Egypt to ban ‘fake’ weather reports

Move comes amid growing crackdown on
dissenting media

One-Minute Read

The Egyptian Meteorological Association is preparing a draft law
banning unauthorised forecasts, which will punish anyone “talking
about meteorology, or anyone using a weather forecasting device
without our consent, or anyone who raises confusion about the
weather”, the EMA Chairman, Dr Agmed Abdel-Al said in a television
interview.

While false reports about the weather are rare, “weather reports
have occasionally become political”, says The Guardian, citing a 2015 claim by Egypt’s
interior ministry that flooding in the coastal city of Alexandria was
caused not by infrastructural failings, but by members of the
banned Muslim Brotherhood blocking drains with cement.

Timothy E. Kaldas, of the Tahrir Institute for Middle East
Policy think tank, told the paper: “Regardless of whether or not
this proposed law affects anything, it reflects the government’s
view that it has a right to regulate any and all information, even
information that should be a product of apolitical scientific
analysis.”

President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi’s increasingly authoritarian
regime has launched a crackdown on what it calls “fake news” in
recent years.

In March, a hotline was set up for citizens to report incidents
of fake news in the media, while a law passed last year gave
authorities the right to shut down or block any websites that
threaten the Egyptian economy or national security. At least
497 websites have been blocked over the past 12
months, according to the Association of Freedom of Thought and
Expression.