Throughout the past two months, Egyptians have felt that there is an international conspiracy against them. While such a feeling is not new to Arabs in general, what is new is that Egyptians and many Arabs were shocked at the Western media, which has long been thought of as being neutral and impervious to governments’ influence. The question has become: Why have Western media outlets taken this desperate position in support of the Muslim Brotherhood, to the extent of reversing the facts and taking things out of context? They have even lied about images, and some Western media outlets broadcast footage of the anti-Morsi demonstrations in front of the presidential palace, claiming they were pro-Morsi demonstrations in Rabia al-Adawiya!

At the end of the day, media institutions — even though being independent and privately owned, are a part of the economic, political and intellectual structure of the state in which they operate. The interests and profits of these outlets are affected by and fluctuate according to the interests of the state. Therefore, these outlets often take their clues from subtle signals embedded in the administration’s official position. At the end of the day, journalists are people who belong — both emotionally and pragmatically — to the same set of interests. It is vital for them to be close to decision-makers, because the latter are important news sources.

June 30 revealed that the US administration and Western media had very hard time accepting the idea of removing former President Mohammed Morsi and ending Muslim Brotherhood rule through popular demonstrations. The logic was, if the opposition could mobilize millions in demonstrations, why could it not do the same in elections, obtain a majority in parliament, form a government and force Morsi to change the Constitution in a few months’ time?  And despite that the June 30 demonstrations were the largest in the history of Egypt — and perhaps the largest in the history of the world — media coverage for these demonstrations was limited. Some foreign journalists could not contain themselves and personally recorded the magnitude of the crowds on their personal accounts on Twitter.

Aside from the conspiracy theory, it is important to understand why Egypt and the revolutionaries failed to gain the sympathy of world public opinion during this wave of the revolution. In general, the Western public does not like the army to interfere in politics, and is not used to the "crowd democracy" model for change, which prevailed in Egypt following the January 2011 Revolution, and possibly earlier.