Towards a Legislative Reform that Guarantees the Rights of Media Professionals in Light of the Digital Transformation of the Media – Egypt as a Model

Abstract

The media owns the mind and thought of the nation and constitutes the fourth authority to control the work of the government, so it has great importance in societies and a major role in the development or backwardness of societies, so taking care of the media and creating a suitable climate for its practice is a societal necessity.

On November 12, 2016, the House of Representatives referred to the joint committee of the Committee on Information, Culture and Antiquities and the offices of the Constitutional and Legislative Affairs and Plan and Budget Committees the two draft laws submitted by the government on "Institutional Organization of the Press and Media" and "Regulation of the Press and Media".

The researcher has reached the conclusion that there are legal gaps in the Egyptian media legislation that waste the rights of media professionals and hinder them from practicing their work, and we see that the Egyptian legislator, despite his interest in developing media legislation, did not pay attention to these gaps, and even when discussing the draft law regulating the press and media and the Supreme Council for Media Regulation, he did not fill those gaps and did not pay attention to only a small part of them, in addition to the fact that the parties that Parliament requested their opinion did not refer to only a small amount of these gaps. Therefore, we decided to prepare this research paper to clarify the gaps in the Egyptian legislation that we believe violate the procedural protection of media work and propose solutions to them, hoping that the legislator will take them into consideration.