Egypt and Journalists

As a "wannabe journalist" like the title of this blog says, I try to keep myself updated on what is happening in the world. I'll admit that I don't focus on the "real" news as much as I should since my real love is sports, hockey, NASCAR, and horse racing to be specific, but the conflict in Egypt has held my attention for a week now.

After doing some research about the Egyptian government and what the people of Egypt were protesting for, I took a pretty educated stance on what side of the "fight" I wanted to be on. I also took more interest in this than I have other conflicts because Egypt is a pretty big ally to the U.S. and what happens over there will affect our country as well. But over the last few days, another issue has caught my attention when it comes to Egypt, the violence towards journalists.

At first, we heard of a little violence towards journalists, such as the police taking away equipment and arresting journalists but now the violence has heated up and been focused towards those trying to get the news out to the world.

"There was no control. Suddenly a man would come up to you and punch you in the face." Anderson Cooper of CNN reported.

Yet another journalist was escorted to her hotel at gunpoint and the Hilton Hotel in Cairo was raided by pro-Mubarak supporters looking for journalists. Throughout the day, I've seen lists of injured and unaccounted for journalists and their assistants grow longer. I find it incredibly sad and unsettling that the people trying to get news out of Egypt to let the world see what is going on are literally putting their lives on the line to get us this information.

As someone that hopes to get into the journalism ranks in the next few years, this definitely opens my eyes to some of the risks I knew there were in the profession but never really thought about. Does this make me rethink my career choice? No, but it does make me rethink where I want to go when I get out of school. It definitely opens my eyes that there are more than just sports when it comes to journalism choices. Will I reconsider the idea of going to sports and hopefully working on a Kentucky farm or at a racetrack? I honestly cannot answer that question at this time, but it is something that has been floating around my brain over the past few days.