Why Is CNN Sending Russian Speakers to Cairo to Cover Demonstrations?

I wrote a post a while ago titled Why Are There Only Monolingual Talking Heads on American TV? and in which I talked about weekly discussions in French of foreign correspondents in France (called Le Kiosque) and in German on German TV (called Quadriga). Among other things I said in that post that we have nothing like that here in US because unlike American correspondents, foreign correspondents may be kind of unpredictable and you can’t really control what they will say. One commenter corrected me and pointed out that Fareed Zakaria and Christiane Amanpour are multilingual and that they often have on their programs very interesting foreign guests. And he was right, up to a point – see my response to his comment if you are interested.

As the images of passionate young people protesting in the streets of Cairo and other Egyptian cities were repeatedly flashing in front of my eyes on CNN, BBC America and other cable news stations, I remembered his comment and tuned in to Fareed Zakaria’s Sunday afternoon program on CNN called Global Public Square. I was curious about Fareed Zakaria because of what the commenter said on my blog and because I have not seen his program in many years, although I used to watch him and I also used to read his articles in Newsweek at one time.

A telling moment which, for me at least, set the atmosphere for the entire program prior to a discussion that was held between Fareed Zakaria, Martin Indyk (which means “a turkey” in Polish, for those who don’t speak Polish, Brookings Institution, former ambassador to Israel, sounds monolingual), Richard Haas (Council on Foreign Relations, sounds very monolingual), Steven Cook (Council on Foreign Relations, in spite of his American accent, apparently fluent in Arabic), and Tarek Massoud (Harvard University, Arabic speaker), was when Fareed Zakaria posed a question to CNN’s reporter Ivan Watson who was reporting on site from Cairo. Mohamed ElBaradei, Director of the International Atomic Energy, had returned to Cairo to participate in the protests and he just finished a speech delivered to the demonstrators. “So what did ElBaradei say in his speech?” asked Fareed Zakaria. He must have thought that Ivan Watson had a translator (or interpreter, if you insist) with him. It was obvious that Ivan Watson had absolutely no idea what Mohamed ElBaradei said because without missing a beat, the famed CNN correspondent launched into a prepared speech about something else, never once even mentioning Mohamed ElBaradei at all. I completely forgot what he said because I was laughing the whole time when I realized what was going on. If I were in Fareed Zakaria’s seat, I would definitely have said to Ivan Watson something like:”So you have no idea what he said, right? You don’t speak Arabic, do you?” But of course, Zakaria said no such thing. He could probably get fired for saying something like that and I am sure he needs his  job. We all need our jobs!!! And not all of us are freelance translators who can’t really get fired easily!!!

So anyway, I did I not find out what ElBaradei’s speech was about because CNN apparently did not know. It is also possible that CNN first needs to figure out what is in every speech before telling people like me what’s in it. That is how it used to work in Soviet Union while it was still around. Incidentally, I went to Ivan Watson’s CNN page and I found out that he speaks Russian (according to CNN), but not Arabic. Oh, well, he speaks English, so why not send him to Cairo, right?

After that, Fareed Zakaria discussed the situation in Egypt (in short segments interrupted with avalanches  of commercials) with Martin Indyk from Brookings Institution, Steven Cook and Richard Haas from the Council on Foreign Relations, and Tarek Massoud from from Harvard University. All the speakers, except for Tarek Massoud, emphasized how important it was to maintain “stability” and ensure a “peaceful transition”, while also saying that “legitimate grievances” of the demonstrators would have to to be addressed, or something like that. The only person on the panel who seemed genuinely excited by the fact that people were demonstrating and demanding democracy, end to corruption and accountability in the streets of Cairo was Tarek Massoud from Harvard University. He sounded oddly out of place on that panel.

I don’t want to know what experts from right wing “think tanks” like the Brookings Institution think about the situation in Egypt. I know what they will say before they open their mouth because I know what they are paid to think. I know they don’t believe in democracy because I have been listening to them for a while, before I turned them off for good.

So, as I said, I did not find out what Mohamed ElBaradei said in his speech from this CNN program.

I will probably have to find out tomorrow from blogs.