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By Reuters staff
CAIRO - Gamal el Adl’s company is one of the most
popular television producers in the Middle East. Its gritty soap operas,
touching on drug addiction amongst the middle classes, sexual abuse and
life in a women’s prison, have been hits on TV in Egypt and across the
Arab world.
Until, that is, President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi unleashed a new wave of censorship.
In
the past three years, the former general has turned the screws on the
entertainment and news industries. A new regulatory agency is overseeing
output and censoring content. Soap operas, it insists, must contain no
sex scenes, no blasphemy, no politics. Police and other authority
figures should be presented in a positive light.
El Adl says he thought he could manage
by steering clear of the biggest taboos. But when he heard that police
had raided the film set of a rival early this year because it lacked a
necessary permit, he revised his view. He immediately halted work on the
two soaps he was filming, fearing he too would run into trouble for not
having a permit.
He couldn’t operate in this environment, he said. “There was just one entity, one eye, one taste, one vision.”
It is President Sisi’s vision – one of heroism and patriotic virtue. And it is being pursued with innovative techniques.
In
interviews, programme makers, and news media executives described how
the Sisi administration has clamped down with controls that they say are
stricter than those that existed under Hosni Mubarak, who ruled Egypt
with a hard grip until being overthrown in 2011. Many details of the new
methods are reported here for the first time.
They
include the withholding of filming permits and a list of banned topics
for soaps that programme makers must agree to. The government has also
created two WhatsApp groups that instruct news media what to report, and
has placed censors at TV stations to oversee output.
The government is also getting deeper
into the entertainment business itself. Since 2017, a new firm called
United Group for Media Services has taken control of news outlets, TV
production companies and channels - in all, at least 14 so far - giving
it unrivalled influence over the TV schedule. United Group has
enthusiastically enforced government censorship rules.
A
dozen industry and government sources told Reuters that United Group
for Media Services was set up by the state. Two of its four board
members have links to Egyptian General Intelligence, and one of the
company’s units was previously headed by the intelligence chief, Reuters
found.
Actors critical of the government say
they fear arrest. Programme makers say the dramas they make have become
bland like an insipid soup. Prime time talk show hosts who don’t fully
toe the government line are fired or side-lined. One producer said the
authorities have blocked him from working in TV or cinema, without
giving a reason.
Khaled Youssef, a member of the
Egyptian parliament and a prominent film director, said the government
is “interfering in the content of drama” and had pushed out private
production firms to exert control. A Sisi critic, Youssef now lives in
Paris in voluntary exile. “They don’t want people to think,” he said.
Sisi’s clampdown on entertainment and
news comes as his government battles Islamist extremists who have
launched deadly attacks against tourists, churches and on the streets of
Cairo. The president’s hold on the media is typical of many
authoritarian governments, from China to Russia. Still, the clampdown in
Cairo is notable because of its implications outside Egypt. The nation
of 100 million is not only the Arab world’s most populous country, it is
home to its biggest film industry by far.
Censorship
is more oppressive now than under Hosni Mubarak’s autocratic rule,
programme makers say. In the final decade of the Mubarak regime, there
were productions that grappled with police brutality and homosexuality.
Where Mubarak’s censors would approve a soap after sampling just a few
episodes, Sisi’s insist on watching the entire series of 30 shows or
more.
An editor at a leading newspaper told
Reuters that even under Mubarak, publishers only faced intimidation if
articles named intelligence or military officers. Now, he said, the
chief of the General Intelligence Service, Abbas Kamel, and his officers
have firm and direct influence over what the media report. So much, he
said, that journalists have begun calling them “Egypt’s editors in
chief.”
The Egyptian government, intelligence
agency and media regulator didn’t respond to detailed questions for this
article. Reuters’ calls to the United Group for Media Services went
unanswered.
Sisi’s presidency began on a wave of
goodwill in 2014 after he led the military in toppling President
Mohammed Mursi, a Muslim Brotherhood leader who was democratically
elected but deeply unpopular by the time of his removal.
Sisi
exhorted the media to back his government. Announcing plans to dig a
second Suez Canal, a patriotic project on a vast scale, Sisi urged the
media to “help us in our fight” to unify Egypt. “It’s a very big fight,”
he declared. Delivering a speech to honour the country’s police a year
later, he called on the entertainment industry to make dramas and movies
that “give people hope and improve our values and ethics.”
By
2016 Sisi’s relationship with the media was deteriorating. In April of
that year, the president ceded two islands in a strategic part of the
Red Sea to his ally Saudi Arabia, leading to protests. When some
newspapers joined the outcry, security forces raided the Cairo office of
an organization that represents journalists. Two reporters critical of
the government were arrested and charged with spreading false news. It
was the beginning of a wider crackdown.
Then, in 2017, Sisi established the
Supreme Council for Media Regulation to oversee all news and
entertainment. Its drama committee was tasked with monitoring all soap
operas on Egyptian television. The council’s head was picked by the
president.
The committee has taken a keen interest in moral issues.
In
one report, issued this year, it criticised some soaps for their
depiction of characters smoking, swearing and “insulting the Arabic
language” by using English words. In a one-week period during the holy
month of Ramadan, when Egyptian families traditionally come together in
the evening to enjoy their favourite dramas, the committee recorded 948
breaches of its code. One series, “Kingdom of the Gypsies,” notched up
105 violations for vulgar language, violence, sexual innuendo and
“disrespecting” the Arabic language. Reuters couldn’t determine whether
the programme or its creators faced any sanction.
News media are under even greater
scrutiny. Hundreds of news websites and blogs have been blocked in
recent years and a media law passed in 2018 gives the state powers to
block social media accounts and punish journalists for publishing what
it considers to be false news.
The security
agencies created two WhatsApp groups to relay instructions to news
organizations about how to cover events. Reuters reviewed messages in
both groups. One is called “Editors” and run by the General
Intelligence. The second is run by the Ministry of the Interior. Neither
the ministry nor the intelligence agency responded to Reuters’ request
for comment about the WhatsApp groups.
When 20
people were killed in an explosion outside a Cairo cancer hospital in
April this year, an intelligence official wrote: “I don't want expansion
of the coverage of the cancer centre incident...limited coverage.”
Egyptian media obliged and reporting was limited.
In
May, a blast near Cairo’s Grand Egyptian Museum injured at least 12
South African tourists. The WhatsApp instruction was: “Please wait for
the Ministry of Interior statement and don’t add anything to it.”
Reuters reviewed the reports carried by four news outlets and found that
they were almost identical.
WhatsApp orders
also flowed in September, when a former actor called for protests
against Sisi in a series of YouTube videos. Mohamed Ali, who lives in
Spain, accused Sisi and Egypt’s military of corruption, claims that Sisi
dismissed as “lies and slander.”
“Please don’t
publish news reports about Mohammed Ali,” said one WhatsApp message.
Obediently, media reviewed by Reuters didn’t cover the videos, which
went viral on social media, until Sisi mentioned them in a speech two
weeks later. Contacted by Reuters, Ali declined to comment.
For staff at TV network DMC, also controlled by
United Group for Media Services, the state is intrusive. Before the
station can broadcast its news, sports and entertainment programmes, its
editors need a green light from the plain-clothed intelligence officers
who are a constant presence in DMC’s studios, one current and one
former employee told Reuters.
The former
employee said the network was effectively “run by intelligence officers”
who attended executive meetings. Some senior appointments were made by
Kamel, chief of the General Intelligence Service, who also set some
salaries. A producer who still works at DMC said an intelligence officer
sometimes sat in the control room to see what was going on at the
channel. Reuters couldn’t reach company management for comment and
Kamel, contacted via the Egyptian authorities, didn’t respond.
“The
damage that has been done to the Egyptian media is unbelievable,
unprecedented," said Hisham Kassem, a former newspaper publisher and
political activist. “It’s easily the worst media disaster in the history
of Egypt. They don’t care about quality – if you disagree, they’ll sack
you."
Central to the state’s tightening grip
on Egypt’s entertainment industry is a company called United Group for
Media Services. Established in 2017, the firm has taken over at least
six newspapers and news websites, four TV networks encompassing 14
channels, four radio stations and several theatres and cinemas. Eight
people in the media industry who have done business with United Group
for Media Services said the company was set up by the state. As it has
expanded, United Group has come to dominate the TV schedules and
determine which programmes make it to air. It has strictly enforced
government censorship.
Reuters reviewed
documents filed by United Group for Media Services with the authorities
since its registration. These documents didn’t disclose the ownership of
the company, but they did identify its four board members.
Two
intelligence sources told Reuters that two members of the board had
links to the intelligence service. One of them, Yaser Ahmed Saber Ahmed
Seliem, was previously an intelligence officer. Another document showed
that intelligence chief Kamel himself previously sat on the board of a
TV firm called D-Media that is now part of United Group. Seliem and
Kamel, contacted via the Egyptian authorities, didn’t respond to a
request for comment.
For programme makers like
el Adl, the dominance of one big buyer, United Group for Media Services,
and the emergence of a strict new regulator made creating and selling
dramas increasingly difficult. At the end of last year he waited in vain
for his usual filming permit. With time running short, he decided to
start work on two soaps, assuming the permit would arrive soon and, if
his scripts avoided the taboos of sex and politics, he wouldn’t get into
trouble.
“I thought I’d make the programmes
anyway and if the local channels didn’t buy them then I could sell them
outside Egypt,” he explained. But three episodes into filming, police
raided the set of a now defunct rival production company. Two police
cars pulled up at the shoot and told the crew to stop filming because
they didn’t have a license, three crew members and a security source
said. The crew complied. El Adl decided to stop filming too in order to
stay out of trouble.
El Adl and some other
programme makers say that, at first, they supported the state’s
intervention in the TV market on economic grounds. Many of Egypt’s
television channels were unprofitable, partly because they were trying
to outbid one another for content. The cost of the soaps made by el Adl
and others were rising and actors’ wages were spiralling. El Adl was
among those calling for price regulation, he said. The state’s entry
into the business has put a lid on wages but the intervention has gone
too far. The authorities are now “the ones who decide whether you work
or not.”
He is hopeful that 2020 will be a
better year. He expects to pick up filming his two soaps, provided he
stays within the new budget limits and works within the new system. “We
figured out that the authorities were making a framework for people to
follow,” he said.
Another director of movies
and soaps, who declined to be identified, said he believes Sisi is
trying “to control the narrative.” The director said he’d had to sign a
document pledging not to include any scenes in his dramas that
“insulted” the police. He was told that if there was a shootout,
officers mustn’t be seen to die because this would be bad for the
force’s morale. The director fell into line.
The
president’s efforts risk backfiring, however, this director said.
Viewers are increasingly turning to channels operated by Egyptians
outside the country, offering shows with alternative views or less
censorship, such as Mekameleen and al-Sharq, both based in Turkey. The
channels didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Each year, during the holy month of
Ramadan, millions of Egyptian families gather in the evening to watch
their favourite soaps. But this year there was a difference.
Government
officials held a meeting with a group of trusted writers and directors,
according to two sources who were briefed on the conversation that took
place. The officials set out the themes and ideas they wanted to see in
TV soaps, and those they didn’t. They told the assembled writers and
directors that dramas shouldn’t show police officers or members of the
security services in a negative light, cheating on their wives, for
instance.
Many Egyptians complain that Sisi is
depriving them even of the right to have fun. Before the president came
to power, the Ramadan audience could choose from 40 or more dramas
exploring social issues, family relationships, mysteries and crime. The
soaps were a cherished part of the holy month, when millions of
Egyptians would spend the evenings glued to their television sets.
But during this year’s Ramadan, which
fell in May, there were only 25 soaps, 15 of them made by a firm called
Synergy, which is part of the United Group for Media Services. Many of
the shows showed police officers heroically fighting “evil forces” – a
term Sisi uses to describe opposition figures and Islamist militants.
One, called Kalabsh, told the story of a special forces officer who fights terrorists and corruption.
Shows
like this, says award-winning actor Amr Waked, underscore how Egypt’s
entertainment industry is withering. Waked reached a global audience
when he appeared alongside George Clooney in Syriana, a 2005 thriller.
“It’s as if the soaps are written by a police officer,” Waked said.
Waked
was last in an Egyptian soap in 2017, and he now lives in self-imposed
exile in Spain. In 2018, a military court sentenced him in absentia to
eight years in prison for spreading false news and insulting state
institutions. Waked believes he was targeted because of his
pro-democracy tweets. The Egyptian government didn’t respond to a
request for comment about Waked’s case.
“Throughout my entire life, I have never seen Egypt worse than this,” Waked said.
Sisi’s Script
By Reuters staff
Photo editing: Simon Newman
Design: Catherine Tai
Edited by Janet McBride
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