Violence Against Journalists In Cairo; Pro-Mubarak Forces Hostile To Press

Katie Couric says it’s not safe for reporters to be out among the protesters and Lara Logan says the Egyptian military stopped a CBS crew from taping and marched them back to their hotel at gunpoint.

“When our crew went out to film beauty shots early this morning with no idea the situation was now different, they were confronted by soldiers and plainclothes agents … intimated and bullied and in fact marched at gunpoint through the streets all the way back to our hotel,” Logan said. “It was a very frightening experience, one that was repeated throughout the day for us.”

Logan said that the crew is basically “trapped in our hotel room.”

“We can go out without cameras, but even then we are being watched everywhere that we go and we are being confronted,” she said. “We are definitely being prevented from telling the story. People are increasingly afraid to talk to us.”

Other media outlets are reporting similar experiences.

CNN’s Anderson Cooper tweeted that he was kicked and punched repeatedly.

“Had to escape. Safe now,” he wrote.

…

New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof tweeted “Pro-#Mubarak thugs at #Tahrir v hostile to journalists. Several journalists attacked. I was threatened but am fine.”

Kristof wrote that pro-Mubarak crowds were “armed with machetes, straight-razors and clubs, very menacing.”

“It’s difficult to know what is happening, and I’m only one observer, but to me these seem to be organized thugs sent in to crack heads, chase out journalists, intimidate the pro-democracy forces and perhaps create a pretext for an even harsher crackdown,” Kristof blogged for The New York Times.

The Associated Press reports that two of its correspondents were roughed up, and that a Belgian journalist was “beaten, detained and accused of spying by unidentified people in civilian clothes.”

Four Israeli journalists were arrested by Egyptian military police in Cairo, the Jerusalem Post reported. Three of those arrested work for Channel 2 and the fourth is from Nazareth.

By: Alan

Alan Colmes is the publisher of Liberaland.