Revolution and its discontents: The messy case of Egypt’s journalists union
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The Egyptian Journalists Syndicate (EJS) is the official body tasked with organizing, protecting, and accrediting Egyptian reporters and editors (and sometimes others, like lucky ad men) at private and government-run newspapers. When you hear of Egyptian journalists being censored, fired, intimidated, detained, attacked, or killed, the syndicate is the go-to place to lodge and resolve these grievances.
In today’s Egypt, it has been largely failing at that. Trials are farcical and deadly. Police brutality is rampant. The government, devoid of real checks on its power, is free to call anything journalistic a crime. For all these reasons, it’s easier for the syndicate to keep going through the motions of fighting for press freedom, rather than take on the deeper problems that plague the profession, and Egypt itself.