Egypt: News Websites and Alternative Voices

Egypt’s 2014 constitution provides guarantees for freedom of expression, and Egypt has ratified international treaties committing itself to international standards for free expression. But Egyptian law allows for many restrictions on free expression, some of which are not in conformity with those commitments.

This study looks at a selection of news websites, which represent the main political viewpoints in Egypt today. It begins with an overview of the websites, categorizing them by traffic ranking, news values, legal and financial status, and political orientation. It then sets out the results from interviews with editors and journalists from these websites, discussing freedom of expression and experiences of censorship and self-censorship. The study covers the period from July 2013, when a military government took over, to September 2014