Egypt’s New Leaders Press Media to Muzzle Dissent

CAIRO â€" As soldiers and policemen opened fire on supporters of President Mohamed Morsi outside an army officers’ club on Friday, killing at least four people, one of Egypt’s state television channels broadcast a religious show that advised viewers to respect the elderly.

Soldiers at the state-run TV station in Cairo on Saturday. The authorities closed some stations.

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On a second state channel, a police officer gave an interview, assuring the public that the department was working night and day to “secure the people.”

After the military removed Mr. Morsi from power while promising that it was not “excluding” any party from participating in Egypt’s future, the leadership moved forcefully to control the narrative of the takeover by exerting pressure on the news media. The authorities shuttered some television stations, including a local Al Jazeera channel and one run by the Muslim Brotherhood, confiscated their equipment and arrested their journalists. The tone of some state news media also seemed to shift, to reflect the interests of those now in charge. “This is evidence of the return of the military police state in its worst form,” aid Mohamed Abdel-Razek, 28, who worked as a newscaster at Misr 25, a Brotherhood station.

The crackdown on the channels, carried out with well-orchestrated speed, was another sign of just how far Egypt’s Islamists had fallen. Having recently been among the most prominent voices on television, they struggled for days to be heard. When Egyptian television stopped covering their protests, the president’s supporters provided live streams on the Internet to show Egyptians their numbers.

Human rights activists condemned the closings and said they thought that the authorities, now under a spotlight, might cave to pressure. Most of the detained journalists have been released, but even so, the crackdown added a martial note to Egypt’s transition, seeming to undermine the military’s assertion that it intended to stay out of politics.

And, as violence erupted throughout the country, the shifting media landscape hardened the feeling that Egypt was inescapably stuck in the past. As in the uprising more than two years ago, when Hosni Mubarak was toppled, bridges became battlegrounds and the country counted new dead. Rumors were treated like fact before evaporating, leaving nothing but doubt.

As Mr. Morsi’s supporters dialed up their language against the army and Islamists were accused of deadly attacks, the military seemed able to count on wide latitude from the public to exert its control.

In another echo of the last revolt, the military started accusing foreign news media of spreading “misinformation” and, in at least one case, interfered with their work. During a live broadcast, soldiers stopped a CNN correspondent as he reported on clashes in downtown Cairo, and briefly confiscated a camera. After the BBC and other outlets reported that pro-Morsi protesters had been killed by soldiers outside the Republican Guard club, an unnamed military source told the state newspaper, Al Ahram, that “foreign media outlets” were “inciting sedition between the people and its army.”

Some private outlets have also thrown their weight behind Egypt’s new leaders. A reporter at one newspaper said that her editor had given his staff explicit instructions not to report on pro-Morsi demonstrations and to make sure that articles indicated that the perpetrators of violence were always Islamists.

The reporter requested anonymity, and her claims about the editor’s remarks could not be independently confirmed. A look at Saturday’s articles on the Web site of the newspaper seemed to corroborate her assertions.

The arrests and closings affected longtime journalists, producers and technicians, as well as firebrand clerics at some of the channels who were widely seen as engaging in hate speech and promoting violence.

The shift of power and changing tone of coverage were apparent on Wednesday, even as Egypt’s defense minister, Gen. Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi, prepared to go on television and announce the end of Mr. Morsi’s presidency. Millions of people had marched for days, demanding that result.

State television prepared the public for the earthquake, in soothing segments that made no mention of Mr. Morsi or the Brotherhood, which instead was referred to as “that group.” A host interviewed a retired general, who spoke about the central, critical role of Egypt’s military over decades. Clips of fighter jets screeching through the sky were played, as well as patriotic anthems.

During another interview, a legal expert discussed the question at the center of Egypt’s crisis: whether constitutional or popular legitimacy was more important. The expert explained that any ruler had to have the support of the people to succeed, bolstering the case that the military was about to make, that the people had spoken.

General Sisi had hardly finished his announcement when, at an office of Al Jazeera’s local affiliate in the Agouza neighborhood, men in civilian clothes carrying guns broke down the door, according to journalists who were there. They asked for identification but provided none of their own. They took mobile phones, computers and iPads â€" anything the journalists could use to communicate. Then they took the employees, and others there, downstairs, where police wagons and other men with guns were waiting.

The other stations were closed down at almost exactly the same moment, in what appeared to be a well-coordinated clampdown.

Events stoked the growing sense of victimhood among the president’s supporters at a demonstration in Nasr City, where the sudden loss of privilege was acutely felt. As journalists were warmly welcomed at the sit-in, there was no talk of Mr. Morsi’s own prosecutions of his opponents in the news media, which while less draconian, were just as selective. The protests were covered live by at least three of the shuttered stations, including the local Al Jazeera network, which was seen, like its Arabic-language parent, as sympathetic to Mr. Morsi and the Islamists. After the arrests, Palestinian networks carried the protests, and people shared videos online. Al Jazeera now has a camera back up at the site.

Seif el-Bgeegy, a 29-year-old plumber who helps guard the protests and is responsible for cameras at the site, said that the images would be protected by “millions” of the president’s supporters inside.

“If they came in, they’d go to war with the masses,” he said.

Mayy El Sheikh and Ben Hubbard contributed reporting.

A version of this article appeared in print on July 7, 2013, on page A8 of the New York edition with the headline: Egypt’s New Leaders Press Media to Muzzle Dissent .

Conservatives’ Aggressive Ad Campaign Seeks to Cast Doubt on Health Law

WASHINGTON â€" Though many of its rules will not take effect for months, President Obama’s health care law is already the subject of an aggressive advertising campaign by Republicans to sow doubts about how it will work.

In one of the largest campaigns of its kind, Americans for Prosperity, a conservative advocacy group financed by Charles and David Koch, will begin running television commercials this week asserting that the law will limit Americans’ health care choices.

The group is spending more than $1 million on the campaign, which will initially include television advertising in Ohio and Virginia, along with online ads asking people to test their “Obamacare risk factors.”

Republicans have staked much of their near-term political success on the bet that the health care overhaul will be unpopular with Americans as it is implemented in a process that they have warned will be chaotic and frustrating. Many Republicans in Congress have said they would push to repeal the law.

So far, the persistent criticism of the law has served the party well with its base. Now, Republicans hope it will resonate with swing voters the party needs to recover from its losses last year.

In a significant strategic shift, Americans for Prosperity is carefully aiming its new campaign at one of those voting blocs: young women.

“How do I know my family is going to get the care they need?” asks a young mother of two who stars in a commercial, the first in a series that Americans for Prosperity plans to expand to as many as seven states. “Can I really trust the folks in Washington with my family’s health care?”

The ads will be broadcast on cable and network television during programs popular with women like the Food Network cooking competition “Chopped,” “Law & Order: SVU” and “Good Morning America.” Mr. Obama’s political group, Organizing for Action, started running ads of its own last month that promote the law’s benefits.

For months, Republicans have been sounding the alarm over impending job cuts by small-business owners, who say they will cut back on workers to avoid having to provide health insurance. And when the White House said last week that it would delay until 2015 the requirement that employers with more than 50 full-time workers provide their employees with health insurance, many conservatives immediately seized on the announcement as a sign that the law was already proving unmanageable.

The delay, announced after Americans for Prosperity had produced its ads, sent the group’s strategists back to the drawing board. They are now testing messages based on the idea that even the Obama administration acknowledges that the law is flawed.

“We think that once we incorporate the new bullet points about how the president is already delaying key aspects of the law, it will be even more effective,” said Tim Phillips, the group’s president.

Conservatives see the fight over the health care law as the defining political debate of the day. They believe it presents them with a rare opportunity to call the president’s leadership into question and raise doubts about the effects of his signature domestic policy achievement.

When Americans for Prosperity wrote the script for its new campaign, which Mr. Phillips described as an effort to “start softening the ground” ahead of the health care law’s implementation, the group wanted to avoid any personal attacks on the president. (The script mentions Mr. Obama’s name only in the context of “Obamacare,” for example.) Mr. Phillips said Americans for Prosperity tried to learn from the mistakes that conservative groups like his and the Romney campaign made in attacking the president last year.

“Too often we fell into a broad-based ideological argument, and I think we failed to get at ‘Look at what they’re doing and how it impacts you,’ ” he said. “I think where we win is on the impact of a specific policy.”

To that end, the online component of the ad campaign asks people to enter information like their age, gender and type of employer. It then generates various “risks,” like longer waits, delayed care and having to share “personal health information” with the Internal Revenue Service.

The Campaign Media Analysis Group at Kantar Media estimates that from 2010, when the law was signed, to 2015, $1 billion will be spent on ads that criticize or defend it. That includes ads for candidates who oppose the law. Half of the $1 billion has already been spent, the group said.

A version of this article appeared in print on July 7, 2013, on page A12 of the New York edition with the headline: Conservatives’ Aggressive Ad Campaign Seeks to Cast Doubt on Health Law .

A Sports Agent With Hollywood in His Blood

Monica Almeida/The New York Times

Casey Wasserman, shown at the Edie and Lew Wasserman Building at U.C.L.A., chose the sports world for making his mark.

PRETTY much forever, one question has hovered over Casey Wasserman: Would he ever be the power hitter that Grandpa Lew was?

Mr. Wasserman’s firm represents 1,300 athletes, triple its total six years ago.

It didn’t matter that Mr. Wasserman was considered a nice guy, something for which his grandfather, the super-scary agent and studio boss Lew Wasserman, was not especially known. When boys grow up in Hollywood as Casey did â€" rich, surrounded by celebrities, with V.I.P. concert tickets a phone call away â€" they often emerge as world-class jerks. Casey somehow came out a mensch.

Yes, that’s nice. But could Mr. Wasserman ever follow in his grandfather’s footsteps as a force in business, civic affairs and politics?

It is no longer a question.

Mr. Wasserman, 39, is chief executive of the Wasserman Media Group, a sports-focused management and marketing firm. Founded 11 years ago, this $150 million business is now one of the largest sports agencies in the world, negotiating lucrative television and endorsement deals and handling naming rights for billion-dollar complexes, including MetLife Stadium in New Jersey. Nike, Pepsi and Microsoft are corporate clients, and individual clients include Derrick Rose of the Chicago Bulls and Andrew Luck of the Indianapolis Colts.

Astoundingly, Wasserman Media represented the No. 1 overall draft pick last year in five professional sports: men’s and women’s basketball, baseball, soccer and football. “There’s a sense of permanence about Casey,” said Adam Silver, the incoming commissioner of the N.B.A. “You know you are going to be dealing with him for a very long time.”

Mr. Wasserman has also become a big deal behind the scenes in his hometown. That new $116 million medical building at the University of California, Los Angeles? He had it built, with his foundation providing significant financing. A $300 million movie museum will soon rise on Wilshire Boulevard, a partnership of the Oscars organization and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, where he serves on the board. The alliance was his idea.

“I only see him growing in stature, and he’s already one of the most civically active philanthropists in the city,” said Antonio R. Villaraigosa, the former mayor of Los Angeles, citing the tens of millions of dollars that Mr. Wasserman and his foundation have funneled to the city’s beleaguered public school system. Mr. Wasserman also sits at the center of continued efforts to build a stadium that would bring the National Football League back to the Los Angeles after an 18-year absence. “His influence extends far beyond what you see on the surface,” Roger Goodell, the N.F.L. commissioner, said.

As for political influence, well, put it this way: Hillary Rodham Clinton likely did not have a two-hour breakfast with Mr. Wasserman a few weeks ago just to shoot the breeze. Mr. Wasserman is a trustee of the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation. He is also a significant Democratic donor and fund-raiser.

IT’S a big and wide-ranging portfolio, but perhaps not a surprising one given the head start he received at birth. Mention Mr. Wasserman’s success around Los Angeles, and some eyes will roll, conveying the sentiment: “What did you expect?”

Mr. Wasserman, whom GQ once called “a kosher Kennedy,” without question had a privileged upbringing. At 10, he helped carry the torch at the Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. At 12, he flew to Ohio to be a Cleveland Browns ball boy. At 18, when he wanted to go to a sold-out Guns N’ Roses concert, his grandfather told him to call David Geffen, one of Hollywood’s biggest power brokers. (“Slash was sweating on my head,” Mr. Wasserman said, recalling how close to the stage his seats were.) At 19, he worked as a production assistant on the hit television series “Murder, She Wrote,” which was taped at Universal, where his grandfather was chairman.

He inherited many important relationships from his grandfather, who died in 2002, including the one with the Clintons. “Casey has a keen intellect and a strong desire to make a difference in both business and society,” Bill Clinton said in an e-mail.

But ne’er-do-well heirs crash and burn all the time proving that access to money and power does not preordain success. Yes, Lew Wasserman lavished attention on his daughter’s son. Every Saturday or Sunday morning for 25 years, he took Casey to Nate n’ Al, a Beverly Hills delicatessen, for matzo brei and a life lesson. But the student had to be willing to learn, and to maintain and expand the relationships he inherited.

“Growing up with means gives a person one important thing, which is the ability to make choices,” Mr. Wasserman said last month as he lounged in his Gulfstream V en route to Los Angeles from Philadelphia. He took a sip of vegan black bean soup and glanced at a TV tuned to the N.B.A. finals.

“Good choices or bad,” he said, clearing his throat, “those are all on me.”

SPORTS was a very specific choice for Mr. Wasserman. He said Hollywood felt too incestuous â€" a place where, he says, he knew he could never “make a reputation” that was his own. Though not an athlete himself, aside from tennis in high school, he found himself fascinated by the business side of sports from an early age.

“I wasn’t the kid who cried if my team lost,” he said. “I was the kid who wanted to know what was going on in the front office after the game.”

His first business was a success. Mr. Wasserman and a childhood friend, the fashion designer James Perse, started a T-shirt and hat company while attending U.C.L.A., from which Mr. Wasserman graduated in 1996 with a political science degree.

A version of this article appeared in print on July 7, 2013, on page BU1 of the National edition with the headline: A Sports Agent With Hollywood in His Blood .