One question for The New York Times, do these kids in this photograph have names?
Sometimes when I look at American news coverage I think “New York Times just don’t get it.” Democracy in Egypt is more than Egypt’s young being on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google while smoking camel cigarettes. It is more than Egypt’s youth being nameless, positioned as just being an ‘advertisement’ for an American-owned computer company.
If you’re a reporter and the angle of your news coverage is ‘Egypt and human rights and defined by a democratic process’ then basic human rights begins with bothering to get peoples names when photographing people around this issue. When subjects have a name, they suddenly become human. In the New York Times coverage though, American owned social network company names, are more important to be named then the faces of Egypt’s struggle.
For Egyptian youth, it’s not about being on social network sites that is ‘democracy’ that will serve them into a future. It is about the right to earn minimum wage or above – especially too for the 20% of teenagers who live below the world’s poverty line in the entire nation of Egypt (16 million). It is about billionaires (politicians and their friends) not milking national assets (oil, gold, natural gas) into their own wallets. It’s not just about getting kids addicted to the internet so American multinational corporates can acquire these kids on their drip!
That infuriates me about people who rarely travel (70% of Americans don’t yet even own a passport) and who just assume that to be like an American teen is a sign of progress or democracy. Maybe it is? Yet, these kids would also have to watched 34 hours of television (on average) per week, to also have a sense of ‘democracy’ too the American multi-media corporates way, if they were to go that route.
Photocaption – In-Cairo, [unnamed] Egyptian youths used laptops to post video they had shot earlier Tuesday in Tahrir Square. The [nameless] group had been collecting accounts of the demonstrations and voices of the protestors, putting them on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter.
We must move beyond using Egypt’s people as a nameless backdrop to make ourselves look democratic. Being democratic is naming subjects in photographs you run stories about. Basic journalism in a democratic nation skills 101. When it comes to Mid-East stories, The New York Times appears not to have these skills. Alright… I’m going to have another coffee. With EXTRA honey in it. Maybe that will sweeten my tone up a bit today.
In News, David D. Kirikpatrick writes: “Although broadly committed to a transition, the Obama administration was trying to influence many of the details. Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. called Mr Suleiman to ask him to lift the 30-year emergency law that the government has used to suppress and imprison opposition leaders, to stop imprisoning protestors and journalists, and to invite demonstrators to help develop a specific timetable for opening up the political process. He also asked Mr. Suleiman to open talks on Egypt’s political future to a wider range of opposition members.”
~Posted by Horiwood.Com, Hollywood California USA. 2.9.11~
One Response to DEMOCRACY IS MORE THAN EGYPT’S “NAMELESS” YOUNG USING GOOGLE, FACEBOOK, TWITTER, YOUTUBE, APPLE COMPUTERS – NEW YORK TIMES 2.9.11