Egypt: CNN's Anderson Cooper beat up by pro-Mubarak thugs

Link to details at Huffington Post, and CNN has posted this video. Shortly after the incident, Cooper tweeted, "Its getting really bad in front of Egyptian museum"—all of the Twitter feeds I'm following from folks on the ground there point in the same direction. The protests are now being flooded by pro-Mubarak thugs, and various state employees paid to be present, and there are very high counts of injuries today. The situation sounds increasingly dangerous.

As an aside, I have plenty of complaints about CNN, but I have nothing but respect for Anderson Cooper's work. Dude is for real. From the tweets, sounds like he and his crew have been awake for four days solid since landing in Egypt. I think they're doing solid reporting under extremely difficult conditions.

Update: Cooper spoke to Reuters about the attack.

Katie Couric, Christiane Amanpour, and a number of reporters with Al Arabiya and Al Jazeera have also been beaten up by thugs who back (or are employed by) Mubarak.

Boing Boing editor/partner and tech culture journalist Xeni Jardin hosts and produces Boing Boing's in-flight TV channel on Virgin America airlines (#10 on the dial), and writes about living with breast cancer. Diagnosed in 2011. @xeni on Twitter. email: xeni@boingboing.net.

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Teller

B: Keith a better candidate for a pummeling.
UG: Lucky, lucky you.
travtastic

I mentioned this on another article a long time ago, I’ll mention it again.

Bear Spray

Someone really needs to send a few plane-loads of it over to the protesters.
treacle

Where are the soldiers? Why isn’t the military stepping in to stop the violence?
- Brainspore
  
  Why isn’t the military stepping in to stop the violence?
  
  I’m not sure you understand how revolutions work.
Anonymous

Six years of covering Hurricane Katrina made him soft.
sdmikev

These so-called “pro-Mubarak” thugs are bought and paid for by same.
They are Egyptian security forces beating the hell out of people.
knoxblox

Being old enough to remember coverage of Operation Desert Storm, does this officially make Anderson Cooper (roughed up by government thugs) cooler than Wolf Blitzer (poking his arm/microphone out of a hotel window during a firefight)?
spriggan

Somebody beat up Katie Couric? Awesome. America is getting to live out it’s subconscious urges. But then again I’m suprised they landed a punch and weren’t blinded by the sun reflecting off Anderson’s albino surface.
osmo

The revolutionaries are gaining on the Mubarak Civ-cops appearently. So it aint over yet. The Egyptian Museum is the temporary military base for the Army.
Anonymous

While CNN’s Anderson Cooper was in Egypt getting beat up, Fox News was taking almost an hour out of its Egypt coverage to cover the unveiling of News Corp’s “The Daily.” Really says a lot:
http://gtcha.me/eTBZ8j
SarahFenix

Uhoh. Wonder if the US will step in now to save America’s national treasure, Anderson Cooper!

Mubarak must leave NOW. He is causing so much destruction and terror every second he stays longer. He is the biggest liar ever and paid all his cronies less than $30 bucks (150 egyptian pounds) per day to go out and slaughter everyone. Wonder where your tax dollars are going now?

Mubarak is purposely trying to start a civil war in Egypt to show the people how important he is and how much power he has. And if the country really wants him out, he will leave it in the worst state possible for them to deal with. The man is HITLER.

Message from my cousin in Egypt (unedited):
We are now in revolution against the very old president , he didn’t want to leave Egypt , also he didn’t want to give us – Egyptians – the right to elect new president. 30 years , we are living in very bad circumstances . No development in trading , medical ,military and every part of the government . a hundreds killed on the last few days .
and I need you and every Egyptian in America to make a demonstration next Friday in front of the Egyptian embassy asking “mobarak” to leave Egypt
- RandomGameR
  
  “The man is HITLER.”
  
  Please, none of that. Hitler’s dead.
osmo

From http://twitter.com/evanchill and http://twitter.com/mosaaberizing the reactionary mob is running for it and the front of the museum belong to the revolutionaries
Anonymous

Going to jump on the anti-anderson bandwagon, as it seems pretty empty so far:

While I’m sure he’s a nice guy, stuff like this — where Anderson Cooper himself becomes the story — seems pretty typical for him. To me it’s the same kind of sensationalistic schlock we get from all the local news reporters rushing out to be photographed in the midst of a raging hurricane.

So what if you got roughed up, Anderson? The fact that you are highlighting your personal experiences running the gauntlet of protesters only takes away from the bigger picture and story. I’m sure it serves to add to your cache as “intrepid reporter” in most folks’ eyes, but not in mine.

Be safe, and give us some real reporting.
- Brainspore
  
  While I’m sure he’s a nice guy, stuff like this — where Anderson Cooper himself becomes the story — seems pretty typical for him. To me it’s the same kind of sensationalistic schlock we get from all the local news reporters rushing out to be photographed in the midst of a raging hurricane.
  
  That’s a pretty dismissive attitude of someone who knowingly endangers his own life to cover an important story instead of sitting behind a desk and spewing ignorant righteousness like most TV personalities do.
  
  Your hurricane analogy misses one important fact: you can’t properly cover an ongoing social uprest without talking to any of the people involved, but no important insight can be gained from interviewing the weather.
  - Anonymous
    
    Hey, just because he’s better than the lowest common denominator (the talking heads), doesn’t mean should be lauded.
    
    To address your point: In the piece that was linked I didn’t see any interviews with protestors. The editorial focus of his story was undoubtedly “brave reporter gets beat up”, just as the reporting in the hurricane examples have a focus of “brave reporter gets blown around”.
    
    I think it’s hard to argue that either of those stories have anything important to communicate to the public. I stand by my schlock comment. Cult of Cooper be damned.
Antinous / Moderator

Wonder if the US will step in now to save America’s national treasure, Anderson Cooper!

Ha. I came to say exactly the same thing. Casus belli.
- jfrancis
  
  They didn’t here
  
  http://www.hulu.com/watch/207601/saturday-night-live-digital-short-andy-and-pee-wees-night-out
- Anonymous
  
  I, for one, Really do think Anderson is a national treasure. Tim Tebow too.
Voris Klopchick

I predict this will make it really hard for Mubarak to get equal time.
ill lich

“I have plenty of complaints about CNN, but I have nothing but respect for Anderson Cooper’s work”

Yeah, me too, so far anyway. Why is it that reasonable and respectful journalists are the exception and not the norm? Is it the so-called “24-hour news cycle” that turns them all into craven entertainers? Is it money and the need for market-share that makes networks debase their reporting into hysteria and opinion and flashy graphics and fads?
telaquapacky

It’s good- that is, in an instructional way, for Americans to see American reporters being rolled by Mubarak thugs. It puts faces we can more easily identify with suffering the tip of the iceberg of this regime’s oppression, and bring it home a little. Most Americans couldn’t care less if some swarthy Egyptians are being tortured, disappeared, etc. But if they see it happening to our TV personalities that’s different. Then, if they could get some conceptual handle on the fact that our taxpayer dollars support cruel, oppressive regimes around the world, and our armed forces prop them up- all the while we preen ourselves in the mirror with the stars and stripes flowing in the background and pose like we invented freedom and democracy and are condescending like good folks to share it with the poor little wretches of the rest of the world. Yeah, I know. I’m dreaming.
Donald Petersen

That’s some solid journalism, reporting precisely how many times one has been punched in the head.

Myself, I think I would have abandoned an accurate count after three or four.
AdrenalineSleep

One would think that the people who are defending Mubarak would want to do whatever they could to paint him in a positive light to gain influence. Isn’t attacking members of the media the absolute worst thing you could do at this point? The very people who are relaying the story to the rest of the world; they decide to attack.

It’s like they are trying to do whatever they can to make his ouster easier and more palatable.
- EH
  
  Isn’t attacking members of the media the absolute worst thing you could do at this point?
  
  No. They know it’s over. They just want to sh*t the bed before they go. Journalists are how their old world got torn down, so now they get the Mubarak treatment. It’s just that now we all get to see who Mubarak really is.
Jack

Blame Pee Wee!
GearheadBustello

10 times? I stop counting after 3.
Anonymous

did any of the attackers look like Andy Samberg or Pee Wee Herman?
teapot

Mubarak is undoubtedly behind all of this. The military needs to grow a pair and go evict/destroy the motherfucker.

Why do we only see pro-Mubarak demonstrators after 8 days, and only after Mubarak knows he has lost the support of the international community? It’s too convenient to believe. I hope they tear that asshole a new asshole.
- Anonymous
  
  The military high command is positioning for putting in place one of their own. The military on the ground know this and are wary.
Teller

Bright lights attract insects. Too bad they fired Olbermann two weeks too soon.
- Ugly Canuck
  
  Not all insects; think cockroaches.
  
  Negative phototaxis can also be instinctual.
  
  Lift a rock, shine a light: and the vermin scatter.
  - Teller
    
    Can’t get a thing by you.
    Except the Olbermann bit.
    - Brainspore
      
      I admit I still don’t get the Olbermann bit. He didn’t even work for CNN.
    - Ugly Canuck
      
      I’m afraid I am unfamiliar with Mr Olbermann. He’s a US political commentator, right?
      OTOH neither is Mr Beck available on my cable dial.
      
      In fact, neither gentleman has ever been on my cable dial, IIRC, unlike Mr Cooper at CNN.
      
      I swear, sometimes the USA seems like a whole other country to me.
      - Anonymous
        
        I C wat U did there.
        
        Most of us live near the border, true enough, but that border can vary from porous to nigh-impenetrable.
        
        In my Ontario bordertown, we once had Rush Limbaugh’s (cable access?) TV show, but the nearest FOX affiliate never carried news. The nearest PBS station considered us *at least* half its audience.
        
        Both countries have national networks, all coming from local perspectives, which informs us keen observers. Vancouver, Atlanta, Hollywood, Toronto, New York, the origin makes the agenda, yes?
Anonymous

Hey Anderson!… Here’s a headline for ya!
travtastic

If this goes on for too much longer, someone seriously needs to go in there and teach them how to present an organized and unified front to these assholes.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e6/Mpl-frm-variations.png

I’m tired of all this fucking violence, but I would like to see the right people getting their faces bashed in, if it comes to that.
Anonymous

“I have plenty of complaints about CNN, but I have nothing but respect for Anderson Cooper’s work”

I completely agree. Cooper Is a man of bravery and integrity. We need more people like him in the media.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  Is the ‘bravery’ part a reference to Kathy Griffin?
Rayonic

What, we’re not entertaining the possibility that this was done by double-reverse astroturfers?

Joking aside, I hope he gets some better security for next time.
Gallerist

I’m sure that I’m not alone in seeing certain parallels between the revolts occurring
in the Arab world now, and those the happened in Europe in 1848:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutions_of_1848

Should the established social order and the governments that serve them survive
and maintain the control they had previously, they must view the future
with the knowledge that an example has been set, which will continue to
run under the surface of their respective societies. Once empowered, the
general populous will likely continue to seek change.

You won’t be putting this “Genie” back in the bottle (And, yes, careful what
you wish for ….)
Gloster

I’ve always held Cooper in high regard. Glad to see my opinion validated.

Also – mad props to his team. They are there with him, risking the same for no fame and a fraction of his money.
vette

Same thing supposedly happened to a Norwegian journalist, but they also stole his money and left pro-Mubarak leaflets in his pocket. link
Anonymous

CNN just aired the raw footage of Anderson Cooper and his team getting attacked in Egypt:
http://gtcha.me/ebLThI