ISSN: 2051-0861 Publication details, including guidelines for submissions: https://journals.le.ac.uk/ojs1/index.php/nmes Egypt’s Military Coup of 2013: An Analysis of the Private Press in 112 Days Author(s): Maher Hamoud To cite this article: Hamoud, Maher (2019) “Egypt‟s Military Coup of 2013: An Analysis of the Private Press in 112 Days”, New Middle Eastern Studies 9 (2), pp. 133-148. Online Publication Date: 30 August 2019 Disclaimer and Copyright The NMES editors make every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information contained in the journal. However, the Editors and the University of Leicester make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness or suitability for any purpose of the content and disclaim all such representations and warranties whether express or implied to the maximum extent permitted by law. Any views expressed in this publication are the views of the authors and not the views of the Editors or the University of Leicester. 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The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material. New Middle Eastern Studies, 9 (2) Egypt’s Military Coup of 2013: An Analysis of the Private Press in 112 Days Maher Hamoud* Abstract In July 2013, a widely celebrated military coup took place in Egypt – only two and a half years after the 2011 Revolution. This article investigates the hegemonic power of the private press owned by Egypt‟s business elite during the coup period. In the context of this research objective, this study answers the question of “how did Egypt‟s private press provide popular support to the 2013 military coup?” through following a critical approach and conducting framing analysis of news headlines in a period of 112 days. This article examines the popular privately-owned newspapers al-Masry al-Youm and al-Watan as the main case studies. Findings show that Egypt‟s business elite engaged in significant news framing in support of the 2013 military coup - for the purpose of maintaining their hegemonic position in the country. They particularly used the frame of “fear” (of the Muslim Brotherhood, potential violence and political chaos) and the frame of “promotion” by portraying the military as a saviour. Keywords: Egypt; 2011 Revolution; 2013 Military Coup; Business Elite; Tamarod; Muslim Brotherhood Introduction We saw millions of people pouring out onto the streets to demand the fall of a regime in 2011, and we witnessed this seemingly strong regime quickly submitting to the people‟s demands only to immediately re-assemble and overthrow an elected government via a popularly supported military coup in 2013. How did all this happen? One article is never enough to go through a complex discourse of reasons answering this question or drawing a full map of mechanisms explaining how the ruling elites outfoxed the masses through persuading them to support the opposite of what the same masses sacrificed for two and a half years earlier. However, highlighting the role of the business elite‟s private press as a tool of the political elite during the military coup period in 2013 can help us understand what was happening in Egypt at that moment in contemporary history and how exactly the public chose to support a coup. Today‟s Egypt has a top-down enforced neoliberal model as many evident realities show. This model created notable social injustices and constituted a key reason for the people to protest against the ruling elites in 2011. However, the 2011 uprising was not born at that moment in history nor did it end with the fall of Mubarak (Abdelrahman 2015). Even though *Maher Hamoud; Department of Conflict and Development Studies, Ghent University, Universiteitsstraat 8, Ghent 9000, Belgium. Email: [email protected]. 133 New Middle Eastern Studies, 9 (2) President Mubarak was removed from office, his regime and legacy remained intact. As Abdelrahman points out, after the initial euphoria and laudatory comments, the supposedly victorious masses were soon relegated to the back seat while established political actors (i.e. the military, Muslim Brotherhood and regional powers) returned to centre stage. The continuing struggle of millions of Egyptians receive cursory attention and only in so far as they are seen to have been subdued and defeated by counter-revolutionary forces (Abdelrahman 2015: 3-4). In this context, I believe that mass media – especially the private one – overlooks the demands of the masses and sustains Egypt‟s authoritarian regime. As the media is still powerful and controlled by the business elite, the masses will keep receiving the same cursory attention. The media holds an important role in conveying political and economic discourses to the public across the whole world. Egypt‟s private media – and those who own it – are in no different position. Journalists everywhere have developed countless ways to frame the news. The most commonly used themes include emphasizing a conflict, an emotional aspect of a story, and grim economic consequences. These frames can promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, or moral evaluation (Entman 1993) and thus influence debates and structure political outcomes. Throughout this article, I argue that news production is heavily influenced by the political and business interests of private newspapers‟ owners (Ratta et al. 2015). Nevertheless, regardless of this influence of news coverage on the public, we still have to examine the issue case by case to learn about how this influence prevails within certain news agendas. Each case has the potential to teach us how decision- makers – including members of the business elite in Egypt – formulate their responses to both the news agendas they control and the public they target (Benson 2004). In their book entitled “Arab Media Moguls”, Naomi Sakr et al. (2015) perceive the Middle East as a fertile ground for media moguldom, where a general business tycoon – coming from the business elite with associations to the political one – invests in the private media. This phenomenon is particularly applicable to the Egyptian case. Autocratic rulers impose media regulations and censorship, not to prevent media monopolies but to curb political opposition and foster a submissive public. Authoritarian power-holders could live with the rise of media tycoons, and media tycoons could co-exist with them (Cook 2006). Ownership concentration has spurred the downswing of pluralism in Egyptian media. For example, the prominent outspoken journalist Ibrahim Eissa, who founded the al-Tahrir TV right after the fall of Mubarak, later sold it to Suleiman Amer, a businessman closely connected to Mubarak‟s elite (Hafez 2015). In the case of Egyptian and Arab media tycoons, profit-seeking cannot be an overriding expectation because distortions in the advertising market and restrictions on editorial content severely undermine the commercial potential of media operations. Controlling a network of media is an effective way to demonstrate loyalty and thus carry favours with the rulers of a country (Skovgaard-Petersen 2015: 273), which is the main goal of the investment. In Mubarak‟s era, all the major media tycoons tended to be close to the regime. However, being close does not necessarily mean that they approved of the regime or that they actively sought its patronage. Rather, it was often an inevitable consequence of the economic importance and interests of the business groups they were heading (Guaaybess 2015). In this context, our 134 New Middle Eastern Studies, 9 (2) cases of al-Masry al-Youm and al-Watan newspapers provide useful samples to analyse the link between politics, business and media in Egypt. If we take a look at these two most-circulated private newspapers in Egypt (commonly estimated to sell about 150,000 daily copies each, however no reliable sources are available for entirely accurate data), we can see that they dominate access to high-profile official sources and information. We can also observe the close connections between the newspapers‟ editors, investors, and the government. For example, al-Masry al-Youm was founded by Salah Diab, who earlier was the founder and main shareholder of Bico that dominates agricultural trade in Egypt. He also has had very strong relations with Israeli companies since the Camp David Accord was signed in 1978. Al-Watan stands as another example, which was founded and board-chaired by Mohamed al-Amin who‟s a top Mubarak supporter and a business tycoon with a diverse investments portfolio. Al-Amin interestingly hired Magdy al- Gallad as al-Watan‟s editor-in-chief. Al-Gallad, known for being highly politically connected, is actually a former editor-in-chief of al-Masry al-Youm, which as we just mentioned is owned by Diab. The Egyptian private media market is clearly dominated by the business elite, which largely owns its news outlets and controls them. This control is sustained through being direct managers and/or by delegating highly connected editors to serve the investors‟ interests.