Zabiha News

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“It is a tough time to be a journalist or broadcaster in Egypt. Cairo News Company (CNC) knows this first-hand after an Egyptian court ordered its chairman, Nader Gowhar, to pay a fine of 150,000 Egyptian pounds ($27,000) for publishing footage of a protest earlier this year that was carried by the pan-Arabic news network Al-Jazeera.

Sunday’s court decision comes after months of wrangling, which finally saw the verdict handed down against Gowhar “for possessing satellite communications equipment and operating a network without a license.”

Ironically, CNC had been in the process of obtaining a license since the middle of last year, but the ministry of information dragged its feet, Gowhar said earlier this year. The company applied for a license in July 2007.

Cairo considered the footage broadcast by Al-Jazeera to be disruptive to Egypt’s national image. It showed demonstrators in Mahalla Al-Kobra, during an uprising in April, stomping on a large photograph of Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak.”