On the airwaves, everyone is telling us what is happening across the Arab world. The truth (if only anyone would admit it) is that we cannot possibly know. Take the revolution in Cairo, says Joris Luyendijk, a Dutch former foreign correspondent and author of People Like Us: Misrepresenting the Middle East, which examines how difficult it is for journalists to understand the region. Tahrir Square was packed with perhaps 250,000 demonstrators. Thousands of foreign journalists cheered them on. The world was watching. Yet we cannot answer a basic question: was this a popular revolution?
在電視和廣播裏，每個人都在向我們講述阿拉伯世界正在發生的事，但事實是我們不可能瞭解，只是誰都不願意承認。《像我們一樣的人：曲解中東》(People Like Us: Misrepresenting the Middle East)一書的作者、前荷蘭駐外記者約里斯•盧因迪克(Joris Luyendijk)說，開羅革命的例子就說明，記者要了解這個地區是何其困難。解放廣場上聚集了可能有25萬名示威者，數以千計的外國記者爲他們歡呼喝彩，整個世界都在關注。然而我們卻無法回答一個基本的問題：這是一場人民革命嗎？