| CNN hit the ground running for its coverage of the January 25 Revolution By Hana Zuhair |
| On January 25, CNN’s Cairo correspondent Ben Wedeman thought it would be a normal day. He only started to realize the gravity of the situation after he received a phone call informing him that tear gas was being fired at pro-democracy protesters in Tahrir Square. In the days that followed, CNN, like many other news organizations, realized the significance of the situation, and all eyes turned to Egypt.“This was the moment when I realized that this was not another demonstration, but perhaps the beginning of the end of this regime. We went to Tahrir Square and we saw the demonstrators push the police back to Kasr El-Aini. I was on the phone reporting this to CNN, then CNN sort of woke up and realized, this was not a normal day in Cairo,” says Wedeman. “This was the beginning of something very big, that was my wake-up moment in covering this story.” Wedeman was right. During the 18 days that followed, Egypt captured the world’s attention in an unprecedented manner. The revolution was the hottest topic on the news. American broadcasting giant CNN, as anecdotal evidence suggests, became one of the most widely followed English-speaking networks in Egypt during that period. As state-owned television channels spread what later turned out to be false information and misleading images to downplay numbers of pro-democracy protesters — perhaps in an effort to influence public opinion — people’s mistrust in them grew. As a result, Egyptians started to turn to other news organizations such as Al Jazeera, Al Arabiya and CNN in search of unbiased coverage. According to CNN’s official website, the network sent seven crews to cover the Egyptian revolution, “gathering material for all CNN worldwide platforms.” And of the seven correspondents, Wedeman, who was CNN’s Cairo bureau chief from 1998 to 2006 and reposted here since 2009, became one of the most widely recognized by CNN followers during this juncture. For international journalists, covering the revolution became much more difficult after several official speeches accusing “foreign elements” of manipulating the protests. ABC News correspondent Christiane Amanpour reported on the American channel’s blog that she and her crew were surrounded for nearly an hour by angry pro-Mubarak supporters as she was on her way to interview then Vice-President Omar Suleiman, and ultimately then-President Hosni Mubarak at the presidential palace. Other journalists were attacked in their hotel rooms and had their equipment confiscated. CNN’s Anderson Cooper was hit in the head while near the square. Wedeman’s camera was taken from him in one of the demonstrations, and he never got it back. As the government cracked down on media, inevitably foreign journalists became part of the story, sometimes stealing the thunder from the “real story,” the revolution itself. Adel Iskandar a professor at George Washington University’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, says that the attack on Cooper, for instance, definitely became the story for a while. He also adds that CNN might have taken advantage of it to increase the popularity of its reporters. But Iskandar also praised the network’s efforts: “Covering Egypt became more about name recognition and scooping other networks than telling the story. Nevertheless, given their field presence, CNN definitely stood out as the more reasonable voice among a cadre of largely disconnected, misinformed and underfunded American media.” Iskandar also notes that CNN successfully refrained from focusing on portraying the revolution as religiously triggered, compared to other American channels. “By the second week of the revolution, CNN had essentially committed themselves to the demands of the protesters, which was a far stretch from the largely apprehensive American networks that were obsessed with the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood.” Wedeman says that facing danger is part of his job, not the actual story. The real story in his mind was always about the power of the people. As a long-term observer of the region, Wedeman had always wondered if the Egyptian regime would ever fall, so he was thoroughly fascinated by the events he was covering: “Everything that followed [January 25] blew my mind […] I don’t think any of us ever imagined that in 18 days they could bring down the regime ruling for 30 years.” |
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