CAIRO: British journalist Robert Fisk has alleged that the international news bureaus with offices in Cairo have bowed to pressure from the Egyptian government and US embassy when covering stories about torture.
In his Saturday article for The Independent titled ‘The truth about the Middle East is buried beneath the headlines’, Fisk asserted that international news agencies cited international human rights groups regarding torture in Egypt rather than investigating it themselves due to fears that the bureau might be closed down.
Fisk wrote that “almost all Cairo-datelined coverage of police savagery in Egypt contains only reports on London-issued protests from Amnesty or Human Rights Watch, followed by the necessary Egyptian condemnation of the human rights groups. In other words, the investment in such Western news bureau has now become more important than the news for which the original investment was made.
Additionally, news bureaus in Cairo contained spies from the intelligence services, who were known to their superiors but could not be dismissed.
“As usual, the Egyptian Mukhabarat security agencies inserted their own lads into the bureau – or blackmailed Egyptian reporting staff – to spy on the journalistic output. All bureau chiefs in Cairo know who their local spies are. But, of course, they can’t dismiss them, Fisk wrote.
He also mentioned one incident about a reporter for Time magazine who was doing a story on torture in Egypt but “the US ambassador in Cairo persuaded the bureau chief to hold off because he understood that Mubarak was going to ‘crack down’ on such abuses. Ho ho! Time didn’t run the story and, of course, the abuses got worse. Shortly afterwards, jail guards were forcing Egyptian prisoners to rape each other. -Daily News Egypt
