Monday, February 23, 2009

Egypt blast kills 1, Injures 18

The writers of this article, Jeffrey Fleishman and Noha El-Henneway, start off hitting the main W's of the event: a bomb exploded Sunday in Cairo, killing one and wounding 18. The attack is believed to be the work of Islamic militants who are unhappy with Egypts decision to keep the Gaza border essentially closed during the 22 days of fighting. The authors make sure to point out that accounts of the event aren't all matching up and they specifically credit the source from which they pull their own report in the text of the article. This is important to do in case they later learn that what they printed is, in fact, incorrect. They were able to interview a man that was present for the bombing, but only for a brief time because he was taken away by the police. This man, whose name they could not get, the Egyption TV (where they took their account of the explosion), and the Murbarak government are the only sources cited.
I think that the story is as accurate as it can be given the fact that the Egpytian Interior Ministry hadn't released a public statement about the event at the time this article was written and that it would be essentially impossible to speak to someone in the militant group. However, there is only one quote in the entire story. It would've been nice to have a few more, even if they were just reactions. In the first sentence the writers give the impression that since this event occurred in a public bazaar, it is feared that the Islamic militants will be targeting Egypt's tourist industry. However, they have no other information to support the claim. Have there been other attacks in similar venues? Or is this based entirely off of one attack? The authors do a good job keeping any personal bias out of the information about the religios groups, though they do include information about a Muslim Brotherhood that has ambitions to create an Islamic state at the end of the article and it didn't really have strong relevance to the story.