The state run media's credibility has reached an all time low, writes Doaa El-Bey While Arabic speaking channels like Al-Arabiya and the BBC provided -- and still provide -- round the clock coverage, giving space to a wide range of points of view and analysis, and popular English speaking news channels like CNN offered detailed coverage of the demonstrations, Egyptian state TV began by ignoring the protests in Tahrir Square and, when that was no longer possible, attempted to pay them down. The tactics of the state run media in covering what is probably their biggest news in decades was sadly predictable. Egyptian television harped endlessly on about foreign influence or else sought to give the impression that the Muslim Brotherhood were behind the protests. As far as possible they contrived to ignore protesters' demands that President Hosni Mubarak step down and refrained from showing posters and banners demanding his removal. A handful of news presenters and journalists from the state-owned media resigned or took open leave in protest at the coverage they were obliged to present. "What happened was a farce," said Nile News's Lamis Abdel-Ghani. "We were a few steps away from Tahrir Square yet were prevented from providing balanced coverage for our viewers." Abdel-Ghani has now taken indefinite leave from her job, alongside her colleague Mona El-Shayeb. Shahira Amin and Soha El-Naqqash went one step further, resigning from Nile TV. The early coverage of the crisis, says Cairo University mass communications professor Safwat El-Alem, betrayed the absence of any political vision as state media patently lost the plot, issuing contradictory statements made by officials, claiming one moment that everything was calm in Suez, for instance, while stating a few minutes later that protesters had been killed and ignoring the mass demonstrations in Tahrir to focus instead on the few hundred Mubarak supporters gathered in front of the TV building. Eventually, says El-Alem's colleague Mahmoud Khalil, when belittling the impact of the demonstrations failed the official media resorted to lies, their visual coverage restricted to a single, still image of the 6 October flyover. When this subliminal message that all was calm failed they adopted deliberate scare tactics, showing themselves as an arm of the security apparatus, deliberately intimidating the public with stories of looting and attacks on apartments. Both El-Alem and Khalil view official attempts to halt Al-Jazeera's operations in Egypt as indicative of the desperate straits into which state TV finds itself. State owned print media fared no better. It too also failed to provide balanced coverage, spreading stories about foreign infiltration of the protests and the growing influence of the Muslim Brotherhood among protesters. It relied on exaggeration or outright lies. On Monday the official daily Al-Gomhouriya opted for the banner "A new era, the vice president, opposition, youth and Brotherhood agree a document of national détente" ignoring the fact that tens of thousands of people were gathered in Tahrir demanding that President Mubarak step down. While recent days have seen a slight change in the rhetoric of the official press, particularly in the tone adopted by some editors-in-chief, it hardly signals a change in the general policies of these newspapers. The hand wringing was as unconvincing as ever. Mohamed Ali Ibrahim, editor of Al-Gomhouriya sent a front page apology to the young protesters: "We apologise for not hearing you, and if we heard you, for not paying attention to your demands, and if we paid attention for not adopting your suggestions." Osama Saraya, editor of the official daily Al-Ahram, while acknowledging in his column that a revolution was taking place in Egypt also advised protesters to be aware of the dangers and difficulties in which they had placed Egypt. State owned newspapers, says Khalil, appear as if they are being published in a parallel universe to that occupied by the public. "The message of the official press, as well as official TV, is like a forged banknote, easily ousted from the market by genuine coins found on the Internet and online journalism." So can the state run media hope to regain any credibility? Not without unbiased, responsive and professional coverage, say El-Alem and Khalil. And there seems little hope of that despite attempts to improve its performance. In his dialogue with opposition groups on Sunday Vice President Omar Suleiman appeared to agree to allow greater freedom of the press. But as Nobel laureate Ahmed Zuweil pointed out in a press conference on the same day, for greater press freedom to become a reality requires a radical upheaval of long established practices. One way to manage such a change, argues Khalil, is to abolish the Ministry of Information altogether and place the administration of state television in the hands of an independent commission. Such moves will inevitably take time to implement. Yet until they are, there seems little hope of state media services regaining the confidence of the public.
