The Exclusionary Media And The Muslim
Brotherhood's Popularity
25 December 2012
By Dr. Hamad Al-Majid
Influential liberals in the Egyptian media have given
President Mursi and the Islamist trend a gift on a
silver platter. Unbalanced media coverage, performed
by the liberal elite's politicians, writers and
intellectuals across their huge and vocal media
platform, has prompted the crowds of Egyptians who
were previously undecided to finally point the
direction of their compass towards supporting
President Mursi and his controversial decrees. This
was shown clearly in the mass demonstration at Cairo
University Square last Saturday, which was organized
by various Islamist movements, where banners were
raised against the biased stars of the Egyptian media.
Furthermore, the liberal media's fierce antagonism
towards political Islamists such as the Brotherhood
has also released the Salafi genie from its bottle.
Previously, the Salafis did not move a muscle in
politics and had no interest in it, but recently they
have acted politically with great fervor and declared
their strong alignment with the Muslim Brotherhood.
This is remarkable given that anyone familiar with
relations between the two trends would be well aware
of the systematic "friction" between them in the past.
No one imagined there would now be such intimacy
between these two movements, yet the liberal media,
fiercely biased in its approach, has contributed to
this phenomenon.
The fatal error that a number of Egyptian satellite
channels and newspapers have committed is that they
expressed the sentiments of their owners and mentors
rather than those of the Egyptian street. However, it
must be said that in light of President Mursi's recent
sweeping constitutional decrees, these media outlets
dealt with the subject intelligently and calmly. They
deliberately avoided adopting a strong bias in their
choice of topics and guests, and thus they drew the
attention of new segments of the Egyptian people who
were previously undecided, or at least managed to keep
them neutral instead of pushing them to favor the
Brotherhood.
Many of those in the television and print media
imagined that their mere control was enough to
propagandize their agenda, market change and brainwash
their audience, as long as their voice was loud and
audible, but this is not accurate. Media dominance to
the extent of severe exclusion can backfire
completely, like a harsh, exclusionary ruler who
thinks that his control, authority and the exclusion
of his opponents will strengthen his position against
them, whereas the truth is the opposite. The Mubarak
regime, with its severe policy of exclusion, its
manipulation of parliamentary elections and the
imprisonment of its Brotherhood opponents, undoubtedly
contributed to boosting the Brotherhood's popularity.
This popularity no doubt contributed among other
reasons to Mursi coming to power after the ouster of
the Mubarak regime, whereupon he has been nothing but
an enemy and a source of sorrow for them [the remnants
of the former regime]. This is exactly what the
liberal media machine is doing in Egypt…It is true
that it has no whip in its hand, but its oppression
has been generated by its exclusion, its lies, its
tendency to amplifying the small and downplay the
large, its denial of rival achievements, and its
curses and insults. This behavior automatically
instills sympathy for the Brotherhood among the target
audience.
Dr. Hamad Al-Majid is a journalist and former member
of the official Saudi National Organization for Human
Rights. Al-Majid is a graduate of Imam Muhammad Bin
Saud Islamic University in Riyadh and holds an M.A.
from California and a Doctorate from the University of
Hull in the United Kingdom.
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EsinIslam.Com
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