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Babylon & Beyond

EGYPT: Be careful of what you broadcast

By Jeffrey FleishmanStaff Writer 
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Egypt is using a new media law to prosecute the owner of a satellite TV company for his role in broadcasting violent anti-government street protests. The law, passed by the Arab League in February, is the latest attempt by regimes in the region to silence independent satellite channels.

Charges have been filed against Nader Gohar, owner of the Cairo News Co., which provides links and equipment to Al Jazeera, BBC and other international networks. Police raided Cairo News in April after Al Jazeera broadcast images of riot police battling with protesters in Mahalla, a Nile Delta town where 27,000 textile workers have been protesting inflation and low salaries.

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Gohar is expected to be tried later this month for broadcasting without permission. His company has been shut down and he faces fines and up to one year in prison. Human Rights Watch has called the charges part of a campaign by the government of President Hosni Mubarak to “stifle freedom of the press.”

The Arab League law, sponsored Saudi Arabia and Egypt, pressures channels from broadcasting transmissions that “negatively affect social peace, national unity, public order and public morals” or “defame leaders, or national and religious symbols [of other Arab states].”

—Jeffrey Fleishman in Cairo

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Babylon & Beyond
Jeffrey Fleishman

Jeffrey Fleishman is a senior writer at the Los Angeles Times. Previously, he was the foreign and national editor. A 2002 Nieman fellow at Harvard University, Fleishman was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in feature writing. A longtime foreign correspondent, he served as bureau chief for The Times in Cairo and Berlin, and was previously based in Rome for the Philadelphia Inquirer. He also was a writer on film, art and culture. Fleishman has been a finalist for the Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting and a finalist for the Center for Public Integrity’s Award for Outstanding International Investigative Reporting. He is the author of five novels, including “Good Night, Forever” and “Last Dance.”

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