram Online editor Dina Samak, Ayman Gaballah, the managing director of Al Jazeera Mubasher Masr and Shahira Amin from the Daily News Egypt.

In this week’s News Bytes: News agency the Associated Press has attracted serious criticism for running a story about a ‘secret’ document supposedly proving Iran is trying to build a nuclear bomb. However, the information on the document was wrong, and the source of the story looks to be the Israeli intelligence using black propaganda.  

In India, two senior journalists from TV station Zee News have been arrested over an alleged attempt to extort money from a leading industrialist by promising not to run stories about his company if he gave them approximately $18m. They were arrested after a ‘reverse sting’ where the industrialist, Naveen Jindal, filmed them allegedly discussing the deal.  

The United Nations has condemned the Democratic Republic of Congo’s jamming of the country’s most popular radio station, Radio Okapi. Although the official reason for the jamming is administrative, critics believe it was because the station ran an interview with the head of the M23 rebel movement.

A Turkish TV channel, CNBC-e, has been fined for showing an episode of the Simpsons deemed by the country’s broadcasting regulator to be insulting to religious sentiments. D’oh!

This week’s feature: It has been a difficult time for the BBC, the world’s biggest and most recognised news network. A decision to drop a story about one of their most celebrated broadcasters, Jimmy Savile, who had been accused of sexual abuse, unleashed a cascade of events that led to the resignation of its director general, George Entwistle. We unravel the bad press the BBC has given itself. We speak to media experts Stewart Purvis, who ran the television news agency ITN; New Statesman journalist and Al Jazeera presenter Mehdi Hasan; Tim Luckhurst, who was a news editor at the BBC; and Nathalie Fenton.

Our online video of the week: Finally, there are many dumb ways to die but only one video of dumb ways to die. It is possibly the wittiest public service announcement you will see. Put together by Melbourne’s Metro Train service, it warns people to be a little more cautious, especially around train tracks. The video has more than 30 million hits online and you never know, it may just have saved a few lives.

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