Egypt
Journalists continue to report despite attacksPosted Feb 4 2011
Journalists have not escaped unscathed during political protests in Egypt this week. “Reporters in Cairo faced a second day of violent intimidation and government detention on Friday even as dozens of foreign journalists and rights advocates were still being detained,” reported the New York Times
Newsrooms were forced to shut down and Al Jazeera Arabic’s Cairo office was set on fire, according to the New York Times story, though the “new attacks did not appear as widespread as they were a day before, when a coordinated campaign of media intimidation hit its peak.”
On Wednesday, Feb. 2, Reporters Without Borders publicly condemned the “shocking attacks on BBC, Al Jazeera, CNN, Al-Arabiya and ABC News journalists by Mubarak supporters who were reportedly accompanied my plainclothes police.”
The Committee to Protect Journalists echoed Reporters Without Borders in condemning these attacks. “The systematic and sustained attacks documented by CPJ leave no doubt that a government-orchestrated effort to target the media and suppress the news is well under way,” said CPJ Executive Director Joel Simon, as quoted on the website. “With this turn of events, Egypt is seeking to create an information vacuum that puts it in the company of the world’s worst oppressors, countries such as Burma, Iran and Cuba.”
Simon added: “We hold President Mubarak personally responsible for this unprecedented action and call of the Egyptian government to reverse course immediately.”
On Thursday, Feb. 3, Reporters Without Borders published a list on its website of known incidents involving journalists with a clarification that the list is not exhaustive. They reported 26 journalists attacked, four cases of confiscated material, one media office attacked, three journalists disappeared, 19 arrested or kidnapped and one journalist in a coma.