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For more than a week now, the mainstream press has been wrestling with the events in Egypt. It’s safe to say that this is the biggest news story, period, on planet Earth right now. I mean, other than Super Bowl XLV.
The drama in Egypt is rolling on and on, which means that journalists in local newsrooms across America are doing that thing that we do — we search for local angles on the stories.
I don’t know about you, but the following paragraph from an Atlantic Monthly blog post by White House correspondent Marc Ambinder left me amazed, confused and then ticked off:
Since your GetReligionistas went pretty ga-ga the other day while celebrating post No. 6,000, I think it is wise to try to stay calm while noting that today — Feb. 1 — marks the site’s seventh birthday. I mean, 10 people left comments to celebrate that previous landmark! Nevertheless, we plunged ahead and did a podcast to mark the event, too.
It is very ironic that one of the only mainstream news-media reports I have read about the plight of Coptic believers in Egypt was in the Baltimore Sun and it centered on the insights of people in — wait for it — Baltimore.
It goes without saying that — as an Eastern Orthodox Christian — I have been trying to keep up with the news coverage of the rapidly unfolding events in Egypt.
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.
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:
If you are a consumer who truly loves books (and libraries, and news magazines, etc.), that recent A1 Washington Post news feature on the death dive of the Borders bookstore chain was a real eyeopener. Grab a box of tissues and read it, including this shot of reality:
