CAN A REVOLUTION HAPPEN IF NOBODY’S THERE TO REPORT IT?
Egypt no longer safe for journalists" writes GAWKER.
Diane Sawyer’s office compiled an ever-expanding list of reporters and photographers who were attacked, threatened and or detained in the last two days.
The New York Times wrote on Thursday:
No news organization seemed exempt from the rage, which escalated as the week wore on. Whether from Western or Arab media, television networks or wire services, newspapers or photo syndicates, journalists were chased through the streets and had their equipment stolen or smashed. Some were beaten so badly that they required hospital treatment.
ABC News reported that one of its crews was carjacked on Thursday and threatened with beheading. A Reuters journalist said a “gang of thugs” had stormed the news service’s office and started smashing windows. And four journalists from The Washington Post were detained by forces that they suspected were from the Interior Ministry. All four were released by early Friday. But two of them, the paper’s Cairo bureau chief and a photographer, had been ordered not to leave a local hotel.
“It appears that journalists are being targeted by the Egyptian authorities in a deliberate campaign of intimidation aimed at quashing honest, independent reporting of a transformational event,” said The Post’s foreign editor, Douglas Jehl.
Photographer, Andrew Burton, wrote about the attack on him:
I don’t know what happened to the men that protected me. I owe them my life, or something close to it. I don’t know what would have happened to me without them. This is my first time in a situation like this. I was incredibly lucky. Outside, numerous journalists, photographers and friends were beaten, had their cameras smashed, hurt badly. I got very lucky, very fucking lucky.
It’s now Thursday morning. No journalists I know are heading outside at the moment. TV is only showing footage from rooftops – no footage from on the ground. Reporters on the ground are giving live reports from their phones. I have no idea what is going to happen.