A man reads the newspaper as he sits outdoors at a coffee shop in Egypt’s southern city of Luxor on 9 January 2025. [Getty]
An intelligence-affiliated media company has recently turned in two public television channels, throwing light on the high cost of state control over the media in Egypt.
United Media Services, a media company founded by the Egyptian intelligence in 2016, took control of Channel 1 and the Egyptian Satellite Channel in 2020, ostensibly to upgrade them and turn them into profit from loss, but in essence furthering state control over the media.
The two channels were the latest in a long series of acquisitions by the same company.
The overhaul of the aforementioned two channels included in practice the launch of new programmes and the introduction of new highly-paid anchors, all of which backing Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.
Earlier this month, however, the company handed over the two channels to the Radio and Television Union (RTU), the original state-run operator of public channels.
The upgrade contract was supposed to last for five years. Nonetheless, the handover of the two channels followed the appointment of a new head for the intelligence-affiliated media company, whose coming was associated with a plan to reduce costs and put a lid on the company’s financial losses.
Commenting on the return of his channel to the RTU, the head of the Egyptian Satellite Channel, which airs outside Egypt, said the channel’s studios are still badly in need of technical upgrade and modern cameras.
His comment opened the door for questions about the nature of the overhaul United Media Services did to the two channels and whether it was real or was only aimed at tightening state and intelligence control over the two channels.
Tight grip
Whether the little change United Media Services introduced to the two channels offers proof of its failure to keep up with the requirements of their overhaul remains to be seen in the coming period.
Nonetheless, the handover of the two channels, media specialists in Cairo said, clarifies the high cost Egyptian authorities are coughing up to control the media and the difficulty of maintaining this control.
“The presumed overhaul introduced nothing new to the two channels in terms of content or ideas,” a Channel 1 female presenter who was sacked from the channel because of her opposition to what she described as the “monopolistic practices” of United Media Services, told The New Arab.
“The government is paying huge amounts of money to maintain control over the media, but it is failing to present anything new to the viewers,” the presenter, who requested anonymity, added.
Since its founding, United Media Services has pushed all other players on the media scene out of the way on the road to controlling this scene.
Getting the lion’s share of advertisements, the company increased in size over the years, becoming, according to its website, one of the biggest media entities in the Arab region.
It produces almost all TV serials, films and programmes for local channels, spending tens of billions of Egyptian pounds in taxpayers’ money on the production of these media works.
Nonetheless, in producing these works, United Media Services, which owns over 40 companies in various media fields, has a mission: delivering the Egyptian government’s narrative to viewers and ensuring that this narrative will prevail over all others.
It has produced a long list of films and serials about the downfall of the Muslim Brotherhood regime in Egypt, the Egyptian army’s fight against an Islamic State branch in Sinai and Egypt‘s 2015 airstrikes on Islamic State camps in Libya after the killing of 21 Egyptian Christian Copts in the neighbouring Arab country.
Learning a lesson
In striving to control the media, Sisi demonstrates a propensity to avoid a mistake committed by his predecessors.
Before the downfall of his regime in 2011, autocrat Hosni Mubarak gave the media unprecedented freedoms, approving the establishment of a wide range of private newspapers and television channels.
He also allowed editors and presenters in those newspapers and channels to step into areas considered prohibited for a long time in the past, from corruption in government quarters, to political succession.
However, over the years, the same media turned into campaigning tools against Mubarak, turning the public against him and contributing to his subsequent downfall.
When he came to power in mid-2012, Muslim Brotherhood president Mohamed Morsi did not try to introduce any change to the local media landscape.
He instead depended for backing on television channels owned and operated by his movement and allied Islamist movements, including the ultra-orthodox Salafists.
Nevertheless, those television channels were not enough to shield him against the backlash created by non-allied media which criticised his policies day and night, fanning public sentiments against him.
In a show of desperation against television channels critical of the Islamist president, Morsi’s backers besieged the Media Production City on the western outskirts of Cairo for weeks in late 2012.
Having learned a lesson from the experiences of his predecessors, Sisi came to power with a plan to control the media and consequently the whole narrative and United Media Services is his tool.
The company owns over 90 percent of all television channels in Egypt and most of the nation’s newspapers and news sites.
Control over these television channels and newspapers apparently aims to put the projects Sisi launches, including his major development projects, under sharp focus.
The same control is made to counter the opposition narrative, mainly coming from television channels and news sites operated by the Islamist opposition outside Egypt.
Costly control
Despite his administration’s full control over the media, Sisi has provided more than one proof of his dissatisfaction with the performance of this media.
One time, he scoffed at the presence of too many cooking shows on local television channels.
Another time, he yelled at the journalists and media anchors attending one of the meetings for failing to clarify to the public the financial burdens his government shoulders to sell them electricity and fuel at subsidised rates.
Sisi‘s desperation with his country’s media is one reason why he is keen to use every public opportunity to address the members of the public himself, acting as his own media machine.
The same desperation raises speculation about whether his administration’s control over the same media is paying off and whether this control will continue, especially with the losses media outlets are incurring.
The state-controlled public and private television channels and newspapers have tens of billions of Egyptian pounds in debts, which gives insights into their uncertain future, observers said.
The same uncertain future makes these outlets too burdensome for the Egyptian state to keep controlling, they added.
“I think the government will have to sell some of these media institutions in the coming days to dispose of the financial burdens connected with controlling them,” Amr Badr, a former member of the Committee on Freedoms at the Journalists’ Syndicate, the independent union of the nation’s journalists, told TNA.
“Nevertheless, it will be keen to ensure that these media institutions will go into the hands of people loyal to it, lest they should turn into campaigning tools against it,” he added.
