Democratisation of Egyptian state-owned media Naomi Sakr I had a piece published in the International Communication Gazette exactly 10 years

ago. It was called Contested blueprints for Egypts satellite channels. Little did I think that 10 years later I would be here in an Egypt where everything is subject to overhaul, including the media. In a sense that is one challenge of this presentation. Any discussion about how to democratise the countrys state media operations cannot take place in a vacuum. It needs to engage with changes in many other strands of reform, political, social and economic. So instead of focusing on internal issues of Egypts state-owned media, or the merits of public service broadcasting, which other speakers have dealt with, I will use my time to consider some of the links that exist between any effort to democratise the media and democratisation efforts in other areas of law and policy. After considering a few of these areas, I will comment on how they link to international law. At the time of the Jan 25 revolution, it seems the number of people employed at the state broadcaster, the ERTU, in Cairo alone had reached 46,000. That figures comes from a Reuters report in February 2011. If we trace the statistics back over recent years, we see a continuous rate of growth. In 2007, the number was 40,000 (according to an opposition MP quoted in Daily News Egypt). At the time of my article about the contested blueprints, 10 years ago, the number was more like 35,000. My source then was a member of the ERTU Board of Trustees. So were talking about an increase of around 1,000 people a year, many of whom were hired on a temporary basis. This shows how the former regime disguised its neglect of the economy by creating false jobs; and the massive structural challenge of job creation that faces any incoming government in the new era. That is to say: peoples livelihoods are at stake in media restructuring, so there is a link here between whether those peoples voices are heard in the restructuring process, which in turn depends directly on how the media are restructured. Will media restructuring safeguard peoples livelihoods in future? Will the restructured media be economically viable? These questions raise others about the legal framework within which media restructuring takes place. Linked with over-staffing and under-employment at the ERTU is the phenomenon of its deficit. This was around E4 billion back in 2004 (according to an official estimate in AlIzaa wal-Telefisiyun) and increasing at a rate of E800 million a year. In trying to track the growth of the deficit, I found it had reached 6bn by 2007 (according to Mohsen Rady MP quoted by Daily News Egypt), so it must be a minimum of 8-9bn today. I have also seen higher estimates. But lets say the deficit is at least US$1.5bn.
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So, if media restructuring draws on public money what we can call tax payers money the process links in with the business landscape as a whole and the way business is regulated. For example, what safeguards are there against ownership concentration? Labour laws will be key, as will the law on unions, which will affect how journalists and media workers seek to protect their rights. Will they choose to have a single union, or more than one, and how this will affect journalists bargaining rights and their ability to draft their own codes of professional conduct, without these being written by bosses and political figures? Competition law is another relevant area of legislation. As far as I know, the current legislation in Egypt, adopted in 2005, targets intentional monopolistic practices but is not geared to prevent monopolies as such. Tax laws were used in the past to give the government unfair advantages over advertising, in the sense that the former regime used to tax advertising revenue selectively: it imposed the tax on advertising for independent or opposition media, but not on its own publications or TV channels. Copyright enforcement is another issue affecting economic viability of media. Can independent local media producers expect to make any money from their creativity enough to sustain continued production? Or does rampant piracy keep them poor? Then there is the whole area of election law. How will election campaigns be regulated? Will there be a free-for-all through the media or are there rules to ensure fairness and how are these rules enforced? This is not new territory to NGOs here in Egypt. The Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS) monitored the media in previous elections. And there is a pan-Arab network, the Arab Working Group, which specialises in media monitoring in elections. Monitoring is essential. But the rules of coverage matter too. We havent spoken at the conference so far about media reporting before and during the Referendum on March 19. I heard there was supposed to be a two-day media blackout. How adequately were the opposing views explained through the media beforehand? Talking of CIHRS and the Arab Working Group brings us to the issue of the law on NGOs and its importance to democratic media. Successive versions of the law on NGOs in Egypt have greatly impeded the diversification and deepening of civil society activity. In a new era of democratisation, one would hope to see independent groups formed not only to defend media freedom on big questions of principle but also to voice the collective feelings and concerns of ordinary media users, perhaps similar to the Voice of the Listener and Viewer (VLV) in the UK. Then we come to laws that are more obviously related to media, such as defamation law. I hesitate to get into this, when we have an ARTICLE 19 representative with us. But reform of the law on defamation would be a huge step towards media democratisation in Egypt. International law recognises that freedom of expression should respect the reputations of others. So there are grounds for legislating against defamation. But not all
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forms of defamation should count as a criminal offence, i.e. one for which blanket restrictions are needed to protect society as a whole. The right to protect ones reputation is most often a matter of dispute between the defamer and the defamed. This means it can be handled by civil law, not criminal law. Secondly, laws in general should promote public accountability; they should not give public officials special protection from criticism. Thirdly, defamation should not be confused with insult. Then we come to the law on Freedom of Information: This is to guarantee the transparency of public bodies. Many countries today legislate for FoI Sweden has been doing it since the 18th century. Clearly such a law represents an interface between public institutions, the media and the public at large. Finally there is Egypts law on broadcasting and Media Production City. Here the question is: How soon will the really interesting Egyptian channels that we all watch become available terrestrially? The law that restricts them to satellite transmission is obsolete. It belongs to the old regime. The list I have just set out may seem like a legal mountain. But I want to end by saying that a lot of the work has already been done. Thats because Egypt is signatory to a body of international law that provides an underpinning of norms to protect human rights and dignity. So a quick way to upgrade the legal system would be to resolve contradictions between domestic and international law. I know that members of the judiciary have worked in recent years with the International Bar Association on precisely this issue. Right at the start of my comments, I mentioned the Labour law. We can take recent discussion on this law as a sign that some ministers in Egypt are thinking in terms of the link between domestic law and international law. Two weeks ago the government announced that there would soon be reforms on labour rights to address the key concerns of unemployment and wages that are so low people cant live on them. The Minister of Manpower also said that the right to create unions would be granted to everyone. And heres the key: We dont need a national law for this, he said, because we ratified an international labour convention that grants this right. Thats exactly the point I would want to make about other international conventions. Obvious examples that are directly relevant to media are: Articles 17-20 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights [ICCPR ] (the ones on the right to privacy, the right to freedom of conscience, religion and belief, the right to freedom of expression, and the right to protection against incitement to hatred or discrimination). Articles 8, 13 and 15 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights [ICESCR] (right of trade unions to function freely; link between education and effective participation in society; right to take part in cultural life and the need for freedom in scientific research and cultural activity).
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There are others in the Convention on Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and so on. And there is UNESCOS 2005 Convention on Cultural Diversity, which Egypt ratified in 2007. This is key to public support for cultural expression if we take media to include the film industry. The US film industry opposes action by states other than the US to support national film. But this Convention guarantees the right to give support. Egypt HAS laws in place to support its national film industry through import quotas and use of levies on cinema ticket sales. But research shows that the laws have not been used for the right purpose. Now is the time to put that right and restore Egyptian film to its rightful place in the region and the rest of the world. This can be done at the same time as Egyptian media legislation is harmonised with its other existing obligations under international law.