The first act of the Egyptian Revolution is over. Mubarak is out of power. But as you can no doubt see, there are now upwards of half a dozen uprisings or mass protests afoot in different Arab countries and in Iran. And at least one of those (Libya) seems to be on its way to a much more jagged, chaotic and violent end than what we saw in Egypt.
But it seems impossible not to note that there’s just far, far less coverage of these other uprising. There’s coverage. Otherwise, how would we know about it? But there’s not that flood the zone, learn the key people’s names, the world is watching coverage that we saw with Egypt. So why is that?
I’ve been thinking about it and several fairly mundane answers immediately suggest themselves. The first is that it’s much easier to cover events in one very small section of Cairo than in half a dozen capitals spread out over a thousand miles or so.
What’s more, Egypt is really the heart of the Arab world. It’s the largest country by population, has a more clearly enduring national character than most of the other countries sliced into existence after the fall of the Ottoman Empire. It’s always been the most important military power in the region. So to a degree, Egypt is just a bigger story. Just because it’s Egypt.
Related to that, that’s where the reporters are. I’m a bit less up to speed on this. But my sense is that many of the reporters have CNN and the Gulf networks were already stationed in Egypt. So they knew the story; they were already there.
But I can’t help thinking that none of explanations quite provides an entirely satisfying explanation. To some significant extent, if it’s not on Al Jazeera or CNN or the BBC and on in a saturation way, it’s just not happening.
