Egyptian Government Being Challenged by Voices on the Internet

In 2006, Wael Abbas became an inspiration for a new generation of bloggers in which he posted a video on his blog that went viral on the internet of two police officers attacking a bus driver in Egypt. The two officers were charged and were given a term of three years in prison. It was a sudden burst of justice for the Egyptian people against such government abuse and corruption in an economy where according to Stephen Franklin in Mass Media 12/13, Article 15, ” a growing willingness by reporters, writers, and human-rights groups to tell the truth in the face of greats risks”. Unlike most bloggers on the internet, what sets Abbas apart fromt he rest is his need to tell the truth that was not being told. According to Abbas in Mass Media 12/13, Article 15, “the arrival of the internet and the explosion of Egyptian bloggers, he said, created the ‘gene’ that the government couldn’t put back in the bottle”.  Hossam el Hamalawy, a photographer and journalist, his photos who showed the faces of Egyptian workers in hostile environments gave the courage of workers to protest against their employers and sometimes their government. Such protest includes bumping up the $7 a month minimum wage that hasn’t changed in the last 20 years. After workers protesting  the government’s broken promises of economic reforms, finally in Autumn, after a trivial of lawsuits and human-rights groups, the government boosted the wage to $70 a month which still below what the workers need. In the Al Ahram (Egypt’s official newspaper) explains how a family of four in Egypt needs to earn more than $120 a month to escape poverty and there are over 40 percent of the nation living off of $2 a day with no pay rules, no workplace protection, and no benefits. Unfortunately, Al Ahram, the government-run Arab newspaper’s role is to represent as the government’s voice which still pervades many of its people what to think. On the 25th of January, the “Day of Anger”,  a mass turning point for mass politics as thousands of  rioter’s broke out of the fear barrier which for decades kept Egypt off the streets for concerns of their saftey under Murubak showed that those days of cencorship are coming to an end.