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?
在电视和广播里，每个人都在向我们讲述阿拉伯世界正在发生的事，但事实是我们不可能了解，只是谁都不愿意承认。《像我们一样的人：曲解中东》(People Like Us: Misrepresenting the Middle East)一书的作者、前荷兰驻外记者约里斯•卢因迪克(Joris Luyendijk)说，开罗革命的例子就说明，记者要了解这个地区是何其困难。解放广场上聚集了可能有25万名示威者，数以千计的外国记者为他们欢呼喝彩，整个世界都在关注。然而我们却无法回答一个基本的问题：这是一场人民革命吗？