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Believe it or not, St. Valentine’s Day was not created by the people who sell chocolates, flowers and strange jewelry. And, believe it or not, the rites that used to be celebrated in churches on Feb. 14 focused on a hero and martyr, not the alleged patron saint of lovers.
Events in Egypt roll on and, of course, journalists and diplomats are all trying to figure out what is up with the Muslim Brotherhood and it’s potential role in the new secular or Islamic state of Egypt. In other words, will a democratic process lead to an Islamic republic?
CNN’s Reliable Sources from Sunday details some of the general problems or opportunities with media coverage in Egypt. Host Howard Kurtz and his guests discuss everything from Al Jazeera being shut down in Egypt to how reporters are dodging bullets with protesters being felled all around. The closure of foreign bureaus means that those hungry for news have been tuning into Al Jazeera English, which focuses on Middle East coverage. Tmatt already looked at one ghost in the coverage — the fate of Egypt’s Christian community.
We’ve had many days of protests and the conditions are dramatically different now than even yesterday. Protesters, police and military are on the streets of cities throughout Egypt, despite a curfew and unbelievable crackdown on communications. News outlets are reporting that their staff are being beaten up, arrested, or thwarted in their attempts to get the news published and broadcast. There was a surreal moment when Al Jazeera was broadcasting while police were trying to shut them down. Reuters reports that more than 400 have been wounded, some with bullets.
Over the years, I have made a number of trips south of the U.S. border with short-term mission groups, both with my church and as a reporter for The Associated Press and The Christian Chronicle.
Anti-government protests are shaking Egypt right now. It’s incredibly hard to get good information about what is going on there since the U.S.-backed Mubarak government (we give them over $1.3 billion annually, I believe) has shut down social media and regular media. Here’s just one recent example:
This is one of those religion stories that, on one level, sounds perfectly logical to one set of readers. At the same time, other people may read the same story and want to laugh to keep from crying or, in a few cases, readers may want to laugh, then cry, then bash their heads into a wall.
More than a few GetReligion readers dropped us a line or two to mention the Foreign Policy report about a recent Seymour Hersh speech. The Washington Post took interest in the speech, too. Here’s how reporter Paul Farhi covered it in his article “Hersh rebuked on ‘crusaders’:
When you think of someone doing right by the Church of Cyprus, you probably don’t think of Boy George. And yet there he was, returning an icon he’d bought (without realizing its origin) in 1985, years after the Turkish invasion. The BBC writes:
