Journalists Syndicate head Khaled El-Balshy said on Wednesday, October 28, 2026, that the syndicate has taken “serious steps” to admit journalists working at news websites to its membership, and that those working at accredited websites, or websites that have applied for a license and hold an official letter, “have the right to join the syndicate.” His statements came during a visit to Suez governorate with the syndicate’s Secretary General Gamal Abdel Rahim.
El-Balshy added that the syndicate has held several internal meetings on the matter and will continue them, and that it faces “different visions” on how to implement it, considering it a measure that “protects the profession and its future,” and that complaints about people impersonating journalists will gradually decline once there is real union coverage that allows the syndicate to hold people accountable.
In an interview published the same day, El-Balshy said many journalists work at websites without union membership because of the current syndicate law and registration mechanisms, and that the syndicate intervenes to defend them in publishing cases because it protects the profession. He called for blocking websites to be done through the judicial authority rather than by administrative decision, and said that denying licenses to journalistic projects that “seem to have a different vision” sends a constant signal of excluding certain parties. He added that the syndicate is demanding a review of the situation of all detained colleagues and their release on its guarantee.
The statements came a day after a ruling by the Ninth Circuit of the New Cairo Misdemeanors Court on Tuesday, October 27, 2026, fining Mada Masr editor-in-chief Lina Attalah 3 million pounds ($62,111.80) and ordering the website closed and its equipment confiscated, in a case in which she was charged with establishing, managing and operating a news website without a license. El-Balshy said at the time that the syndicate would take legal steps to appeal the ruling.
Photo: Hossam el-Hamalawy via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)
