Two trials, different coverage

“Morsi goes back to prison” and “The first civilian president is a defendant” are the dramatic headlines that the privately-owned Al-Shorouk led with in Tuesday’s edition, mostly dedicated to covering the first hearing of ousted President Mohamed Morsi's trial.

Morsi, ousted from power on July 3, is today a defendant in the Ettehadiya clashes case, where 11 people were killed in confrontations between Muslim Brotherhood supporters and their opponents near the presidential palace in December of last year.

The headlines come slightly over two years after headlines about the trial of another former president, Hosni Mubarak.

Mubarak was accused of killing protesters during the January 25 revolution and the case is still ongoing.

While the headlines in both cases were dramatic, those about Morsi are somewhat more demeaning. The state-run Al-Ahram ran a headline reading, "Morsi in white clothes in Borg al-Arab [Prison]."

The privately-owned Al-Masry Al-Youm referred to Morsi and the 14 other defendants in the case as “the deposed and his brothers.” In another story, the newspaper refers to the interactions that happened between Morsi and other defendants who were with him in the dock as a “soap opera.”

The paper also dedicated a page to reactions it gathered from victims of the Ettehadiya clashes such as the family of Al-Husseiny Abu Deif, a journalist who was killed in the violence and activist Shahinda Makhad who was assaulted by a Brotherhood supporter.

The same Al-Masry Al-Youm led its August 4, 2011 headline with “The pharaoh in the dock” while most of the coverage was focused on reactions to the first hearing.

Similarly, Al-Shorouk ran reactions to the hearing of Mubarak back in 2011, while its most judgmental headline on the case read, “So you become a model for those who would follow you,” which was the front page headlines.

In both Al-Shorouk and Al-Masry Al-Youm, there was little reference to Mubarak's collaborators who were also in the dock, as well as his sons, unlike the coverage of the hearing of Morsi, who has been often referred to in media in terms of his Muslim Brotherhood affiliation whose politics are perceived as clan politics.