Satellite TV channels owned by business magnates are transmitting false election-related news, charges Islamist group.
The Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) released a statement on Monday slamming satellite television stations “owned by businessmen” for transmitting what it described as “false information” about Egypt’s ongoing parliamentary elections.
According to the FJP, these channels are playing a “dangerous role” by “misleading voters with false news,” incorrectly suggesting for instance that runoff elections had been cancelled in the Cairo voting districts of El-Sahel and Shubra and in Alexandria’s Maharam Bek.
Such inaccurate information, the party noted, came in spite of the fact that Egypt’s Supreme Electoral Commission (SEC) had explicitly denied reports that some runoffs had been cancelled.
The FJP went on to urge the local media to cover the ongoing polls objectively and refrain from “manipulating the Egyptian people in the interests of a small number of businessmen.”
Several Egyptian satellite television channels are owned by prominent businessmen of liberal political orientations, including ONTV, owned by Coptic-Christian billionaire and founding member of the liberal Free Egyptians Party Naguib Sawris, and El-Hayat, owned by Al-Sayed Al-Badawy, head of the liberal Al-Wafd Party.
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