'Arab Spring' Update: Muslim Brotherhood Accused of Attempting to Control Egyptian Press

Let's see if this story gets any meaningful attention in the U.S., or if the Associated Press expands the brief unbylined item currently seen at its national site. I wouldn't bet on it -- and even if that occurs, I don't expect the U.S. establishment press to give what is contained therein much notice.

The AP's four-paragraph blurb tells us that independent columnists in Egypt are alarmed at what they see as the newly empowered Muslim Brotherhood's "attempt to control the state-owned press":

EGYPTIAN COLUMNISTS PROTEST EDITORIAL APPOINTMENTS

Several Egyptian journalists have left their columns blank in daily papers to protest the appointments by the upper house of parliament of 50 new editors for state-owned publications. Many of the newly -appointed editors are known for their Islamist views.

Instead of their pieces in Thursday's editions of independent newspapers, the columnists wrote short notes explaining their protest and denouncing what they describe as the Brotherhood's attempt to control the state-owned press.

The upper house is dominated by Islamists, mostly from President Mohammed Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood. The fundamentalist group has complained about negative press coverage, both of the Brotherhood and of Morsi.

Clearly, the independents are also worried about the Brotherhood coming after them.

Gosh, are we take this as meaning that those who doubted the legitimacy of the Brotherhood's claims to believe in basic liberties are seeing their fears realized, and that the U.S. and world press were duped into fawning over an "Arab Spring" which was never real in the first place?

Does it also mean that the Obama administration's embrace of the Brotherhood will in short order be seen as a diplomatic and national security blunder as bad as and maybe worse than Jimmy Carter's encouragement of Iranian Islamists who opposed the Shah of Iran in the late 1970s and then turned that country into the world's headquarters for fostering and funding terrorism?

The answer to both questions appears to be heading towards the affirmative, which is why I expect this story, as well as other similar one which may emanate from Egypt during the next several months, to have low visibility in the U.S.

Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.