Dispatch: Journalists 'under siege' in Cairo

Producer David Enders just returned from a reporting trip to Egypt. Watch his team's full report Tuesday, Aug. 20, on America Tonight.

In the two years I’ve been working in Cairo, working as a journalist has never been this difficult.

In the space of 48 hours on the ground in Cairo, our America Tonight team was accosted twice on the street, simply for being foreign and/or having a camera. In the most serious incident, we had been filming with our phones for less than 10 seconds before a man hit Brent, our cameraman, in the back of the head. Shouting “Americans, go home!” he and others began picking up rocks as we slowly retreated toward our car. As the rocks began to fall, we broke into a run, with a growing group of men behind us. Our crime had been to witness the beating of a bearded man whom the mob presumed was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Attacks on journalists, whether they are Egyptian or have government-issued credentials, have become increasingly common, particularly those carried out by pro-military thugs. I cannot think of a time in the last year-and-a-half when I attempted to film on the street in Egypt and did not face some kind of harassment or even arrest, but now such harassment comes more quickly and severely than ever.

On Friday, thugs in Giza attempted to pull us out of our car at an informal checkpoint. The incident took place in daylight on a main street.

The 7 p.m. military curfew that is in effect has turned what is normally a 24-hour metropolis into something of a ghost town -- though it is hard to imagine life in Cairo staying that way for long.

Meanwhile, the military’s propaganda machine has gone into overdrive, casting the fight against its opponents as a patriotic campaign against terrorism. Foreign journalists have been singled out by the government for criticism, building on a xenophobic campaign the military has been pursuing since it openly took power for the first time after the demonstrations that removed former dictator in February 2011.

Shortly before we were attacked, crowds at the scene were filmed shouting “Down with Al Jazeera! We’re digging your graves.”

There was nothing that made the crowd think we were from Al Jazeera before the attack – the fact that our cameraman and correspondent were obviously not Egyptian was enough.

At one point I spotted a poster, pictured above, decrying Al Jazeera’s coverage of Egypt:

“Perhaps a bullet kills a man, but the lying camera kills a nation..."

Journalists will continue to risk their lives to report what is happening in Egypt. Many of us are experienced in covering conflict, but it is new to feel so entirely under siege in Cairo.