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| Nader Gohar, Cairo News Company director, stands by the backdrop he uses for taping interviews. Liam Stack |
Arab TV feels the pinch of new broadcast limits
The Arab League has adopted new restrictions on satellite broadcasters warning them not to insult Arab leaders.
from the May 2, 2008 edition
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"If the government starts to close down service providers, or harass them to stop cooperating with independent media like Al Jazeera, the BBC, or the AP, then this is something that the international community and human rights groups that focus on freedom of speech should be paying attention to," he adds.
The state prosecutor has charged the CNC with violation of the 1960 Transmission Law, which gives the state-run Egyptian Radio and Television Union the sole right to transmit television signals out of the country. That law does not take into account the existence of technologies such as satellite broadcasting and the Internet.
The government has long promised to update the law, and will not renew the operating licenses of groups like the CNC until the law is changed.
Critics say the government has taken no action toward actually changing the law, and want to keep the media in a state of limbo.
"If you make a mistake the government will punish you for not having a license, but if you don't make any problems for them then you will be OK," says Gohar.
Critics say that those gray areas are the government's best weapon against the independent media.
Hussein Amin, the author of the Satellite Broadcast Charter, says that one of his goals for the document is to clarify those shades of gray. "Imagine you are walking in a dark room and someone turns on the lights," he says. "Censorship is that darkness and regulations are the lights."
He compares the guidelines to those of the Federal Communications Commission in the United States, and says it is meant to protect Arab youth from pornography, violence, and "hate campaigns" run by terrorist groups. "It was obvious that some channels were really designed just to implement hate campaigns against Christians in general and Americans in particular."
He points to Al Zawra, a channel run by Sunni militants in Iraq that was pulled from both Nilesat and Arabsat last year.
Mr. Amin, who is chairman of the journalism department at the American University in Cairo and a member of the policy committee of the ruling party, which advises Mubarak, says critics of the document do not under "the difference between freedom and responsible freedom."
"People need to remember that this is not the United States or Europe," he says. "This is still authoritarianism. The government can ban any network they want if it is giving them a hard time. They can ban it. They are in control."
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