"The Caged Leader"

The coverage today of former Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak was interesting. Virtually all of the stories – print, online, TV, and radio – made early reference to Mubarak being wheeled into the court room on a hospital bed (he’s ill with heart palpitations (he’s 83 years old)) in a cage. (Here’s the Washington Post story. And here’s the Chicago Tribune story. And here’s CNN’s story.) It’s the “cage” imagery I find interesting in all of these stories. The implication is that he’s caged because he’s evil and the country and world needs to be protected from this 83-year-old invalid. Jena McGregor begins her Washington Post blog post, “Hosni Mubarak, the caged leader”: “The sight of former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak lying inside a cage on a hospital gurney in a courtroom had to have been shocking to Egyptians. Many doubted until the last minute that the former leader, who ruled Egypt for 30 years, would actually show up. . . . But many non-Egyptians people seeing the photos of the trial likely found it jarring, too. Most of us are unaccustomed to seeing people in cages inside courtrooms.” Well, yes, no doubt. But that’s because “most of us” are unaware that’s it’s customary in much of the world – and most all of the Middle East – to confine persons on trial for serious offenses (and make no mistake, Mubarak is on trial for the most heinous of offenses) in “cages,” or at least metal cells, within the courtroom. But this isn’t because – as the implication of the stories and accompanying photos suggest – to protect the courtroom and public from Mubarak, but rather to protect Mubarak from any violent assault on him that might make it into the court. And that protection may be justified. As the CNN’s story reports, “The tension ran high [outside the court building] and at one point gunfire erupted as supporters and opponents chased one another, hurling rocks and bottles. Several people were carried away in ambulances.”

There’s constant talk of slanting and bias in reporting, though the criticism is usually of political bias. But in this case we have a slanting of the facts – an accurate reporting of the facts (he was secured within a cage in the courtroom), but not the context (it’s for his own protection). A minor thing, perhaps. But it’s this kind of minor thing that has to raise the question of what else we can trust in the reporting of anything. It’s easy to twist the story of the trial of a tyrant into a conventional plotline; what’s to say that any other story can’t in some way be twisted into a similar preconceived notion? The answer is: It can, and it happens every day.