Barely a week into the January 25 uprising that brought about the downfall of the Mubarak regime, Amin found herself torn between her job at Nile TV and her journalistic ethics. “I was away for the first five days [of the events]. I followed the news on the BBC [...] When I came home on the 30th and watched state TV I was shocked.

They were showing that things were calm. Even the pictures they showed from Tahrir […] were without sound. You couldn’t hear what the activists were demanding,” remembers Amin.

At first Amin tried to stay off air to avoid taking part in the coverup. “But then they said you’ve been away for a whole week, it’s time that you went on air. On February 2, I was on the air for one day only, and that was the day of the ‘battle of the camels.’

They tried to give me a press release to read. It was from the Interior Ministry and said these were [thugs that] the Muslim Brotherhood hired to cause unrest.

I refused to read it. I said, ‘I’m not reading this, it doesn’t make sense.’ It claimed that five people had died but that there had been no clashes. I said, ‘You know, we are supposed to be telling the world what is happening just three minutes away from the building.

And they [Nile TV management] said, ‘No, we have clear instructions not to mention it, don’t you dare,’” Amin recalls.

At the time, the person in charge of the news was not the editor in chief but a senior supervisor coordinating very closely with the then-head of the news sector, Abdelateef El Menawy. “[The editor] was getting her instructions from him, he was getting his instructions from the minister and from the interior minister and from the president directly,” claims Amin.

“I called the new minister that Mubarak appointed on air, and I asked him, ‘What are you going to do?’ He said, ‘I promise change.’

Then I said, ‘We’ve been waiting 30 years and nothing has happened, why should we believe that now?’ The new minister answered on air, ‘Are you sure this is Egyptian television?’ I [ended the call] and stormed out of the studio.

Angry as she was, Amin had no intention at the time of leaving Nile TV for good. “When I left I didn’t tell a soul, because I didn’t know I wasn’t going back.

The next day I decided no, I can’t do this. I sent a message to my editor saying ‘Forgive me, I’m not coming back, I’m on the side of the people.’” Her bold move sparked waves of support from the street and garnered much media attention.

It was only after former President Mubarak was deposed and things started looking up that Amin considered returning to Nile TV. “I was offered the Hilary Clinton interview from the State Department, but I [had] nowhere to air it. The embassy suggested I go back to my program.

I thought it was a fabulous idea, [especially] when I saw there was more freedom in the media, and that they were [giving more space to] the opposition.

I [decided] I would go back, not as the deputy head of the channel, not as a news reader because somebody else writes the news and I have no control over the content, but as a [producer] because I would produce [the program] myself.”

So in early April, Amin went back to El Menawy, who told her, “You can come back, but you must know nothing has changed, I’m still getting directives.

At first, I got them from the presidency and the minister, now I’m getting them from somewhere else.

” He didn’t say where, but Amin presumes the now-ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF). He also told her, “I’m government-employed.”

Despite the revolution, Amin says Nile TV still has almost no freedom to report. “Nile TV is basically the same people with the same mind-set, working from press releases.

They don’t go out to get the story themselves, hardly. And they copy and paste from the wires. They don’t even rewrite the story. We need a change in the editorial policy, definitely.

Journalists need training. But also, hiring people still depends strongly on connections. There is still favoritism.” Today, Amin is a freelance contributor at CNN and a program presenter at Nile TV.

“I do a show once a week and I do it from outside the building [Nile TV headquarters]. I don’t even go into the building. I record it with the guests outside because nobody talks to me at the channel.

They consider me a whistle-blower and that I made them look bad.” Asked if she still gets comments from the head of the channel or censors, Amin answers: “They didn’t talk to me to begin with.

But when I broke the story of the virginity tests on CNN on May 31, I got a senior military general to admit that the virginity tests had, in fact, been conducted. For two months the military had been denying that this has happened.

When I interviewed an Amnesty International researcher on Nile TV, he claimed, ‘Human rights violations today are worse than they were under Mubarak.’ I had to go to SCAF for [a counter-]interview to see what they had to say if [I was serious about] airing this on TV.

When I went back to the senior military official [who asked to remain anonymous] and told him SCAF had been accused of conducting virginity tests and if he could confirm this, he answered, ‘These aren’t your daughters or mine.

These are girls who camped out in Tahrir.’ Now, whenever I’m working on a show, my boss tells Mervat Mohsen, who is number three in the channel, [to review it in case I’m] mentioning SCAF. She wants her to watch my program before it’s aired.”

On a far more personal level, Amin reveals she has been warned about being outspoken. “I got a threat on Facebook that said, ‘Focus on your family now or you risk losing EVERYTHING’ in bold letters.

I’d rather not say who sent me the threat, but people need to know that journalists are still getting threats of defamation and are still being persecuted.” et