Egypt forms committees to 'monitor' and 'analyse' media coverage of elections

Saturday 01-08-2015 11:03 PM
Egypt forms committees to 'monitor' and 'analyse' media coverage of elections

Officials count ballots after polls closed in Cairo, January 15, 2014. REUTERS/Mohamed Abd El Ghany

By

CAIRO, Aug 1 (Aswat Masriya) - Egypt's Supreme Electoral Committee (SEC) formed three committees tasked with monitoring media services' coverage of the delayed parliamentary elections, the state agency MENA reported on Saturday. 

This comes shortly after President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi issued two laws to organise the upcoming elections, which were due earlier this year but were delayed after a top court deemed articles in the legislation organising them to be unconstitutional. 

The committees will view daily coverage of the elections, "monitor" and "analyse" it, in accordance with professional standards and "determine" violations. 

If a "violation is proven," SEC, which is managing the entire election process, may take several courses of action, MENA said. 

The media service may publish an apology and a pledge to never commit another violation in the future, giving the correction the same coverage time and space as the first story. 

A media service found in violation may be obligated to issue a written criticism of its own editorial policy on the story in question.  

Finally, the committee can decide to prevent a media service from running any coverage in any form on the election for a period of time, decided by SEC. 

The elections were scheduled to take place over two phases, in late March and late April.

However, they were postponed when the the Supreme Constitutional Court decided against the constitutionality of two of the three legislations governing the poll, in decisions made in early March.

A new date for elections has yet to be set.

facebook comments