May 21, 2012 / Modified may 21, 2012 3:45 p.m.

New Egyptian Media Landscape Takes Shape

Press in Egypt gaining freedoms, adapting amid creation of new government

As a new government continues to evolve in Egypt, with presidential elections held later this week, the press there is also undergoing changes.

An example is one newspaper founded after the revolution during the Arab Spring and the toppling of the Hosni Mubarak regime.

The Egypt Independent got its start in November 2011. It has been dealing with censorship threats and an Arizonan is traveling to Cairo this summer to work at the paper.

Britain Eakin is a graduate student at the University of Arizona, studying journalism and Middle Eastern studies. She'll work at the Egypt Independent for two months, starting this week.

Eakin says she'll be covering what happens after the Egyptian presidential election, and plans to focus on how the elections impact relations between Israel and Palestine.

In addition to the government changes, there have been changes for Egyptian media since Mubarak's rule ended, Eakin says, including an expansion of press freedoms.

"Having said that, there's still a lot of crackdowns--journalists are not necessarily free to criticize SCAF, which is the current military leadership," Eakin says. SCAF is the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, and has been in control of the country since Mubarak left office.

The country is working on its first freedom of information law, Eakin says. In the U.S., such laws allow the public access to government documents at the federal and local levels, and are important to American journalists and government oversight organizations.

"I think journalists feel for the first time more empowered to be more critical and report on topics that were previously off limits for them," Eakin says.

There may be misconceptions in America, Eakin says, about what Islamist party victories mean in Middle Eastern countries, which are still undergoing political changes.

"It's important to remember that the revolution is ongoing, it's not over just because they're going to elect a president," Eakin says. "There's a lot of questions that remain about how much power will the military leadership continue to have. The demands of the revolution have not been met yet, the new president is going to have a lot of issues to deal with. They're going to have to really meet the needs of the people."

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