Published: 10 September 2012
Region: Egypt
The Media Diversity Institute has published its second study on how inclusive and diverse the media content was in the coverage of the Presidential elections in Egypt in May-Jun 2012.
MDI team, led by Dr Rasha Abdulla from the American University in Cairo, has concluded that diversity issues are still ignored in the Egyptian media. Minority groups are still unheard in the mainstream media.
The report published in the press conference in cairo in September the 10th, showed a severe under-representation of all minority groups in society. Females constituted only 6.5% of the overall individuals interviewed for stories during the elections, a very similar percentage to the 6.8% we revealed in the Parliamentary elections report. This basically means that for every 15 males interviewed or featured in newspaper stories, only 1 female was featured.
Other minority voices were almost non-existent in the newspaper coverage. Only 14 people of different ethnic origins such as Bedouins or Nubians were identified within the 20,312 individuals featured in the stories. There were also a total of 37 people identified as persons with disabilities, 23 identified as expatriates, 70 identified as elderly in stories discussing their issues, and 36 children. These figures are indeed alarming, particularly given the actual percentages of these groups of people in the Egyptian society.
Inclusiveness is defined as the inclusion of different groups in terms of race, ethnicity, religion, nationality, age, income, gender, and any other factors which make individuals or groups different from, but equal to, one another.
Since this was the first presidential election after the January 25th revolution in 2011, it was important to document changes, improvements, and challenges in the media’s coverage of the electoral process.
The study is the second in a series of 4 studies that will be produced over the life of a two year MDI programme, ‘Embracing Free Expression, Diversity and Inclusiveness: Rebuilding post-revolution Egyptian media‘, funded by SIDA.
The project also includes training for journalists and NGOs, support for journalism educators, and production of TV entertainment programmes, as well as media monitoring studies. Its objective is to tackle the issues of political, social and cultural exclusion by state and privately own media in Egypt, and encourage the emergence of responsible Egyptian media based on international standards and principles of free expression, diversity, inclusiveness, transparency and public accountability.
The study can be downloaded below in English here:
MDI_Egypt_Media_Monitoring_Report_2_with_Introduction.pdf
For more information please contact Hala Morgan, MDI Programme Director at hala.morgan@media-diversity.org or call (+20) 100 571 6518.
