Reply #96: Reporting from Tripoli, chafing on Gadhafi's leash

[pinboy3niner]

Source: AP

Reporting from Tripoli, chafing on Gadhafi's leash


By Hadeel Al-shalchi, Associated Press – 28 mins ago


TRIPOLI, Libya – At the Rixos Hotel, Moammar Gadhafi's gilded cage for foreign journalists, fistfights break out. Paranoia is high. And the Libyan government is on unblinking watch for any deviation in the official script.

Waitresses who serve coffee with smiles on their faces act more like trained intelligence agents hours later, when a woman bursts in claiming that militiamen had raped her. They expertly wrestle her to the ground.

Government minders feed reporters the narrative of a nation united behind its longtime leader, then arrest or even expel those who sneak away to find out for themselves. Government-led trips dubbed "magical mystery tours" by the press corps sometimes turn perilous.

...


The Rixos, by contrast, is a five-star hotel, though it has rapidly declined as journalists and minders have taken over the building and some staff have fled. Still, for Western journalists accustomed to press freedoms, working in Tripoli under Gadhafi's rules has in some ways been tougher than reporting from a battlefield.

One reporter muses about whether his dinner is being drugged. An Italian journalist punched a government minder and had to be pulled off the man by a couple of British reporters.

...


If on the off chance, journalists are able to slip away and get one or two precious quotes of dissent in the capital, they walk around with the sense of pride that comes with beating the system, and brag to their colleagues and competitors about their work.

Usually the sneaking trips have ended badly — some reporters were arrested, cuffed, detained for a day, disappeared for a few hours, or kept in a parking lot to get berated by Gadhafi militiamen.

Sometimes just being arrested feels like work has been done that day.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110403/ap_on_bi_ge/af_libya_bizarre_hotel

Hat tip to Al Jazeera. :thumbsup: