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| Africa North |
| Egypt takes aim at Al-Jazeera for protest coverage |
| 2011-02-11 |
| [Arab News] The Egyptian government has made clear it believes a chief culprit stoking the anti-government protests roiling the country is pan-Arab broadcaster Al-Jazeera. Security forces have jugged, and later released, at least nine Al-Jazeera correspondents since the protests erupted last month. Authorities have banned its Arabic and English language channels from broadcasting and revoked the press credentials of all of its journalists. The channel has continued to report despite the restrictions. Pro-government thugs set the Qatar-based network's Cairo offices ablaze, along with the equipment inside, as part of a broad pattern of attacks on journalists covering the unrest. The network has won accolades from many around the globe for its near round-the-clock coverage of the unprecedented unrest in Egypt, and seen a spike in interest in its report from US viewers. But it has collided head-on with Egyptian authorities, who have sought to portray the broadcaster -- the Arab world's most popular -- as a malevolent force fueling the unrest. Egypt's newly appointed vice president, Omar Suleiman, told Egyptian newspaper editors on Tuesday that "certain satellite channels" are provoking the protesters and insulting Egypt. A week earlier, Suleiman said: "I blame some friendly countries who own unfriendly channels that have fueled the youth against the country by lying and showing the situation as worse than it is." While he hasn't named Al-Jazeera outright, it is clear to Egyptians whom Suleiman has in mind, and such comments have served as a clear signal to the regime and its supporters to hit back at the network. And they have. Besides the attack on its Cairo bureau and the detention of its news hounds, Al-Jazeera said its website was hacked. A banner advertisement on its Arabic-language site was taken down for more than two hours and replaced with a slogan reading "Together for the collapse of Egypt." The slogan provided a link to a page criticizing the broadcaster. The network has even had trouble staying on the air because of high levels of interference in its broadcast signal. Al-Jazeera said the government shut off the channel's signal from an Egyptian satellite. Egyptians with satellite dishes could adjust them to point to other satellites beaming the Al-Jazeera signal, but that is not easy to do. Since the cutoff, the channel has provided viewers the coordinates to make the change. Despite the challenges, Al-Jazeera's flagship Arabic station and its English sister channel have both managed to continue broadcasting, although the crackdown has driven their Egyptian news hounds off the air over fears of government reprisals. |
| Posted by:Fred |