Saturday, February 12, 2011

Getting the News from Egypt

Congratulations to the people of Egypt who changed their government through largely nonviolent protest! They are an inspiration to the world.

This is a reflective post about the way I have been getting news and information about Egypt.

My main source of news has been NPR. Listening to All Things Considered, On The Media, Fresh Air and occasionally the hourly news updates, I learned about the protests from well-trained journalists and experts. Most of the interviews on these shows were with academics or people who have had direct experience in Egypt. Accessible interviews with scholars are one of the things I value most about NPR. I think our tax dollars should certainly support this important form of news analysis distribution. (Please sign the petition at http://pol.moveon.org/nprpbs/?rc=fb.taf.alt.5 if you agree.)

Democracy Now! has also had intensive live coverage of the events. I tuned into the program a couple times this past week to get up to date information and listen to interviews with experts. Senior Producer Sharif Abdel Kouddous gave reports from a studio near Tahrir Square. Though I didn't tune into any live video, I think Democracy Now! was webcasting live from Cairo.


Similarly, Al Jazeera English had a live video-feed from Tahrir Square through its website. I'm tuned there now. They are analyzing the role of social media in the Egyptian revolution and reading Tweets.




Yesterday, I went to the New York Times website to look up an arts and culture review, and I was sidetracked by an article on the latest news from Egypt.

This morning, I turned on my TV, which is almost always tuned to Channel 1, NHK. This is where I heard of Mubarak's resignation (辞任). After some local news and the weather, the broadcast turned to an analysis of the events in Egypt. With a table discussion of journalists and Egypt experts, they discussed Mubarak's resignation and the events of the past three weeks. One reporter explained the role of facebook in the revolution using a cartoonish diagram in the shape of a pyramid with hieroglyphic-type symbols. (Charts and graphs like this are typical of Japanese TV and news.)

On gmail, my friend's status read "LOVE TO THE EGYPTIANS!" I chatted her, and she sent me a website with translated protest signs from the revolution. She found it on a friend's facebook site, and my partner told me she was getting most of her news about Egypt from friends' facebook posts.

The importance of the events in Egypt and the quality of the media coverage of the revolution gave me pause to stop and think about where I get my information. These sources generally confirmed and corroborated the basic facts of one another, and I took comfort in receiving mostly valid information from these well-established news organizations. The images from each source, however, differed slightly. For example, Democracy Now! showed graphic images of the wounded. They also featured an extended speech in English by a physician who had been at the forefront of the protests and was encouraging his fellow demonstrators to proceed fearlessly. NHK had images and voices of individual protesters, who appeared mostly angry to me, but the commentators said, "They look so happy, don't they?" (嬉しそうですね!)(Am I socialized as an American to find images of Arab mobs scary and angry? I'm no Islamaphobe, but I should be aware of my own social conditioning. I really did find the people's facial expressions angry, even if they were voicing their happiness and excitement about Mubarak's resignation.) The image which will stick with me for a long time is the overhead view of Tahrir square overflowing with protestors. The website of translated protest signs featured portrait-like images of the signs and people holding them. I was struck by the variety of faces, from a cosmopolitan-looking young woman with a headscarf and sunglasses to a middle-aged man with a dark, wizened face, a lazy eye and several scars. The images of "cool" young Egyptians taking pictures with their cell phones and gathering in the streets also seemed to predominate many of the Western sources I tuned into.

Finally, the languages of the coverage also caught my attention. Most of the media from NPR, Democracy Now! and the New York Times was in English, including interviews with protestors and experts. There was little or no Arabic. NHK, however, used footage of the protestors speaking in Arabic with translated subtitles in Japanese. These are some of my observation about how these various media sources painted the story with their own news-brand's shade of truth.

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