“New political movements, such as Kifaya (which means ‘enough’ and is the moniker for the Egyptian Movement for Change), began to call for reform. They held street demonstrations, chanting anti-Mubarak slogans. But no journalists dared cover the protests because of the thousands of security officials who surrounded the activists. So the Egyptian people knew nothing about what was going on. That’s when we bloggers decided to take matters into our own hands. We believed in the people’s right to know. I took photos and video footage of the demonstrations and posted them on the Internet.”

Come _on_, I mean really, how many journalists attended Kifaya rallies? Too scared to cover them?! Half the people at the average Kifaya rally were journalists. And not just western journalists, I can’t think of a major protest or event that Egyptian independent daily al-Masri al-Youm didn’t cover or splash across their front page. The people knew.

He then goes on to say that his blog’s publicizing of the May 25 2005 attacks on referendum protestors caused the huge scandal — once again I would suggest that maybe the scores of international and Egyptian journalists there at the syndicate when it happened might have had something to do with it.

Rather than Kifaya protests, what Wael and his friends really did publicise was the police brutality and sodomy videos, though it is worth mentioning that these were spread without the permission of the people being abused and violated.

The bloggers have done great work but so has a new generation of Egyptian journalists and its worth spreading the credit around a bit.