The Foreign Service Journal, May 2012

M A Y 2 0 1 2 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 23 Still, it is the Muslim Brotherhood, not secular youth, that constitutes the main force for change in Egypt, writes Lucan Way of the University of Toronto in the Oc- tober 2011 Journal of Democracy . He cited the group’s press for a March referendum on early elections, which passed easily, despite opposition from new democratic groups. “The young people who filled Cairo’s Tahrir Square may know how to use Facebook, but the Broth- erhood has a branch in every neighborhood and town,” observes Way. What to Watch For After a breathtaking expansion of their freedoms, the media in both Egypt and Tunisia are now tracking with the unsteady advance of democracy in both countries. It makes sense that countries still lacking administrative and judiciary structures able — or willing — to implement democratic laws, and subject to an extraordinary range of outside broadcast sources, would view the new media cli- mate with wariness. While these societies sort themselves out, governments that support a free press, international civil society and pro- fessional media groups should offer the following: • An insistence on legal guidelines and safeguards for licensing media under international norms; • A framework for indigenous journalists to create a journalistic code of ethics for the whole array of emerging online media, to build confidence and credibility; and • Pressure to shine a light on abuses such as those com- mitted in connection with Egypt’s Maspero massacre. This terrain will not be easy to navigate, to be sure. Egypt’s crackdown on international nongovernmental or- ganizations earlier this year reflects some of the sensitivity to perceived outside meddling during a highly fraught po- litical transition. Ultimately, of course, it is up to the citizens of the Arab states emerging from autocratic rule to decide whether their extraordinary media awakening will prove a tempo- rary phenomenon — or a beacon for broader economic and political reforms. F OCUS