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Information and the Egyptian Cause: Muhammed Abd al-Qadir Hatim and Egypt's News Infrastructure
Abstract
Radio Cairo and Voice of the Arabs are two of the more infamous examples of Nasserist propaganda, known for spreading the message of pan-Arabism, Third Worldism, Socialism, as well as a variety of other isms, across the globe. Yet this effort to broadcast from Cairo was one of many efforts to shape and control the news about and from Egypt. This paper sketches this broader information infrastructure through the career of Muhammed Abd al-Qadir Hatim, one of the initial Free Officers, who became a leading architect for Egypt's information regime. Using both his prolific writings and periodicals which he edited, this paper explores how Hatim's ideas about news media and public opinion informed the creation of Egyptian institutions, starting with his founding of the Middle East News Agency in 1954 as way of challenging the domination of Reuters and AP. Hatim's success with MENA was followed with a series of promotions, culminating in his tenure as the first Minister of Information in 1959 and then as the head of the Ministry of Information, National Guidance, and Culture from 1962 to 1966. This paper traces his various endeavors, from his role in establishing Egyptian television and state publication houses, as well as the faculty of Information Sciences at Cairo University, to his largely unsuccessful attempt to create an 'Army of Truth' through Egyptian publications in the early 1960s. Though Hatim was sidelined in the late 1960s, under Anwar Sadat he served again as Minister of Information and then as a deputy Prime Minister during the October War, after which he published his most well known book, Information and the Arab Cause in 1974. While Hatim is often mentioned in his histories of this era, he has remained a largely marginal figure in these narratives. This paper focuses on Hatim as a way to historicize the intersection of decolonization and news media in Egypt, illuminating how news and information became a state project, how propaganda and public diplomacy became intertwined, and how public relations and ideas of public opinion became professionalized and institutionalized in modern Egypt, which in turn served as a model for the rest of the Third World.
Discipline
History
Geographic Area
Egypt
Mediterranean Countries
Sub Area
None