The Egypt Report

Sometimes it’s interesting to see the way in which the different papers are covering events. To get a broad view I generally look at Al-Tahrir, an independent liberal paper launched just this past July, Al-Masry Al-Youm a more mainstream “moderate” independent paper, and Al-Ahram, the state newspaper. Here are the papers from this morning, presented from left to right in terms of their political leaning, below:

Above, Tahrir starts by asking “Will the general leave in the footsteps of Mubarak” The main image of demonstrators hiding behind a piece of wall holding rocks, bears the headline “Security forces storm the square and attack the sit-in’ers”

Above, Al-Masry goes with “Tahrir conquers Qaba Bridge,” for its headline with the more descriptive subheading reading “Bloody clashes between the army and police and the demonstrators…and the resignation of the minister of culture in protestation of the events.” Of note, the box just above the picture points out that “Egypt is hostage to these,” and then lists the following groups: “The army: Actors are behind the events and elections will be as scheduled;” “Tahrir: We won’t leave the square until the military council steps down;” “The Interior: We are committed to restraint and we didn’t fire one bullet;” “Presidential candidates: What happened was inevitable and there is no escape from the timetable;” “The parties: A conspiracy to postpone the elections, security is deliberately absent.”

Finally, the state-run Ahram headlines with “Confronations escalate between the security forces and the demonstrators in the square” with the subheading reading “forces from the the army and the police abandon Tahrir…and the sit-in’ers return despite their tents being burned;” “Meeting between the military council and the government…and the minister of culture resigns in protest”

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As always, Tahrir makes it as painfully obvious as possible that these are civilians being attacked by fully armed government forces, where by the time you make it over to Ahram, you find a more “disinterested” framing that somehow suggests a battle between two possibly equal parties. It should be noted that Al-Ahram has the widest circulation of any paper in the country.