Editorial| A specter looms over Egypt’s independent media

Its first arm struck the newsroom of Matsadaash and flung the entire staff behind bars. Its second reached for Mada Masr, where a summary ruling ordered the outlet closed and fined its editor-in-chief, our colleague Lina Attalah, three million Egyptian pounds. No defense heard. No file read.

How many arms of this specter remain? How many newsrooms must fall silent to be spared reprisal?

These questions haunt us as we consider how to stand in solidarity with our colleagues, and we find that we stand not with fellow newsrooms but with ourselves, against arms of a body we cannot see, though we see their effect on press freedom, on free expression, and on the rule of law.

We are still reeling from Tuesday’s travesty. We hope our colleagues at Mada Masr will recover from it, as they have -repeatedly- from the blows they endured since 2013. Their courage has long lit the way.

Today we stand with Mada Masr and Matsadaash to defend our constitution, Egypt’s constitution, against being tampered with, hollowed out, stripped of meaning.

The Constitution tells us that citizens, and society, have the right to know, to circulate information, and to hold to account the authority that serves them. It tells us that independent press is the citizen’s eye on that authority. It follows, self-evidently, that no authority may withhold or grant, through its administrative bodies, a license to speak and to know.

The Constitution tells us that newspapers are to be issued by notification. Yet the notorious media regulation law, Law No. 180 of 2018, invents a baseless distinction between a newspaper printed on paper and one published online.

The Constitution tells us that laws that contradict it are void, and that mechanisms exist to strike them down. It tells us that fair trials carry guarantees, that the right to defense is secured, and that the court must record the defense’s motions, whether it grants or denies them. Yet Tuesday’s ruling disregarded the defense’s pleas and recorded none of them. It came after the court imposed a lawyer on the defendants, and it passed over their motion to recuse the panel.

The Constitution tells us that an independent press is an inherent right, not a favor or privilege that authority dispenses. Without it, citizens are deprived of the information that lets them understand the world around them, hold their government to account for its failures, and celebrate its achievements, if there are any.

We cannot read the overreach of these arms apart from the fraught backdrop against which Egypt now lives. Weeks ago, the authorities convened a conference to “raise the government’s morale,” while citizens’ realities are weighed down by deep economic and social challenges, and their future looks deeply dark. What tomorrow can we dream of if the spaces for vision, debate, and choice keep contracting? How can citizens be asked to bear the consequences of fateful decisions when the information they need is kept from them?

If we seek a more stable country, the duty to defend independent media cannot fall on media institutions alone. The spaces that allow journalists to work freely, and the public to reach information, are part of a public sphere we cannot do without, if we want stability for Egypt.

To everyone who has reached out to check on us: we are carrying on, because the conversation must go on. We watch. We publish. We contribute to people's access to information, because we believe the horizon runs wider, and that independent media is a specter in its own right, one that frightens whoever moves the arms, while hiding in their dark room.