By Maggie Fick and Munir El-Boweti

CAIRO (Reuters) - "The army and people, one hand!" was the rallying cry of jubilant masses of Egyptians in Cairo's Tahrir Square on the night Hosni Mubarak fell, and again last Wednesday, when the army overthrew elected President Mohamed Mursi.

It resonates loud and clear in state media that have quickly gone "on message", as they had been for 16 tumultuous months of military rule following the 2011 uprising that toppled Mubarak.


Troops are still present in the building four days later.


They included the Muslim Brotherhood-owned Egypt 25.

Security forces arrested several dozen employees of the stations. Among those raided was Qatar-based Al Jazeera's Egyptian news channel, which military sources accused of broadcasting "incitement". It remained on air.



Those images were layered with others invoking national pride: the pyramids; Egypt's "victory" in crossing the Suez Canal in the 1973 war with Israel; and flag-waving masses thronging Cairo's Tahrir Square in the uprising against Mubarak.

The day after Mursi's removal, Nile TV and state radio suddenly hosted studio guests who railed against the Brotherhood as "enemies of the people" and cast Islamist supporters of the elected president as instigators of violence.



"Every editor-in-chief at national newspapers is treading water, waiting for the new regime and its policies to crystallize and taking into account that the armed forces have a stance to be reckoned with," Attiya Eissawi, managing editor at state-run Al-Ahram told Reuters.



Although journalists from a state-run TV station and a state-run newspaper said they had not yet received direct orders from the military since it removed Mursi, activists say such a move would be consistent with the army's policies towards the media under previous governments.

"The military has always tightly controlled state media coverage of anything related to them, whether positive or negative," said Heba Morayef, Egypt director at Human Rights Watch. "A return to that is not too difficult."




State-employed journalists went on strike to demand the removal of Mursi's information minister, Salah Abdel-Maqsoud.





"This time, they don't need to," the journalist said, citing huge popular support for the military's toppling of Mursi.




"We have always tried to cover different events happening around the country, and our split-screen coverage shows this," said Karim El-Assiuti, denying the charge of partiality.

"Unfortunately, the Egyptian media is only presenting one picture of what's happening now. It's the picture of those who want the military government," said Abdel Aziz Mujaahed, one of 29 Mubasher Misr staff members, including the station's general manager, who were arrested on Wednesday.


Gehad El-Haddad, a Brotherhood spokesman described Egyptian journalists as "fiction writers". In a telephone interview from the pro-Mursi sit-in, he said Egyptian media were not reporting a crackdown that had killed dozens of people since the takeover.

"The state is taking a side, the army is taking a side, national television is taking a side. Does anyone see how crazy this is?" Haddad asked.

The Muslim Brotherhood's political arm said the state-owned printing press refused to print its newspaper - Freedom and Justice - for two days after Mursi's removal, but the paper was back on some newsstands on Saturday.



"Under the Brotherhood, people didn't watch state television. Now it has come back to the people. Since the June 30 revolution, it is reflecting the reality of the Egyptian street," said Ahmed Sherif, 59, who works for a tourism company.

"State TV reflected politics that did not match those of the people," agreed Mohamed Said, 48, a barber, sitting outside his shop reading Al-Ahram.

(Additional reporting by Shadia Nasralla and Paul Taylor; Writing by Maggie Fick; Editing by Paul Taylor and Will Waterman)