{"id":17069,"date":"2026-10-07T15:54:57","date_gmt":"2026-10-07T13:54:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/?p=17069"},"modified":"2026-10-24T14:53:02","modified_gmt":"2026-10-24T12:53:02","slug":"matsda2sh-media-coverage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/matsda2sh-media-coverage\/","title":{"rendered":"From Media Coverage to the Prosecution Statement: How Matsda2sh Was Framed as a Security Threat"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today, 7 October 2026, the Public Prosecution issued a statement<\/a> on Case No. 8083 of 2026 (Supreme State Security), in which it said that National Security investigations had linked the “Matsda2sh” platform to the Muslim Brotherhood, and that it had authorised the arrest and search of its staff. The operation resulted in the arrest of six people, who were questioned in the presence of their lawyers, with a member of the Journalists Syndicate attending the interrogation of the defendant registered with the syndicate.<\/p>\n

The statement attributed to the first defendant a confession that he had joined and worked in a media committee of the group, had published content to carry out a plan targeting state institutions, and had received monthly funding via bank transfers from abroad. But it also stated that the remaining defendants denied membership, except for one of them, who said that he had previously belonged to the group and then left it before working at the platform. The prosecution said that the examination of phones and accounts revealed correspondence, closed groups and posts supportive of the group.<\/p>\n

The prosecution added that it had referred three of those who said they had been subjected to the use of cruelty to forensic medicine, and that its reports did not establish any injuries or signs of violence, and it announced the pretrial detention of the defendants and the continuation of the investigations. This is the prosecution’s account of the investigations and examinations, and not a judicial ruling of conviction.<\/p>\n

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From a Verification Platform to an Organisational and Security Frame<\/h2>\n

Zawia3’s analysis of the statement reveals a linguistic and narrative structure that goes beyond setting out the measures and accusations to redescribing the activity attributed to the defendants. The work moves from a journalistic frame based on publishing content and verifying information to an organisational and security frame that links it, according to the statement’s account, to spreading rumours, stirring discontent and seeking to bring down state institutions.<\/p>\n

Among the most prominent shifts is the redefinition of “Matsda2sh”: instead of presenting it as a digital journalism platform specialising in fact-checking, the statement describes it from the outset as “one of the media platforms of the group”, and then attributes to the first defendant a confession that he worked on the page affiliated with the media committee of the Muslim Brotherhood. This does not change the need to show the denial of the other defendants as reported in the statement itself.<\/p>\n

In this frame, organisational affiliation becomes the entry point for defining the platform and its staff. The terms “cadres” and “elements” appear in describing the people to whom the activity is attributed, while their journalistic capacity appears mainly in a procedural context, such as the registration of one of them with the Journalists Syndicate and the attendance of a syndicate representative at his interrogation.<\/p>\n

The statement includes descriptions that reframe the published content in criminal and security terms, among them “spreading rumours and false news and data”, “belittling the roles of its officials and their performance”, and “escalating sectoral problems and fabricating and exaggerating their events”. It attributes to one of the defendants a statement linking the highlighting of obstacles and negatives and the exposure of officials’ shortcomings to creating tension and pushing citizens to demonstrate in order to bring down state institutions.<\/p>\n

The statement does not confine itself to describing the content of the published material, but assigns it a political and security purpose; posts and communications thus appear as parts of a “media plan”, not as separate journalistic facts.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Descriptions such as “the terrorist group” and “the fugitive member of the group” reinforce this frame. The following infographic shows the terms and their semantic groups according to the analysis coding; it is a record of the statement’s language, and not a measure of the validity of the accusations or evidence that a ruling has been issued on them.<\/p>\n

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\"Frequency<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

The statement relies on the language of investigations and inquiries: “the investigations of the National Security Sector”, “the investigations established that”, and “issued an authorisation for their arrest and search”, and then moves to the language of examination, such as “it was established to the Public Prosecution” and “it was technically established”. These formulations give the account a decisive character, and place correspondence, closed groups and secure applications in the context of the organisational activity attributed to the defendants, instead of presenting them as communication tools that may also be used in journalistic work.<\/p>\n

Funding stands out within this frame, as the statement links work at the platform to the receipt of periodic sums in foreign currencies and transfers from a company that it says is owned by a member of the group abroad. But receiving wages or using bank transfers and digital correspondence does not, on its own, prove organisational affiliation; the link here is attributed to the prosecution’s account, while “Matsda2sh”, in its response published on 1 October<\/a>, denied the security accusations and said that its journalists work under contracts and receive salaries through legal transactions. This response preceded the prosecution’s statement, and is not presented as a new response to it.<\/p>\n

The statement sets out the results of examinations of accounts and phones, among them posts that it attributes to one of the journalists despite his denial that he published them. The technical results mentioned remain attributed to the prosecution; the statement alone does not allow independent verification of the details of those examinations or of the digital evidence.<\/p>\n

In its conclusion, the statement affirms the soundness of the procedures and denies the existence of injuries or signs of violence in the cases referred to forensic medicine. This stands in contrast to the statement of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights on 5 October<\/a>, which quoted defence lawyers as saying that most of the journalists stated before the prosecution that they had been subjected to torture and ill-treatment and forced to record fabricated confessions before being brought before it. These accounts are presented attributed to their owners, without presenting the prosecution’s denial as an independent verification carried out by the report.<\/p>\n

A comparison between the language of the statement and the vocabulary of earlier coverage reveals a clear overlap in talk of the media committee, foreign funding, rumours, the exaggeration of negatives and the bringing down of state institutions. This is a similarity in framing and language, not in itself evidence of coordination between the prosecution and the media or that one of the two sides took from the other.<\/p>\n

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Before the Prosecution’s Statement: How Did the Coverage Construct the Image of “Matsda2sh”?<\/h2>\n

The report links the analysis of the 7 October statement with the media monitoring that preceded it, while keeping the time frame of each clear: the following reading deals with coverage from 30 September to 4 October, and its quantitative results are based on a sample from 1\u20134 October; the new prosecution statement is not among the 48 items in that sample.<\/p>\n

Zawia3 monitored Egyptian press coverage of the case of the arrest<\/a> of journalists from the “Matsda2sh” platform during the first days of the campaign, which began on 28 and 29 September 2026. The monitoring reveals a variation between conveying the security account attributed to its source and adopting its vocabulary as facts, alongside a narrower space for the legal discourse that refrains from pre-empting the investigations.<\/p>\n

“Matsda2sh”, in a response published on 1 October<\/a>, denied the accusations of the Ministry of Interior, and said that it is independent of political organisations and that its journalists receive salaries under contracts and legal banking transactions. What was stated in the ministry’s statement is presented here as accusations attributed to it, not as facts established by a court.<\/p>\n

Negative discourse clearly dominated the treatment of the “Matsda2sh” case, with variation in the degree of negativity and the nature of the vocabulary used; some newspapers focused on conveying the official account, while other newspapers used more charged and sensational language, including terms such as “exposes”, “scandal”, “lies”, “plots” and “cells”.<\/p>\n

Most media coverage in Egyptian newspapers focused on describing the arrested journalists from the “Matsda2sh” editorial team as “6 elements” or “members of a media committee”, describing the platform as a “media committee”, and describing the fact-checking content it provides as “publishing fabricated news”, while linking it to foreign funding and management from outside the country.<\/p>\n

Three main patterns can be identified in the monitored material. The first is the conveying of the official security account, with terms such as: “arrest”, “uncovering”, “monitoring”, “follow-up”, “investigations” and “Ministry of Interior statement”.<\/p>\n

The second pattern is accusatory and incriminating discourse, which uses expressions such as: “terrorist”, “fugitive Brotherhood member”, “fabricated news”, “lies”, “rumours”, “plots”, “cells”, “exposes”, “scandal” and “misleading platform”. This pattern appeared clearly in some private newspapers, especially in the coverage of the recordings and the alleged relationship between Abdelrahman Mansour and the Muslim Brotherhood.<\/p>\n

The third is cautious legal discourse, which focuses on the prosecution and the investigations, detention pending investigation, and not pre-empting the results and the legal procedures. This pattern tends not to settle the accusations, and to present the procedural status of the case.<\/p>\n

The coverage by Egyptian media and newspapers of the case of the arrest of journalists from the “Matsda2sh” platform during the period from 30 September to 4 October 2026 showed a gradual shift in the treatment of the case; before the Ministry of Interior’s statement<\/a> was issued, the coverage focused on the incident of the journalists’ arrest, the position of the Journalists Syndicate, and questions related to places of detention and legal procedures.<\/p>\n

For example, on 30 September at 4:41 pm, “Al-Masry Al-Youm” published a news item<\/a> titled “The Journalists Syndicate files a report with the Public Prosecutor and a complaint with the Minister of Interior demanding the release of 6 journalists”. The item was based on the syndicate, which reported receiving complaints from lawyers and colleagues about the arrest of six journalists from the platform, among them a member of the syndicate, and demanded disclosure of the reasons for the arrest and the places of detention. This coverage adopted a syndicate and legal frame focusing on the rights of those arrested and the procedures of their detention, not on settling the security accusations.<\/p>\n

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How Did the Security Account Escalate?<\/h2>\n

1 October marked a turning point in the coverage, after the Ministry of Interior’s statement<\/a> was issued. The security account dominated a number of news items and television programme episodes before the journalists were brought before the investigating authorities. These items focused on the accusations contained in the statement, the alleged relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood and the funding, so that the security accusations became material for shaping a public image of the detainees before the declared judicial process began.<\/p>\n

The newspaper “Youm7” used the headline: “Interior Ministry: 6 workers at the Brotherhood’s Ma Tsda2sh page arrested for publishing fabricated news<\/a>“, which included terms found in the official account, most notably “the Brotherhood’s” and “fabricated news”, and terms such as “the media committees”, “the Muslim Brotherhood”, “false news”, “fabricated”, “financial funding from abroad” and “unlicensed” were also repeated in the body of the item.<\/p>\n

“El-Watan” adopted similar wording in its headline: “Interior Ministry reveals the circumstances of the arrest of the ‘Matsda2sh’ page’s team: they belong to a terrorist group and receive funding from abroad<\/a>“, and the item focused on what the Ministry of Interior attributed to those arrested in terms of belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood, running the page from abroad and receiving foreign funding, in addition to publishing news that the ministry described as false and fabricated.<\/p>\n

“Akhbar El-Yom Gate” likewise moved towards a clearer security framing, through the headline “6 Brotherhood elements arrested for involvement in running the ‘Matsda2sh’ page and publishing false news<\/a>“, and then published an analytical piece titled “Electronic cells and funded rumours: how did the terrorist group exploit the ‘Matsda2sh’ page?<\/a>“. This coverage linked the case to a broader narrative concerning “electronic cells”, “funded rumours” and the use of digital platforms, based on the account presented by the Ministry of Interior.<\/p>\n

On 2 October, “Al-Ahram” published a piece titled “Interior Ministry detects an unlicensed internet page run from abroad to broadcast false news and distort facts<\/a>“. The item focused on describing the page and the nature of the content attributed to it, with the continuation of the elements of the security account relating to management from abroad, the alleged link to Brotherhood media committees, and foreign funding.<\/p>\n

By contrast, “Masrawy” offered a relatively different model in the wording of its headline. On 1 October it published a news item titled “First statement from the Interior Ministry after the arrest of 6 of the Matsda2sh team”. The headline did not use descriptions such as “the Brotherhood’s” or “Brotherhood elements”, and confined itself to describing those arrested as “the Matsda2sh team”, and then conveyed within the item the accusations contained in the ministry’s statement relating to the Brotherhood, management from abroad and funding.<\/p>\n

At the same time, “Masrawy” published statements by Magdy El-Galad under the headline “The war continues: Magdy El-Galad comments on the arrest of members of the ‘Matsda2sh’ page<\/a>“, and the statements included an interpretation of the incident as part of attempts to influence public opinion and “destabilise Egyptian national security”, linking it to the Muslim Brotherhood and other parties.<\/p>\n

On 1 October, “Al-Masry Al-Youm” published a news item titled “Urgent statement from the Ministry of Interior regarding the ‘Matsda2sh’ page: it is run by a fugitive Brotherhood member<\/a>“, which reflects the direct presence of the security account.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, on 1 October the newspaper “Al-Dostour” published a piece<\/a> titled “Mohamed El-Baz: Journalism is not a crime, and what ‘Matsda2sh’ did does not fall under journalistic work”. The piece included descriptions such as “Brotherhood cell” and “content sowing doubt”, which moves the case from the frame of news to the frame of opinion and political and media interpretation.<\/p>\n

\"Distribution<\/figure>\n

The monitoring data attached to the report comprises 48 items distributed across eight newspapers during the period from 1 to 4 October 2026: 14 in “Sada El-Balad”, 12 in “Akhbar El-Yom”, 12 in “Al-Bawaba News”, 7 in “Al-Masry Al-Youm”, and one item each in “Al-Ahram”, “Youm7” and “El-Watan”, with no items in the “Al-Gomhuria” column. 44 items were classified as negative and 4 as neutral, and the data recorded no positive items. This is a specific sample and not a comprehensive inventory or a representative sample of all Egyptian media, and a zero in a newspaper’s column does not mean an absence of coverage across its entire website. The attached material did not include a complete list of links to the 48 items or a breakdown of the coding and inter-coder verification procedures; the results are therefore presented as indicators from this monitoring, not as a quantitative judgement on all coverage.<\/p>\n

As for the state-owned newspapers, “Al-Ahram”‘s coverage in the sample was limited to a single item relating to the Ministry of Interior’s statement, which used the terms “the terrorist Brotherhood”, “arrest” and “elements” to link the platform to the group. This does not mean that the website published only one news item about the case.<\/p>\n

“Akhbar El-Yom”‘s coverage, meanwhile, was marked by a clearly negative direction, and went beyond merely conveying the incident of the arrest to offering an interpretive frame linking the page to the Muslim Brotherhood, funding, rumours and disinformation. Among the most prominent formulations used were headlines speaking of “recordings that expose”, “the arrest of Brotherhood elements”, “electronic cells and funded rumours”, “the misleading platform” and “the lies”; the general direction of “Akhbar El-Yom”‘s coverage in the sample was marked by a high degree of negativity.<\/p>\n

The “Al-Gomhuria” column in the sample contained no items during the period under study. This result may not be generalised to everything published by the newspaper or its online portal.<\/p>\n

On the level of private newspapers, “Al-Masry Al-Youm”‘s coverage included a relative diversity of treatment frames: negative headlines linking the platform to false news or to the “fugitive Brotherhood member”, and others focusing on the legal and procedural side and the moves of the Journalists Syndicate. Five of its seven items were classified as negative, and two as neutral.<\/p>\n

By contrast, the discourse presented in the sample of news published about the case in the newspaper Youm7 was marked by a high degree of negativity, as it published a news item titled “6 workers at the Brotherhood’s ‘Ma Tsda2sh’ page arrested for publishing fabricated news”, a wording that combines the terms “arrest”, “the Brotherhood’s” and “fabricated news”, terms that carry clear accusatory connotations.<\/p>\n

The newspaper “Al-Bawaba News”, meanwhile, showed the highest levels of linguistic charge compared with the other private newspapers included in the sample, as its headlines used clear terms of condemnation such as “exposes”, “unmasks”, “a new scandal”, “plots”, “the terrorist Brotherhood cells” and “lies and incitement”, with a clear rise in the level of linguistic charge and sensationalism.<\/p>\n

The same applies to “Sada El-Balad”, whose news on the case was marked by a negative direction, and which linked the arrest of the journalists to the audio recordings, the accusation that political activist Abdelrahman Mansour had a relationship with Khairat El-Shater, funding, and membership of the Muslim Brotherhood.<\/p>\n

The negative charge appeared in terms such as “exposes”, “plots”, “the fugitive Brotherhood member” and “lies and incitement”, which are indicators of a high level of negativity, while it published two news items titled “Mostafa Bakry: The Public Prosecution’s investigations in the Matsda2sh case must not be pre-empted” and “The ‘Matsda2sh’ case before the prosecution, and we await the outcome of the investigations”, which lean towards neutral or cautious legal and procedural discourse and do not settle the accusations.<\/p>\n

The coverage in the newspaper El-Watan was limited to one news item linking the arrest of the page’s team to membership of a terrorist group and the receipt of funding from abroad, and the item is classified as highly negative.<\/p>\n

\"Monitoring<\/figure>\n
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A Focus on the Accusations and an Absent or Weak Counter-Narrative<\/h2>\n

The monitoring by the “Eye on Journalism” initiative of media coverage of the case of the arrest of the “Matsda2sh” newsroom revealed a number of professional observations, among them the conveying of the security account in some coverage as a complete truth, rather than as an account attributed to its source, alongside the use of headlines and descriptions that may suggest a prior conviction, such as “cell”, “fabricated news” and “media committee”, even though the matter concerned accusations that were at the time still under investigation, according to journalist Shaimaa Galhoum, the founder of the initiative.<\/p>\n

She shows that some coverage focused on the accusations and their sources, against an absent or weak counter-narrative and right of reply, pointing to the absence of the Journalists Syndicate from the picture in some coverage, whether through official statements or through direct contact with the head of the syndicate or the Freedoms Committee to obtain the syndicate’s position.<\/p>\n

She tells Zawia3: “Presenting accusatory details about the arrested journalists before the investigations are concluded may affect the image the reader forms of them, which makes adherence to the distinction between accusation and fact essential in such cases.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The “Eye on Journalism” organisation paused at a news item that bore the date of 1 October on the “Al-Masry Al-Youm” website and reported the interrogation of the six journalists and the issuance of a decision to detain them for 15 days. Galhoum raises questions about the publication of the item, its removal and its republication, followed by the emergence of statements indicating that the investigations had not yet begun. The Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression documented, in a position paper dated 3 October<\/a>, that the item appeared on the evening of 2 October speaking of an interrogation on the previous day, and that the rapporteur of the syndicate’s Freedoms Committee conveyed the prosecution’s denial that it had conducted investigations up to that time. This chronology differs from the investigations that took place later, and does not justify presenting the later decision as confirmation of a news item that preceded its issuance.<\/p>\n

She believes that the importance of this incident is not only about determining who is responsible for the error, but that it raises questions about the mechanism for producing news and verifying information before publishing it, among them: “What was the source of the information on which a news item of this sensitivity was built? Was it verified with more than one source? And was there a clear official source to which the information could be attributed?”<\/p>\n

She adds that the professional handling of journalistic errors should not stop at deleting the news item or republishing it; when information is proven to be untrue, this calls for a clear correction that reaches the reader who received the original information, especially when the matter concerns people’s freedom and legal investigation procedures.<\/p>\n

She stresses that accuracy in such cases “is not a luxury”, and that the verification of information should not be skipped under the pressure of the scoop, emphasising that a journalist against whom accusations are made, “whatever his name or the institution he works for”, remains entitled to fair professional treatment, and that an accusation remains an accusation until its truth is determined through its legal course.<\/p>\n

She explains that professional solidarity does not mean defending error, just as commitment to professionalism does not mean adopting the account of a single party, considering that the minimum of professional rules consists of attributing information to its sources, verifying it before publication, clearly distinguishing between accusation and fact, giving the party concerned the right of reply, and correcting errors clearly when what was published turns out to be inaccurate.<\/p>\n

She notes that the initiative does not intervene in the case before the investigating authorities, and does not issue judgements on the accusations against the journalists, but rather focuses its monitoring on the way some press platforms have handled the case and the extent of their adherence to professional standards in coverage.<\/p>\n

For his part, Ashraf Abbas, executive director of the Egyptian Observatory for Journalism and Media, believes that the incident of the “Matsda2sh” platform’s journalists raises, alongside its rights dimensions, a professional debate about how the press deals with the cases of colleagues in the profession, whether in the decision to cover and to show solidarity or in the standards that govern coverage when the institution decides to publish<\/p>\n

Abbas explains that solidarity with colleagues is a basic principle within the journalistic community, but that it is necessary to distinguish between the position of the individual journalist and the position of the institution he works for: a journalist may wish to cover an incident concerning a colleague or to declare solidarity with him, while his institution takes a decision not to publish or not to express a position of solidarity, and here it is not right to hold the editor responsible for an institutional decision that is not his to make, without this exempting institutions from their responsibility towards the profession and those who work in it<\/p>\n

He tells Zawia3: “Editorial policy may determine what the institution chooses to publish, but it does not change the rules of journalistic work in terms of accuracy, verification, attributing information to its sources and respecting the presumption of innocence, and neither the scoop nor the editorial position should be a justification for giving up any of these rules.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He adds: “The journalist should not turn into a mouthpiece for any body or agency, and his role is not to receive an account and reproduce it as it is. Official statements are sources of information, but there must remain a professional distance between the journalist and the source, and the reader must know clearly who is behind each account and what it has been possible to verify.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He points out that this matter becomes more sensitive when dealing with security statements, since the official nature of the source does not mean that everything stated in it is established, and what the arresting authority attributes to a person remains attributed to it, and should not be presented as a judicial charge or a fact established in the investigation; bringing charges in the framework of the investigation is the competence of the prosecution, and even bringing a charge does not mean that it is proven or that the person charged is guilty.<\/p>\n

He stresses that fairness also requires not settling for the account of one party when the account of the other party is available and directly relevant to the incident: if the newspaper publishes what was stated in the Ministry of Interior’s statement, and the “Matsda2sh” platform then publishes a response to what it contained, the requirements of professional coverage include making both accounts available to the reader, clearly attributing each of them to its source, and attempting to verify the disputed facts<\/p>\n

He continues: “This does not mean that the journalist’s job is to place two conflicting accounts before the reader and withdraw, nor that equating the accounts is a substitute for verification. What is required is that we provide the available context, make clear who is saying what, and then make our journalistic effort to verify; but ignoring a published and available response by a party to the case while settling for the other party’s account makes the picture presented to the reader incomplete.”<\/p>\n

He stresses that the responsibility becomes greater when the information concerns the whereabouts of a journalist, his being brought before the investigating authority or the decisions issued concerning him: if the newsroom is unable to verify an essential piece of information, it can postpone publishing it until it has been verified.<\/p>\n

He concludes his conversation with us, saying: “Solidarity with journalists and professionalism do not conflict. Institutions may differ in their policies and in the space they give to coverage, but when we decide to publish, the journalist must not turn into a mouthpiece for any party, the security account must not turn into journalistic fact, and the accusation must not turn into a conviction. Most importantly, the reader should get what we know, not what we want him to believe.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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Adopting the Security Account<\/h2>\n

In the view of human rights lawyer Malek Adly, director of the Egyptian Center for Economic and Social Rights, the media treatment of the crisis of the “Matsda2sh” journalists reflects a real crisis in the media’s handling of cases of a security nature in which the Ministry of Interior presents its account of the case, as some local media outlets pre-empt the results of the prosecution’s investigations and the rulings of the judiciary.<\/p>\n

He describes this treatment as deplorable, as it consisted of some journalists and media figures adopting the security account and defending it, alongside the circulation of leaks of calls and videos linked to the case, which reveals, in his assessment, the existence of media that are loyal to the security agencies to a greater degree than they should be.<\/p>\n

He points out that some journalists confronting their syndicate and their colleagues is not a new phenomenon, citing what happened, according to him, in the crisis of the storming of the Journalists Syndicate in 2016, following the arrest of journalists Amr Badr and Mahmoud El-Sakka inside the syndicate’s headquarters, and the positions taken at the time by some journalists who defended the storming of the syndicate.<\/p>\n

He tells Zawia3 that the problem is also connected to the state of the profession and the codes of journalistic honour: “The ethics of the profession here are in poor health,” adding that the political and security circumstances since 2013 have cast their shadow on media coverage.<\/p>\n

He stresses that a security body’s accusation against a citizen does not mean his conviction, and does not give the press the right to convict him or to influence public opinion against him before the investigating authorities and the judiciary have completed their work. In this context, he points to the case of political activist Ziad El-Elaimy, against whom wide-ranging media and security accusations were made at the time of his arrest, and then the investigations did not include questions about some of the accusations that had been circulated in the media.<\/p>\n

He adds: “The crisis is also being exploited in electoral battles or to settle scores within the Journalists Syndicate, and syndicate disputes should not overshadow the issue of press freedom and journalists’ rights.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The “Matsda2sh” crisis reveals, in his view, a gap between some official discourse about widening the public sphere and the practices of other bodies, since the President of the Republic or the Minister of Information may deliver a discourse in a certain direction, while other bodies carry out different practices.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, human rights researcher Mohamed Abdel Salam, executive director of the Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression, does not link the arrest of the “Matsda2sh” platform’s journalists to the publication of a particular piece of journalism, or to procedural violations related to licensing or to the status of the journalists, considering that their arrest may mark the beginning of a new phase of the pursuit of independent press platforms.<\/p>\n

The accusations that could be levelled at the “Matsda2sh” journalists apply, in his assessment, to other and diverse press platforms, given the difficulties associated with licensing digital platforms and the crisis of the status of journalists working in digital journalism and the extent to which it is compatible with the legal frameworks governing registration with the Journalists Syndicate.<\/p>\n

He tells Zawia3: “The aim is to silence any critical voices, and to silence professional groups under claims linked to protecting the state from plots that threaten it. The arrest of the ‘Matsda2sh’ journalists coincides with a government conference to showcase the government’s achievements, and with calls to amend or change the constitution, and these developments reflect a political orientation that cannot tolerate the existence of independent critical voices in this way.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Abdel Salam believes that the arrest of the journalists carries a clear message of intimidation to those working in the field of journalism, and that the aim may have been to push independent and professional journalists to withdraw from the scene or to remain silent.<\/p>\n

He believes that the wide reactions rejecting the arrest of the journalists, and the continuation of the “Matsda2sh” platform itself in publishing statements and coverage about the arrest of its journalists, led to the opposite result, as the groups of independent journalists did not withdraw from the scene, which led, in his opinion, to the expansion of the media campaign to include leaks and recordings.<\/p>\n

The case does not concern only the content of the accusations against the “Matsda2sh” journalists, but also the way in which these accusations were presented to public opinion; the sample of coverage under study showed a shift from news and legal treatment to the adoption of security and incriminating vocabulary, with variation in making the counter-narrative available and in distinguishing between accusation and fact.<\/p>\n

And while the results of the investigations and the judiciary remain the decisive factor in the accusations attributed to the journalists, the media coverage of the case raises a broader question about the limits of professional responsibility when dealing with press freedom cases, and about the ability of the media to maintain the standards of accuracy and independence and not to pre-empt investigations.<\/p>\n

For the context following the monitoring: the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights reported in a statement dated 5 October that defence lawyers attended the interrogations of the platform’s journalists on 4 October. The later start of the investigations does not change the need, when analysing the earlier coverage, to distinguish between the account of the arresting authority, the judicial investigation and conviction by a ruling.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An analysis of the Public Prosecution’s statement and a review of 48 media items reveal an overlap between the vocabulary of the accusations and the security framing of the “Matsda2sh” case, set against the defendants’ denials and the defence’s statements about coercion and ill-treatment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":17174,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[410,390],"tags":[],"kateb":[11853],"class_list":["post-17069","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-investigations-en","category-human-rights","kateb-hisham-aref"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/ChatGPT-Image-7-Oct-2026-20_23_37.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17069","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17069"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17069\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23848,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17069\/revisions\/23848"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17069"},{"taxonomy":"kateb","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/kateb?post=17069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}