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Speaking about Religion and media censorship. Al Masry Al Youm has officially apologized  for the daring cover of Assyasy Magazine "The Politician magazine" latest issue. Here is the daring cover which is the product of famous revolutionary cartoonist Ahmed Nady. The controversial cover by Ahmed Nady The cover shows those who signed Al Azhar document to denounce violence completely naked and in their hands wine glasses and in the back Mohamed Morsi tells a strong and enormous CSF officer to act as he wants as there is no more political cover for the protesters

Many activists criticized the political activists and parties participated in the document accusing them of dumping the protesters alone facing the police violence. This is the first time the Sheikh of Al Azhar and the Church representative are  being shown naked like that. According to Ahmed Nady , the cartoonist he got a tip that Al Masry Al Youm administration has decided to pull the issue from the market after it got an objection from the Church on how a church man would appear like that in a cartoon on cover of a magazine.

it seems that administration of Al Masry Al Youm does not want to break any taboos anymore

Turkey’s directorate of telecommunications, whose Web site was taken down on Thursday as part of a protest against what Anonymous says is government censorship of the Internet

Turkey, whose ruling AK Party won a national election on Sunday, plans to introduce a new Internet filtering system in August, under which users will have to sign up for one of four filters: domestic, family, children and standard

Journalist Khaled El Balshy — a keen defender of freedom of expression and a democracy advocate, deputy head of the Egyptian Press Syndicate and head of the syndicate’s Freedom Committee — has been vigorously campaigning for the release of jailed journalists in Egypt. This week Balshy himself faced prosecution and risked being imprisoned on charges of “inciting protests, insulting the police and inciting to overthrow the regime.”

On April 6 the Interior Ministry, which had filed the legal complaint against him, was forced to withdraw the lawsuit following an outcry from fellow journalists, free speech advocates and rights organizations

Minutes after hearing of the warrant for his arrest, he boldly declared in a Facebook post: “If they want to arrest me, I’m in my office. I’m not better than those who are imprisoned.”

After days of on-location observing, I have come to the conclusion that Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s biggest loss is the erosion of the Justice and Development Party (AKP)’s intellectual support base. This loss curtails Erdogan’s ability to control Turkish public opinion significantly because the average Turk has lost his trust of the mainstream media, and the internal rifts within pro-AKP media establishment are taking their toll.

Either run by friends of the AKP or manipulated through different means ranging from incentives to outright crude pressure, media outlets that are functioning today are only semi-independent when it comes to political news.

when dissenting opinions are continuously punished in courts as well as through other means (social media attacks, threats, loss of prestige or maybe employment), voicing any sort of criticism becomes an act of bravery The system has perfected itself so much so that corruption monitoring and transparency in government spending remain unspeakable.

maintenance of the pre-revolutionary media landscape: No new TV station has been allowed. Just as no daily newspaper has emerged. New titles are edited by political parties and appear as weeklies, most of which incorporate the standard of the tabloid press. After a 9-days hunger strike by Radio Kalima’s manager, Omar Mistiri, twelve regional radios out of 74 candidates were finally selected in late June by the National Authority for Information and Communication Reform (INRIC), a temporary media advisory board. Now, the selected radios are waiting for the governmental permission. At the institutional level, the disappearance of the Communication Ministry does not lead, right now, to more media autonomy. Pre-revolutionary media managers are mainly the same: CEOs, Editors and Chairmen of Board moved from flattery of the ousted president and his system to a doubtful celebration of the “revolution”. In the state-owned media, the turnover of managers is conducted without any transparency just like under the dictatorship. Changes look more like a consequence of power balance between the different clans in the current government than a nascent process towards a democratic media system.

field reporting, which was longtime banned from or depreciated in the official media

The legal status of old private media, especially those belonging to the former president family, is still unclear. Some of them are under jurisdictional managers, but INRIC excluded them for the moment from any ethical obligations. Hannibal TV, owned by a relative to Leila Trabelsi, was involved in many ethical infringements to the Ethical Code like slandering or fake news, before and particularly after the revolution. Larbi Nasra, the Hanibal TV owner, seems to play a political role by receiving political leaders and airing many reports about his own charitable actions. Fethi Houidi, Information Minister under Ben Ali, is still Nessma TV’s CEO. Moez Sinaoui, former Nessma PR man, was nominated as the Interim Prime Minister’s spokesman

The picture above advertises a popular Turkish soap opera – Harim Soltan (the Sultan's harem).  But there is also a satirical version (below) in which the Sultan's face has been replaced with that of Algeria's president, Abdelaziz Bouteflika. Besides "Sultan" Bouteflika himself, it shows a few members of the president's "harem", including his brother Said, prime minister Abdelmalek Sellal and Amar Saidani, secretary general of Algeria's ruling party, the FLN ...

On October 4 last year, Algerian activist Zoulikha Belarbi posted the Photoshopped picture on Facebook with a comment saying: "I don't know when the Bouteflika soap opera will end and he will wake up from his false dream which has become a nightmare threatening the future of Algeria and her people." On October 20, police raided her family home in Tlemcen, arrested her and seized her computer, mobile phone and SIM card. She was held for 24 hours before being released under judicial supervision. "I was treated like a terrorist," she said later. Her case finally came to court last weekend, and she was fined 100,000 dinars ($905) for "undermining the president of the republic". 

In October 2016, lawyer Samir Sabri filed a lawsuit before the Second Circuit of the Administrative Judiciary Court, demanding that Shiite media outlets and websites be shut down in Egypt

“It is unacceptable and unreasonable to have a media platform in Egypt promoting Shiite ideology. Egypt is an Islamic state and the main source of legislation is Sharia under the constitution, which recognizes Christianity and Judaism to be monotheistic. El-Nafis is one of the news websites inciting against Saudi Arabia, Al-Azhar and the Ministry of Awqaf, where Ahmad Rasem al-Nafis attacks in his articles the Sunnis and Saudi Arabia and calls for professing the Shiite faith.”

“The Salafist leaders’ Wahhabism was behind the dissemination of extremism in Syria and Yemen. Shiite channels and websites in Egypt do not advocate extremism or renounce any ideology or doctrine. They call for dealing with the Shiites as Muslims at a time when Salafist movements claim that Shiites are non-Muslims.”

"The decision to ban (the paper) was made on the basis of article 29 of the press code" that protects the monarch, the senior communication ministry official said on Saturday.

the first time that a foreign publication was banned for the stated reasons since the moderate Islamist Justice and Development Party (PJD) came to power in Morocco in January,

Bouabene has staunchly defended his decision to host Moussi on Wataniya 1, stating that he was fired because of “government interference,” and that public television does not have the right to exclude anyone’s opinions – even if those opinions come from members of the RCD party

Bouabene himself referred to his dismissal as an “error” in an interview with TAP yesterday.  He condemned the government’s action and said that it represented “a return to old methods.”

current status of various constitutional controversies, such as the status of women, the criminalization of blasphemy, the creation of a government-appointed media regulatory committee, and the system for electing the president

multi-party support will be necessary to pass these articles

it remains disputed whether the president will be elected by the people or by the parliament

When not standing up to the regime, Okasha was busy being part of it: In 2010, he was elected MP of a constituency in his native Daqahlia on a National Democratic Party ticket.

Okasha’s Al-Faraeen appearances are the stuff of legend and have transformed him into a cult figure. There is something a bit unreal about his TV persona — the animated delivery, the meandering and sometimes bizarre anecdotes, the sudden explosions of rage. A catalog of popular “Okasha-isms” now exists, such as his warnings about Masonic plots on “13/13/13” and his challenge to Mohamed ElBaradei to prove his qualifications for the presidency by describing how ducks are force-fed in the Egyptian countryside.

While his critics dismiss him as a buffoon and enemy of the revolution, Okasha has proved himself to be an astute broadcaster with mass appeal.

they do not kill us to restore their state; they kill us because killing and jailing are normal behaviours in their state

It wasn’t only the police of their state who let us down; did the deans of their colleges not share in running over our children? Were we not let down by the bakeries and the gas depots of their state? By the ferries and ports of their state? Were we not let down by its wheel of production that lavishes millions on the director and the consultant while at a standstill but cannot spare a crumb for the worker when turning? Were we not let down by its economy that closes down the textiles factories while the cotton is piled high in the farmers home but keeps the fertilizer plant pouring poison into our water? Were we not let down by its football clubs that let security brutalize the fans if they cheer too noisily but intervenes to shield players when they raise arms? We are let down by all its institutions and every leader in it and tomorrow we will be let down by its parliament and its president.

That you should bury your son rather than he bury you? Is there a worse injustice? Is there a worse imbalance? We kid ourselves and pretend it’s an exceptional event and that it is possible to reform that state, but all the evidence shows that it is a normal event and there is no hope except in the fall of that state.

Ben Ali’s regime deployed the surveillance gear to demonstrate its power, Wagner says. Changing e-mails into nonsense, rather than luring dissidents into ambushes, created a pervasive unease, in which even spam could be perceived as the work of Ammar 404, he says.

“It leaves citizens in a persistent state of uncertainty about the security and integrity of their communications,” he says. Western suppliers used the country as a testing ground. Moez Chakchouk, the post-revolution head of the Tunisian Internet Agency, says he’s discovered that the monitoring industry gave discounts to the government-controlled agency, known by its French acronym ATI, to gain access. In interviews following Ben Ali’s ouster after 23 years in power, technicians, activists, executives and government officials described how they grappled with, and in some cases helped build, the repressive Wonderland.

Saadaoui, who has a master’s degree in computer science from Michigan State University, says he helped procure and set up the system that captured and changed e-mails. It uses a technique called deep-packet inspection, which peers into the content of communications and sends suspect e-mails to the Interior Ministry. During an hour-long interview in his office at the National Telecommunications Agency, he describes a monitoring room with metal bars on the windows and 20 desks, where staffers review the e-mails in an array of languages. “They were able to read why it was blocked and decided whether it should be re-routed to the network or deleted,” he says. “Or changed.”

Katatni confirmed that the FJP appreciates the role of the press and the media as a watchdog to state and government institutions, while keeping in mind the best interests of Egypt and Egyptians who offered huge sacrifices in order to attain their freedom.   He pointed out that rumours circulated by some media outlets during the last few days alleging that the party will close down papers or restrict publications are false. "Such actions are not reflective of the FJP's policies which acknowledge the freedom of press in particular, and basic freedom in all its forms", he stated

a new bill that would ban blasphemy in Tunisia. The draft bill, proposed to the Constituent Assembly on Wednesday by Tunisia’s ruling moderate Islamist party Ennahdha, would criminalize “insults, profanity, derision, and representation of Allah and Mohammed.”

” If passed, the draft law would punish such violations of “sacred values” with prison terms of up to two years and fines of up to 2,000 dinars (U.S. $1,236) through an additional article to the Tunisian Penal Code.

Mrad justified the bill’s proposal by explaining that the protection of religious symbols does not inherently represent an attack on freedom of expression. “In all societies, you will always find limits and things that you cannot say,” he said, adding, “We [Ennahdha] are committed to granting freedom of expression, but this law is just to set limits for this freedom.”

Over the 30 years leading up to the 2011 popular uprising, state media took its cue from Hosni Mubarak's gatekeeper, the diminutive but terrifying Safwat el-Sherif, former minister of information. Post January 25, state media and papers backed the Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF), the country's ruling military council. Last week, in a nod to the democratic process, it was the turn of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB). Egypt's upper house of parliament, the Shura Council, announced the appointments of the new editors, setting off a storm of angry protest among journalists, led by the Journalists' Syndicate, who insisted that the Islamist-dominated council had essentially rigged the selection process and assigned their own men to do its bidding.

Gamal Fahmy, secretary general of the Journalists' Syndicate, also told Egypt Independent that he thought the majority of the new editors were weak, professionally speaking, and certainly not qualified to lead the kind of large staffs involved in these papers. Professional competence is an especially sore point; Yasser Rizk, the former editor of Al-Akhbar is generally acknowledged to have worked wonders with the ailing publication. However, he has not been supportive of the Islamists and was replaced during the shuffle.

The appointments were followed by a rash of blank editorial pages in national newspapers, a favored means of protest. One of the most prominent protesters was Gamal Fahmy, whose column in in Al-Tahrir newspaper simply read: "This space is blank to protest the hereditary system that did not fall with the ousting of Mubarak and his son. It seems that the Muslim Brotherhood is trying to revive it after it was blinded by arrogance. This protest is against their control of the public owned media."

The president of the association of Egyptian judges said Thursday that they were abandoning their neutrality toward the coming presidential runoff in an effort to guard against an Islamist monopoly of power.

if the group’s members had known Islamists would win most of the seats in Parliament after elections that ended in January, they would not have supervised the voting

the effect of Judge Zend’s appearance was a public pitch for the presidential campaign of Ahmed Shafik, the last prime minister under Mr. Mubarak, who is now squaring off against the Brotherhood’s nominee, Mohamed Morsi

Members of the Ennahdha party, the dominant group in the coalition government, were among those calling for renewed protests. Odalisque 2.0 by Héla Ammar, was part of the exhibition The movement's leader, Rachid Ghannouchi, said in a statement on Friday that he condemned all violence against individuals or property. Yet he also restated his opposition to "attacks on the beliefs of Tunisians" and of the need to protect "sacred symbols".

Rachid Ghannouchi, said in a statement on Friday that he condemned all violence against individuals or property. Yet he also restated his opposition to "attacks on the beliefs of Tunisians" and of the need to protect "sacred symbols".

The concept of national or sacred values is just a pretext to muzzle artists and creativity. These concepts can be interpreted in many different ways, especially the most restrictive, which will ultimately result in Tunisia having official art and dissident art

We all grew up with the standard formula: journalism plays a crucial role in making western democracies work by providing citizens with the information that enables them to make informed judgments about urgent issues of general interest. Therefore, the fundamental question for those who study the western new media is: Do they in fact do what they are supposed, and claim, to do?

The crucial western capitalist context in which the news media operate in Dutch society and which they fundamentally reflect, is the same as that of British and American societies. Economic and foreign policies in the three countries are much more alike than different. The Netherlands too avowedly promotes ‘free trade’ and ‘the spread of democracy’ to less fortunate countries. In the Netherlands too, neoliberal thinking dominates politics. Journalism in the three countries is also very much alike. The ruling professional ideology is ‘objectivity.’ The media are mostly privately-owned and depend on advertising revenue. In the name of ‘freedom of the press’, the government exercises restraint, taking the position that, as much as possible, the market should decide which publications live and die. But journalists and politicians are caught in a symbiotic relationship and the PR industry exerts a lot of covert influence on journalism. It was American journalist Ben Bagdikian, who claimed in his popular The Media Monopoly , now in its sixth edition, that continuing concentration in the American media industry amounts to a de facto news monopoly. As a result, American news reflects the interests of political and economic elites. Just like in the Netherlands, where media markets are dominated by a few big corporations.

The official version of Dutch media history maintains that the partisan journalism which was prevalent until the 1970s fell far short, because it was intimately tied to political parties. In the 1970s, journalism professionalized and since then it has done more or less what it is supposed to do. But this is a very partial account. Indeed, the partisan media hardly practiced journalism as we like to see it done: acting as the watchdog of democracy. But when journalism shrugged off its political ties, the market filled the vacuum, and far from the market functioning as an ‘engine of freedom,’ to use British scholar James Curran’s words - the market in reality amounted to yet another ‘system of control,’ to cite Curran once again. The commercial media’s primary task is not to provide the population with relevant, independently-gathered information. Their primary task is to deliver readers, viewers and listeners to advertisers. As a consequence, the media in the Netherlands are owned by rich corporations and persons who have a stake in maintaining friendly ties with other corporations and also the government, for access to powerful political sources needs to be kept at all costs. No wonder that the journalistic product reflects the interests of elites. The media are the elite, also in the Netherlands, its reputation of a progressive country regarding ‘cultural’ issues like abortion and the death penalty notwithstanding. Dutch journalism thus remains far from independent, at least, if we take Jurgen Habermas’ definition seriously, whereby a public sphere ‘can only approach autonomy if it is independent from both the state and commercial interests’.