In the early 1980s, I was working as editor in chief of al-Ahali, the magazine of the Tagammu Party. In this capacity, I used to receive the Public Prosecutor's decrees banning the publication of news regarding some issues he was investigating into. I have been keeping these decrees in a private folder. While I was reviewing them, I realized that the Public Prosecution issued in three years around 33 decrees namely one per month banning the publication of news. It seems the Prosecution abused its legal right to issue such ban. Indeed, this is a form of censorship, which is explicitly forbidden by the Constitution. Most of these decrees do not have any detail about the facts that nothing could be published about. Sometimes, all a decree provided was the number of the procès-verbal and the name of the first defendant. These decrees included such a broad and incoherent list of crimes – espionage, drug trafficking, prostitution, bribery, embezzlement and forgery - that it was difficult to believe that this decree conformed to the regulations set by the law. According to the law, the Prosecution has the right to ban the publication of news to preserve public order and morality and to find the truth. In other words, this ban must be for the sake of the investigations, so that no news may conceal a piece of evidence or help an accused flee. The Public Prosecution issued publication bans with regard to some cases without revoking them for months or even years. Moreover, these bans did not fall automatically once the bill of indictment was announced or once the case was referred to the competent court (at this point, it is the court itself which decides whether the trial will be public or behind close doors). All this and more has prompted me to deduce that it is not only for the sake of investigations that such decisions are issued. Indeed, there is another reason and this turns the prosecution itself into a form of censorship that limits the freedom of the press. Based on all this, at the third general conference of journalists in 1996, which was held to prepare a bill on the freedom of the press expressing the journalists' point of view, I proposed to include a provision in this bill. This provision would regulate the Public Prosecution's authority to ban the publication of any news in the investigations it carried out. According to this provision, the decision had to be motivated, last no more than three months and be extendable once; after that, it would expire automatically, regardless of whether the bill of indictment had been issued or not. The government has never agreed on this proposal. Yet, it must remain part of the journalists' efforts to revoke sanctions and legal and informal obstacles against freedom of the press. The judiciary's right to ban the publication of news must be regulated. At the same time, though, the press and the remaining media must commit to good manners when they spread news about crimes. Over the last few years, crimes have become Egyptian newspapers' top priority as a thrilling and attracting issue. This has encouraged publishers to issue weekly newspapers specialized in crimes. They have kept growing so much that now there are on average more than two daily newspapers specialized in this field and dozens of pages devoted every day by the other newspapers. When the Egyptian press exercises its role to publish news about crimes, it blatantly violates some articles of the Penal Code, regardless of how skeptical we are about these articles. Perhaps the most significant case is the ban from publishing news about investigations into cases of divorce, separation or adultery. Yet, newspapers violate these articles every day although the sanction is six months in prison or a fine between LE 5,000 and LE 10,000. Yet, no one is held accountable. More importantly, the Egyptian newspapers do not know what good manners are when it comes to publishing news about crimes. The reports about Egyptian newspapers' professional performance has stopped following up on how much these newspapers are committed to such good manners. For instance, they are not supposed to publish names and pictures of juvenile delinquents and of people involved in cases of prostitution and to publish news about exceptional crimes. The media's worst mistake, though, is when they forget the constitutional and legal rule that a person is innocent until proven guilty. Instead, stupidity pushes some newspapers to go beyond their professional and fundamental role, namely bringing news about crimes and trials precisely and impartially without siding with any of the litigants (the Prosecution and the Defense). Instead, newspapers turn into courts and instead of bringing news they pass rulings. This makes the public opinion side with one party or another and erupt if the ruling contradicts it. Street justice is now dominating, thus compromising a fundamental human right, namely the right to justice. It is time that Egyptian press had qualitative codes of ethics, including goods manners when it comes to publishing news about crimes, as the wish to create suspense pushes newspapers to publish stupid news as if they were tabloid.
