CAIRO ? It was an idea born of desperation. Ibrahim Issa, a prominent opposition journalist, was livid at the way Egypt?s government-owned media were covering the revolution. So he decided to launch a TV station of his own.
Normally, that would be impossible without approval from Egypt?s internal security service. But officials there were distracted by the protests in Tahrir Square. So with $300, some volunteers and a satellite frequency donated by a friend, Issa hit the airwaves.
(Mary Beth Sheridan/WASHINGTON POST) - CAIRO, EGYPT - Ibrahim Issa, an opposition journalist, has launched a new newspaper and TV network since the fall of the Hosni Mubarak regime, a sign of the proliferation of new media.
Four months later, his Tahrir TV has millions of viewers. Issa, who had been arrested and harassed during the rule of Hosni Mubarak, is a symbol of the growing freedom of expression in this former one-party state.
?The idea of banning people from talking is over,? said the journalist, 46, sitting in the office of his other new venture, a newspaper called Tahrir.
Since the revolution, TV channels and newspapers have proliferated. People once shunned by the media ? opposition politicians, Islamists, human-rights activists ? publish op-eds and appear on talk shows.
The new media freedom has its limits. Military authorities, who now run the country, have staunchly defended a longtime taboo on challenging them. They have imprisoned a blogger and questioned journalists who have criticized them in print or on the air.
But there is a new feistiness in the media and among activists that is serving as an important check on the power to censor.
?From the media side, there is a feeling that this is a point of no return,? said Lina Attalah, managing editor of the English-language version of Al-Masry Al-Youm, a major independent newspaper. ?We also have to act as an interest group here, and get as much freedom as we can.?
A new wave
In recent years, Issa ran several publications that were shut down by the government. He was part of a new wave of independent media, which provided a lively, sometimes sensationalistic alternative to the fawning state-owned newspapers and television. Nonetheless, before the revolution, independent journalists were often harassed, and they risked arrest if they went too far.
In 2008, Issa was sentenced to two months in prison for questioning Mubarak?s health. He eventually was pardoned. Last year, he was fired as editor of the weekly Al Dustour, which he founded in 1995 and was shut down by authorities at one point for ?jeopardizing national unity.?
After the revolution, the government dropped the requirement that TV stations receive security clearance. At least 20 new TV channels have launched or are in the works, including Tahrir and one called ?25,? after the January date of the start of the revolution. Several others are run by religious groups ? including the long-banned Muslim Brotherhood and ultra-traditional Muslims known as Salafists.
The boom reflects the growing audience for news in this country of 80 million, which is facing an uncertain political future after 30 years of rule by the same man.
?You have turned from a time in which maybe one in 1,000 people was interested in politics, to a time when you have 80 million politicians,? said Hossam Bahgat, director of a prominent human-rights group, the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights.
Source: http://feeds.washingtonpost.com/click.phdo?i=857b67a660d17c4b63086eda7d63597e
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