I've been home sick in bed all afternoon with a horrible bug of some kind. Ugh. Been feeling bad for a week but today it finally caught up with me big time. But at least let me link to all of today's stories about Egypt's constitutional referendum crisis in the New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, National Review, Weekly Standard, CNN.com, FoxNews.com, and - for good measure - yesterday's Egypt-related questions at the State Department Daily Press Briefing. Oh. Ahem. Never mind. I wonder if Mubarak can stand this intense glare of American media scrutiny?
Friday morning update: the American media isn't the only place to point fingers. The major Saudi-owned media is also studiously ignoring Egyptian politics. Today, just like yesterday, neither al-Hayat nor al-Sharq al-Awsat has run an online story about the Egyptian constitutional crisis. In that time, al-Sharq al-Awsat has published only one column about it (Howeydi's); al-Hayat, none. And al-Arabiya's website has consistently avoided the topic; it was occasionally running one story down towards the bottom of the page about the confusion of the Egyptian opposition about whether to boycott, which is kind of a secondary issue all things considered and at any rate is now gone. It has plenty of space for a story about Jordanians arresting 23 Iraq Shia for proselytization and another on whether singer Sari al-Hani is as beautiful as the late Ismahan al-Atrash. It's hard to conclude anything other than that they are following official Saudi policy of backing Mubarak - which should be a prime lesson for anyone who believes that Saudi-owned media can ever be a reliable vehicle for pushing democratic reforms. Meanwhile, the American al-Hurra's headlines currently have no stories about Egypt. Al-Jazeera does.
Unbelievable.
Nobody gives a shit.
I just looked at the BBC "Middle East" agglomeration of news.
Nothing.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/default.stm
Posted by: Katie | March 22, 2007 at 05:50 PM
The Economist picked up on the story last week. Not exactly what you're looking for, but they do make many of the same points that you've been making.
http://www.economist.com/world/africa/displaystory.cfm?story_id=8861479
Posted by: Hubb | March 23, 2007 at 01:53 AM
Yes, the Economist has been great; as has been Foreign Policy magazine, the Time blog, some British papers, a few others... but not nearly enough to really focus any kind of sustained international attention, I'm afraid. You need the big American dailies and TV news to do that.
Posted by: aardvark | March 23, 2007 at 06:18 AM