The day after the appointments, a handful of columnists (all at privately owned papers) ran blank columns in protest — objecting to both the individual choices and the idea that Morsy’s government was adopting the Mubarak-era levers of media control. That turned out to be just the opening salvo in a widening conflict that has Morsy’s young government accused of suppressing free speech.
A pair of prominent government critics now face charges of incitement to violence and the purely Mubarak-era crime of “insulting the President.” Tawfiq Okasha, a firebrand anti-Brotherhood television host, has had the channel he owns temporarily shut down. And police raided the offices of the privately owned newspaper al-Dostour, confiscated the Aug. 11 edition of the paper and charged its editor in chief, Islam Afify, with incitement.
With or against us http://t.co/oXIihNgeKU On the recent attacks against the #media. /by @sarahcarr #egypt
The current regime meanwhile is combining the very best of pre-2011 media repression techniques with a classic February 2011 xenophobia campaign with the force of an Interior Ministry stretching its sinewy muscles as it resurrects itself.