Reporter's first person account in Egypt: "You will be lynched" | Hacker News Reader

Reporter's first person account in Egypt: "You will be lynched"

bloomberg.com

68 pointstsycho15 comments

This constant cry of "they are attacking and threatening us" from reporters is getting annoying.

Stop making this about you.

The thugs are attacking EVERYONE against keeping him in power. The cellphone companies all gave in and allowed the government to send out mass text messages to coordinate them. They are being bussed in from who knows where (because it's not being reported!) Reporters are easy targets because your cameraperson is lugging around that huge "look at me" camera. Why do you expect thugs to be nice to you?

Do the reporters think they will get special treatment? What about all the innocent people who aren't throwing stones and are getting far more seriously hurt than any reporter?

Reporters are observers. Get the heck out of the way and simply report if you want the job of being a reporter.

The attack on reporters is nothing special or unique to Egypt or non-democracies, it happens every year at the Republican and Democratic National Conventions right here in the USA. Sometimes even by the police.

Attacks on reporters is worthy of cover because it is often done to drive reporters away so that no one will know when things go really ugly.

Yes I agree the reporters should try to be on the scene.

But they should not immerse themselves in the scene.

Now there are thugs coming into the hotels and harassing them, that's news because they are being targeted. But when they walk into the crowd of thugs and get beat up, they are making the news about themselves.

So reporters should just stay in their hotels? That's where the real story is taking place, not on the streets?

No that's not what I said or meant.

Walking into the middle of the crowd of thugs and holding a mic/camera to them and asking why they are being violent, and then getting beaten by them, that's purposely making yourself part of the story and you can't pretend to be surprised.

But interviewing someone on the scene who was hurt by the thugs is being a reporter. Injecting yourself in the middle of the fight and knowing you are likely to get beaten is making yourself part of the story and not proper reporting.

Which do you think is proper reporting during a hurricane? Interviewing someone whose home was just flattened for what their experience was and now means to them OR setting up a camera and filming yourself jumping out into 100mph winds to get blown away?

What a stupid analogy. You can't interview a hurricane. But you can interview the people involved in a revolution. Isn't that a reporter's job?

Reporters were even getting trouble for putting cameras on their hotel balcony.

If reporters carry the same fate as the crowd they are in, its not what the news should be (The news should be about what hapenned to the crowd, the reporter's experience is just to help people relate to the event). In this case, they were attacked specificaly, not because they were part of the crowd but because they were reporters.

The author wrote early on in the article "It happened not because I was a reporter", so while I can see your point in general, it's not particularly relevant to this article.

The fact that, in some cases, reporters are being directly targeted is however of real importance. Not because something is worse when it happens to a reporter than when it happens to one of the protestors, but because of what it signifies.

It signifies a mixture of two things, which are Mubarak supporters being mislead by propaganda into blaming reporters for what is going on, and also the fact that Mubarak is doing everything he can to prevent free press.

I don't know how much of each of them is in play, could be just one or the other, though I suspect it's around 50/50. Mubarak has shown he has no problem using violence to try and improve his situation, and he's shown in numerous ways that he doesn't like the reporters who aren't state-controlled, so it's not a huge leap of assumption to think that he is encouraging his supporters to attack reporters.

"It happens every year ... in the USA"

Not promoted by the White House in order to try and prevent the country from understanding what is going on. THAT is why this is relevant, not because we have to care more about reporters.

Actually, every year congress votes itself huge security funds for the conventions of the two parties. They bring about the harassing environments by purposely isolating themselves and having a ridiculous police-to-protester ratio.

Back to "freedom of the press" for a moment, there isn't a single arabic nation that has that. Not saying it's right, but it certainly isn't a surprise to walk around among thugs and be harassed and threatened. If they are trying to prove the thugs are thugs, well we already knew that from all the video from the previous few days.

To me it smacks of the idiot weatherpeople who have to go stand out in a hurricane to prove it's windy. Every darn year, every darn storm, every network throws someone into danger saying "ooh look at us, we are in danger, but don't do what we are doing".

And indeed, these seemingly racism-infused attacks seem to be just what has happened to plenty of other members of international press covering this event in the flesh. Just two days ago a Swedish reporter, Bert Sundström, was abducted by a mob loyal to the Mubarak regime. Stabbed several times in the abdomen and the back, and with blunt force injuries to the head, he survived with the help of protesters who escorted him to one of the hospitals in Cairo where his condition was stabilized. Before abandoning Bert to die, the Mubarak-faithful captors responded to a telephone call made to his cellphone by one of Sweden's national television broadcasters, "Your man is with the Egyptian government, with the military. If you sons of whores want him then come get him".

(pardon for commenting on this non-hackery news entry)

What do you mean racism-infused attacks? Mubarak goons attacked al-Arabiya and al-Jazeera reporters.

Was it Europeans that were run over with tanks, trucks and camels and being shot and stabbed?

P.S. The author of this Bloomberg article is herself Egyptian: "I held onto my backpack, with my Egyptian ID card"

"Egyptian state television has actively tried to foment the unrest by reporting that “Israeli spies” have infiltrated the city – which explains why many of the gangs who attack reporters shout “yehudi!” (“Jew!”)."

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/03/latest-updates-o...

(To be taken with a grain of salt obviously. But interesting to note this comes from the government)

Accusations of treason and espionage is as old as revolution itself. It's partly the regime spreading disinfo, partly the goons incapable of justifying their amoral acts, and then partly the Saddat-Mubarak regime unable to imagine any sort of spine, much less disobedience, is left in this People which it has so totally dominated.

So they point their fingers outward at the nearest boogymen.

http://yfrog.com/h4fmiaj

Translation:

""Foreign powers are planing to incite the you tomorrow in Tahreer Square, amidst the huge gatherings, and wants to attack the Egyption military and forcing it to retaliate, which will pave the way for foreign powers to come here in the name of peace-keeping in Egypt. Because of that, it's the responsibility of all the Eygptians not to go to Tahreer Square tomorrow, so the Egyptian Military is able to find the traitors, and arrest these elements. So, we ask you in the name of God not to gather tomorrow in Tahreer Square after the Friday prayers"

It evokes all the favorite talking points of a lying scoundrel: God, home-land and a benevolent military (all imaginary, imo.)

I refer to the age old phenomenon accompanying almost every occasion of conflict and turmoil, where hostile parties develop a... how to put it... instinctive form of xenophobia and heightened suspicion towards strangers. It's a known fact that foreign tourists and reporters are statistically proven to be popular targets of sporadic acts of violence in countries suffering domestic discord.

If you're accusing me of blaming the Egyptian people per se as being generally racist then you're off on a limb. That wasn't what I was trying to allude.

Of course I didn't accuse you of racism; I have 51 other cards to turn to before I pull out the 'R'. It's just, in Egypt today, everyone was a target for a paid mob hired by despicable thief.

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