On Monday, November 2, 2026, Khaled Abdelaziz, head of the Supreme Council for Media Regulation, received a delegation from the National Council for Human Rights led by Ambassador Ahmed Ehab Gamal El-Din, the council’s president, and including his deputy Mohamed Anwar Sadat and the heads of the civil and political rights, complaints and media committees. The meeting dealt mainly with the situation of websites seeking to regularize their status, alongside strengthening coordination between the two councils in supporting freedom of opinion and expression and professional media practice, given their overlapping mandates.
The two councils agreed to form a joint working group to consult and coordinate on files that fall within their constitutional and legal mandates, and to produce joint views and recommendations on them. The statement did not name the group’s members or set a timetable for its work, and announced no decisions on pending license applications.
The meeting came days after a ruling fining Lina Attalah, editor-in-chief of Mada Masr, EGP 3 million (about $54,000) and closing the website on the charge of operating without a license, while Mada Masr says it has submitted license applications since 2018, and learned in 2022 that one had been rejected without notice. The Journalists Syndicate has called on the Supreme Council for Media Regulation to settle Mada Masr’s license application.
Photo: Ahmed Hamed Ahmed via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
