The Supreme Council for Media Regulation, headed by Engineer Khaled Abdel Aziz, announced on Thursday that all media outlets subject to the provisions of Law No. 180 of 2018 are obligated to prevent the appearance of both Reham Saeed and Yasmine Al-Khatib for two months, after investigating the mutual complaints submitted by them, according to the recommendations of the Complaints Committee headed by the journalist Essam Al-Amir, the Council’s representative.
The statement of the Supreme Council for Media confirmed that the General Department of Monitoring of the Council monitored the exchange that occurred between them through their “social media” accounts, and that this was not consistent with societal values and controls, and the professional principles regulating media work.
The Council stressed in its statement that professional responsibility is not limited to what the journalist presents through various media outlets, but rather extends to what he publishes or circulates through his “social media” accounts, as it is part of the public sphere that requires adherence to professional rules, respect for the nature of the work, and the controls it imposes in speech and behavior, in a way that preserves the status of the profession and respect for the public.
In turn, Dr. Mahmoud Khalil, professor of media at Cairo University, explained that “freedom of expression is guaranteed to everyone as long as it is within the limits of the professional and ethical framework,” adding to Asharq Al-Awsat: “In the event of non-compliance, the supervisory authority has the right to take the necessary measures to prevent any absurdity from appearing on the platforms.”
Khalil stressed that “the rules of the profession have controls and codes for addressing the public, whether on personal accounts or media platforms,” explaining that the media person is not supposed to use his platforms to settle disputes with others or turn the screen in his favor, and that engaging with citizens’ issues and addressing them in accordance with recognized professional rules is the most important priority of media work.
According to the Media Syndicate’s statement two weeks ago, the Syndicate received two complaints submitted by the journalist, Reham Saeed, against the journalist, Muhammad Al-Desouki Rushdi, and the journalist, Yasmine Al-Khatib, explaining in her complaint that she was subjected to insults, defamation, and her personal life was undermined, in addition to her media professionalism being diminished, through the media platform provided by the complainant against them, while the union confirmed in another statement that it had resolved the two complaints submitted after listening to their point of view in dealing with it.
Commenting on the Supreme Media Council’s decision, broadcaster Reham Saeed wrote on her Facebook account on Thursday and asked: “What is this injustice... Did I make a mistake in my work?” She explained that she had been suspended several times before, and that her program adhered to media codes.
Reham Saeed noted in her post that her media work is her source of financial income, which she relies on to spend on her children.
For her part, Dr. Sarah Fawzi, Professor of Radio, Television and Digital Media at Cairo Media, confirmed to Asharq Al-Awsat that “what happened between them does not befit the image of the Egyptian media,” and described it as “a decline in the media level, especially since the accounts of public figures must be documented and express their morals, while being careful not to turn them into an arena of war and trolling of others, because they are for the public, and not closed personal accounts.”
She added, "What happened should have been resolved and ended privately and amicably, away from squabbles over social media. What was monitored, according to the statement of the Supreme Council of Media, is inconsistent with the media and moral code."
The Egyptian Ministry of Education announced the use of “class teachers” as part of the mechanisms to confront the shortage in the number of teachers in schools, and it recently began regulating their status by concluding seasonal contracts in various educational directorates, at a time when the Ministry confirms that using them contributes to filling a large gap in the numbers of teachers.
Educational experts believe that the system may represent a temporary solution, but it does not replace permanent appointments. According to the details of the contracts announced by the Ministry of Education on Sunday, the value of one share is 50 pounds (the dollar is equivalent to about 51.9 pounds), with a maximum of 96 shares per month, bringing the total reward to 4,800 pounds per month, including legal deductions, and the contract extends from the first of September until the end of June, during the period of the academic year. According to the ministry, the step aims to “reconcile the financial conditions of class teachers and work to regularize the disbursement of their dues, in addition to regulating the contractual relationship during the academic year.”
Azza Nasr, former educational director at the Ministry of Education, says, “Using class teachers may contribute to dealing with urgent needs within schools, especially in specializations that suffer from a shortage of teachers, even though it remains a result of the problem of teacher shortages that extends for years.”
She added to Asharq Al-Awsat that “regulating the status of class teachers with seasonal contracts can give schools greater flexibility in filling the shortage, and help ensure the presence of a teacher in front of the class,” but she stressed that this mechanism “remains a temporary solution that cannot be relied upon permanently to address a deficit that has accumulated for years.”
Nasr believes that addressing the problem in the long term requires the continued recruitment of new teachers according to the actual needs of the specializations and educational regions, in addition to the good distribution of existing teachers, pointing out that “the professional stability of the teacher is in turn reflected in the stability of the educational process.”
The Minister of Education, Mohamed Abdel Latif, said during a meeting with newspaper editors and media professionals this September that the deficit in the number of teachers had previously reached about 469,000 teachers, indicating the difficulty of appointing this number at once.
The Minister announced during a press conference last August that the Ministry had hired about 160,000 teachers during the last academic year through the quota system, pointing out that their numbers change according to the needs of schools, with new appointments continuing to reduce dependence on them. The numbers reveal the extent of reliance on this path in parallel with permanent appointment plans. In January 2022, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi directed the appointment of 30,000 teachers annually for a period of 5 years, with a total of 150,000 teachers, to meet the needs of the education sector, before the first recruitment competitions began in the same year.
Education expert and professor of curricula at Ain Shams University, Dr. Hassan Shehata, links the continued need for new teachers to several factors, including “the retirement of tens of thousands of teachers, the expansion of school construction to accommodate the increasing number of students, and work to reduce class densities.” These are factors that he says “require a steady increase in the number of teachers every academic year.”
Shehata told Asharq Al-Awsat that “teacher preparation and training is the basis for the success of the educational process,” considering that confronting the deficit should not depend on one path, whether through class teachers or recruitment competitions, but rather requires “diversifying solutions in filling the teacher deficit,” which he described as “an issue related to national security.”
The new contracts coincide with ongoing demands to improve the conditions of class teachers and ensure regular receipt of their dues. Shehata suggests, in addition to using class teachers, “expanding the use of graduates of colleges of education, extending the retirement age for teachers, and re-utilizing some workers in supervisory positions in teaching, as well as using university graduates assigned to public service after qualifying them to work within schools.”
He also called for “creating a fund to finance the appointment of graduates of colleges of education with contributions from civil society, businessmen, and charitable endowments,” noting that “the state has spent on preparing and training these graduates for years, and benefiting from them could constitute one of the paths to filling the deficit.”
