I want to write about the so-called "independent" Egyptian daily
Al-Masry Al-Youm which is owned by wealthy businessmen with trade links to Israel. (No this isn't fiction, its reality. Ask Salah Diab himself.)
Their Israeli connection isn't the issue here although it's certainly something to keep in mind when evaluating this newspaper.
The issue is the paper's role in serving the regime's interests.
For one thing, it has done the police state in Egypt a huge favour by spearheading the hysterical campaign against this country's oldest and largest opposition group the Muslim Brotherhood. Even the sick pro-government (or shall we say Interior Ministry mouthpiece?)
Rose El-Youssef daily newspaper couldn't compete with
Al-Masry Al-Youm.
Why? Although
Rose El-Youssef publishes nothing but filth and hysterical diatribes which very few people bother to read anyway, its alleagancies to the regime are no secret. This leads anyone with the average IQ to take anything they say with a grain of salt because it is official government propaganda.
But with the self-proclaimed "independent"
Al-Masry Al-Youm, the average reader with average IQ, political "awareness" and all probably wont suspect any wrong-doing on the paper's part because it's "objective" and all that stuff.
Al-Masry Al-Youm also seemed to take *sides* with the *reform* movement. In many ways it served as a platform for government critics and an activities calendar for the many anti-Mubarak and anti-dictatorship/corruption demonstrations that marked 2005 and the first half of 2006.
Yet the stench of the rotten in
Al-Masry Al-Youm is beginning to suffocate me (read their story in p5 today titled
'The mufti: forming a muslim brotherhood party will transforms Muslims to sects' [Since when do we care what the mufti's political views are? Clearly the "liberal"
Al-Masry Al-Youm does because they're campaigning against the MB)
. I found their police work in inciting public opinion against the Muslim Brotherhood quite appalling if not cheap and I have a major issue with their sensitive approach towards he who thinks of himself as heir-to-be, the Gamal Mubarak.
Yes
Al-Masry Al-Youm does good reporting in general but that's because the Egyptian press stopped reporting on anything for over a decade now and either suck up to the powers that be (Al-Ahram, Al-Akhbar, Rose El-Youssef etc) OR rant about the powers that be (El-Destour, Soat El-Umma, El-Karama etc).
And since Al-Masry Al-Youm is doing some journalism it stands out as "the professional" the "independent" the whatever it likes to call itself.. But in fact its not.
When you join ranks with a despotic regime that has done as much destruction to a country (Egypt) as the occupation did in Iraq (without a classic war and a classic occuption although both exist in Egypt nonetheless)- then you are far from serving as an independent newspaper nor do you subscribe to the aims, purposes or objectives of honest journalism.
When you help the regime quash its opponents and you tread cautiously around its glaring plans to install the Gamal Mubarak, you're committing a crime.
Al-Masry Al-Youm is helping the regime in its vicious campaign against the Muslim Brotherhood simply because they constitute a threat to the authorities and
not because they have issues with the group's ideology. (Egypt is
already an Islamic state just look at the hijab, the niqab, the chador, the beards, the writing on the wall- you name it and yet neither the regime nor its spasticated liberal cohorts give a damn.. noooo, all they're worried about is the muslim brotherhood bogeyman). And this, my dears, is what the security apparatus does already so why is this newspaper helping them? Or is it a newspaper?
Al-Masry Al-Youm is also promoting the Gamal Mubarak.
Al-Masry Al-Youm is fake.
