He also calls the protesters “thugs” in an attempt to justify how the police force dealt violently with them, the use of such emotional words like “thugs” and “hostage” was a part of the state’s strategy to win over the mass population’s sympathy before the protesters could, making it so much easier to crush the uprising. Ironically, the state actually sent real thugs to beat the protesters and harass them. He starts of the call by sobbing while saying: “with all these protests the country is now in ruins”, pathetically using pathos to get people’s sympathy, making it seem that if one protests they’d be ruining the country even more (as if half the country wasn’t under poverty lines).
The anchor then asks him about which groups of “foreigners and Egyptians are there? And to which parties or groups do they belong”; he says: “They all speak English language very well. Everyone in the square only talks English no one talks Arabic. The foreigners seem friendly, they helped us write slogans too” paradoxically; he himself tries to talk English (or say a couple of English words) and twist his tongue in a way to make him seem upper class therefore to many Egyptians educated and trustworthy. In other words he tries to persuade the people by using the sound of educated speakers. This is ethos, except he tries to get the public’s trust when he isn’t trustworthy.
Mehwar TV:
Who can forget the beautiful Shaimaa, who we couldn’t really see for her own “safety” of course. She told us about her “paid trips to the US”, the words “paid” “trips” and “US” in one sentence were the key words to get the negative attention of any average Egyptian. This interview took place on the 9th 2 days before the fall of the regime, where people have been told for 2 weeks everyday that the protesters are foreigners or Egyptians that took training in “other countries” like the “US”, “Qatar”, “Iran” and “Israel” (the four countries that don’t agree on a single thing suddenly all united) to train people like her “on how to topple regimes” these sentences had very negative connotations as the channels made it clear that these countries where conspiring against Egypt by saying “such countries don’t want good for Egypt and it is in their benefit that it stays unstable” therefore again some exaggeration mixed with complete lies as not a single document to prove what Shaimaa said was shown. She insists (by saying it 5 times) that she “was trained alongside the Muslim Brotherhood Group’s Youth ” this was another message by the TV; that the MB which has been an illegal group are the ones in the street, not regular people and this is only a political conflict and not a whole nation calling for their rights. “Blame the foreigners! All the foreigners are conspiring against us, because nothing is wrong.” This was basically the trend in all the state TV interviews.
So the Egyptian government attempted to blame: The Muslim Brotherhood, political opposition parties, Mosaad, The US, Iran, Hamas, Qatar, Aljazeera and everyone else, but themselves and their corruption, brutality and inhumane detentions for causing the first grassroots revolution in the history of the country, no way.
Then suddenly, with a magic wand, Egyptian TV the switched its stand after the 11/02/2011 and suddenly called the protesters “heroes”! This is how they’ve been since the 50s and they’re changing unless the people demand that change, whoever is in power is who they’ll support. Reports on the millions in Tahrir were done after there were only “tens” just hours ago that day!
Let’s not forget, that the media’s still under the Ministry of Information, which is part of the regime. This institution is so full of corruption that even changing their stance doesn’t mean we should trust them. We won’t trust our media until it’s cleaned of the corruption of many of those inside it and till it’s an independent institution not bound by press laws or under any governmental supervision. We’re at a crucial point where we need to question everything, until we live in a democratic, just country with honest media.
Word count: 999
Rationale:
My written task is a blogpost about the Egyptian media’s propaganda during the first 18 days of the revolution. It is an analysis of how the media used language as a propaganda machine in order to manipulate what the people do and not do which relates directly to language and power, as they completely excluded the revolutionaries point of view as well as directly lied most of the time. I chose this topic as it is intriguing and I saw this the most suitable way of writing it in because it also symbolizes how the revolutionary chose to go to uncensored media and not use the “Press/ Newspaper” as it would censor out things. In conclusion I see that my task fulfilled the requirements in a very suitable maner.
All quotes are translations except for the bolded words within the text.