CAIRO: Minister of Information Anas El-Fiqi has ordered the formation of a committee to work on establishing a Media Syndicate, according to local press reports. El-Fiqi assigned Ahmed Anis, president of the Egyptian Radio and Television Union (ERTU), to head the committee which is to include representatives from the different media sectors and satellite channels, as well as legal advisors. The minister made the decision in light of the expanding media scene, especially in the realm of private satellite channels. A Media Syndicate, he believes, would be a channel for them to express their issues and concerns. El-Fiqi told the Middle East News Agency (MENA) that this decision is "the first in a series of corrective measures he will be taking in the coming period, based on meetings with employees of the ERTU earlier this month. ERTU employees had protested for several days outside the ERTU building, against the recent "development of Egyptian terrestrial channels 1 and 2. Staff members including presenters, directors, writers and photographers, called on President Hosni Mubarak to intervene with progress plans that entailed the cancellation of their shows and outsourced new ones. They complained that 75 percent of the work and editing was commissioned to externals, triggering fears of massive layoffs as part of the restructuring plans. Mahasen El-Sinousy, a reporter at Akhbar Al-Youm, told Daily News Egypt that El-Fiqi met with the protestors and agreed to retract his previous decision to redistribute 28 TV shows among the various terrestrial channels as part of ERTU's restructuring plan. El-Fiqi recently came under fire for allegedly banning International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Chief Mohamed ElBaradei from appearing in state media, because of his controversial views on the state of democracy in Egypt. He also came under attack in 2008 for proposing a number of measures which are perceived as tightening state control over the media. In February 2008, he was one of the architects of the Arab League ministers of information charter titled "Principles for Organizing Satellite Broadcast and Television Transmission and Reception in the Arab Region, which calls on the regulatory bodies in Arab League member states to ensure that satellite channels broadcasting from their jurisdictions do not "negatively affect social peace, national unity, public order, and public morals or "defame leaders, or national and religious symbols [of other Arab states].
