Via BRAD BLOG, a tran­script of Rush Lim­baugh mock­ing attacks on jour­nal­ists in Egypt on Thursday:

LIMBAUGH: Ladies and gen­tle­men, it is being breath­less­ly report­ed that the Egypt­ian army — Snerd­ley, have you heard this? The Egypt­ian army is round­ing up for­eign journalists.
I mean, even two New York Times reporters were detained. Now, this is sup­posed to make us feel what, exact­ly? How we sup­posed to feel? Are we sup­posed to feel out­rage over it? I don’t feel any out­rage over it. Are we sup­posed to feel anger? I don’t feel any anger over this. Do we feel hap­py? Well — uh — do we feel kind of going like, “neh-neh-neh-neh”?

I’m sure that your emo­tions are run­ning the gamut when you hear that two New York Times reporters have been detained along with oth­er jour­nal­ists in Egypt. Remem­ber now, we’re sup­port­ing the peo­ple who are doing this.

Brad notes how Rush’s view changed with­in the same show, when jour­nal­ists from his par­ti­san ally – Fox News – were attacked:

LIMBAUGH: Accord­ing to Medi­aite, Fox News’ Greg Palkot and crew have been severe­ly beat­en and are now hos­pi­tal­ized in Cairo. Now we were kid­ding before about The New York Times, of course. This kind of stuff is ter­ri­ble. We would­n’t wish this kind of thing even on reporters.

“Even on reporters” being Lim­baugh­’s sick stab at humor.

I’ve writ­ten before about the dis­ap­point­ing anti-jour­nal­ist ten­den­cies of Amer­i­can con­ser­v­a­tives, and espe­cial­ly the unfor­tu­nate ways this plays out in war zones and with leaks of sen­si­tive or embar­rass­ing infor­ma­tion. Per­haps because of some sort of bizarre psy­cho­log­i­cal pro­jec­tion, too many con­ser­v­a­tives seem to assume that all report­ing is intend­ed to bol­ster the reporters’ polit­i­cal bias­es, and that there­fore pho­tograph­ing a sniper who has attacked Amer­i­can troops is evi­dence of the pho­tog­ra­pher’s bias, rather than evi­dence that the pho­tog­ra­ph­er is doing his job. Jour­nal­ists reveal­ing gov­ern­ment secrets are assumed to be opposed to those gov­ern­ment poli­cies, not sim­ply tend­ing to their duty of inform­ing the pub­lic who the gov­ern­ment serves.

The fact that Lim­baugh­’s first reac­tion when New York Times reporters, and reporters from many oth­er out­lets, were attacked (one was killed by gun­fire, anoth­er stabbed, many beat­en and hos­pi­tal­ized) or arrest­ed, was not fra­ter­nal con­cern for those jour­nal­ists tells you all you need to know about whether Lim­baugh deserves the title of “jour­nal­ist.” And that he would seem to cheer the attack and kid­nap­ping of New York Times reporters, while decry­ing attacks on Fox News reporters, is sickening.

For­tu­nate­ly for us, the Times reporters are pro­fes­sion­als. So after being kid­napped by the mil­i­tary and by the Egypt­ian secret police, held over night in a tor­ture cen­ter, and being threat­ened in var­i­ous ways, they went to their hotel and filed a report on that assault. It makes chill­ing read­ing, right from the open­ing words:

We had been detained by Egypt­ian author­i­ties, hand­ed over to the country’s dread­ed Mukhabarat, the secret police, and inter­ro­gat­ed. They left us all night in a cold room, on hard orange plas­tic stools, under flu­o­res­cent lights.

But our dis­com­fort paled in com­par­i­son to the dull whacks and the screams of pain by Egypt­ian peo­ple that broke the still­ness of the night. In one instance, between the cries of suf­fer­ing, an offi­cer said in Ara­bic, “You are talk­ing to jour­nal­ists? You are talk­ing bad­ly about your country?”

A voice, also in Ara­bic, answered: “You are com­mit­ting a sin. You are com­mit­ting a sin.”

They explain why they had to file this report:

For one day, we were trapped in the bru­tal maze where Egyp­tians are lost for months or even years. Our detain­ment threw into haunt­ing relief the abus­es of secu­ri­ty ser­vices, the police, the secret police and the intel­li­gence ser­vice, and explained why they were at the fore­front of com­plaints made by the protesters.

Many jour­nal­ists shared this expe­ri­ence, and many were kept in worse con­di­tions — some suf­fer­ing from injuries as well.

Accord­ing to the Com­mit­tee to Pro­tect Jour­nal­ists, over the peri­od we were held there were 30 deten­tions of jour­nal­ists, 26 assaults and 8 instances of equip­ment being seized. We saw a jour­nal­ist with his head ban­daged and oth­ers brought in with jack­ets thrown over their heads as they were led by armed men.

And though what they saw was only a frac­tion of the hor­ror expe­ri­enced by per­haps mil­lions of Egyp­tians over the 30 years Mubarak and his regime of thugs have ruled Egypt, the sliv­er they saw is chill­ing. They were arrest­ed while dri­ving from the air­port to their hotel, seized first by a crowd of thugs, searched by secret police, and turned over to the army. One of the reporters, know­ing that the army had been rel­a­tive­ly safer to deal with, asked the sol­dier trans­port­ing them, “ ‘Where are you tak­ing us?’ The sol­dier answered: ‘My heart goes out to you. I’m sor­ry.’ ” They soon came to under­stand what that meant, as they were walked past tor­ture cham­bers echo­ing with the hard slap­ping sounds of beat­ings. “The screams from the tor­ture made it near­ly impos­si­ble to think,” as they wait­ed to learn their fate. 

They wait­ed all night, eat­ing only a few cook­ies and drink­ing a Pep­si. “The ago­niz­ing scream­ing stilled our appetites,” the reporters explain.

In the morn­ing, we could hear the strained voice of a man with a French accent call­ing out in Eng­lish: “Where am I? What is hap­pen­ing to me? Answer me. Answer me.”

This prompt­ed us into action — press­ing to be released with more urgency, and indeed fear, than before. A plain­clothes offi­cer who said his name was Mar­wan ges­tured to us. “Come to the door,” he said, “and look out.”

We saw more than 20 peo­ple [inter­na­tion­al jour­nal­ists], West­ern­ers and Egyp­tians, blind­fold­ed and hand­cuffed. The room had been emp­ty when we arrived the evening before.

“We could be treat­ing you a lot worse,” he said in a flat tone, the facts speak­ing for them­selves. Mar­wan said Egyp­tians were being held in the thou­sands. Dur­ing the night we heard them being beat­en, scream­ing after every blow. 

Hours lat­er, mid-day on Fri­day, their cap­tors released them with their gear. As they left the head­quar­ters of the secret police:

They put us in our car with orders to put our heads down. “Look down, and don’t talk. If you look up you will see some­thing you don’t ever want to see.”

They left us that way for 10 min­utes. The only sounds were of guns being loaded and checked and duct-tape rip­ping. â€¦

In Ara­bic, Ms. Mekhen­net, a Ger­man cit­i­zen with Arab roots, kept telling the ques­tion­er that we are jour­nal­ists for The New York Times. “You came here to make this coun­try look bad,” the inter­roga­tor said.

Jour­nal­ists don’t do what they do with the intent of mak­ing their sub­ject look good or bad. They go on assign­ment intend­ing to show their read­ers what they see. The Egypt­ian gov­ern­ment – like Lim­baugh and some oth­er Amer­i­can con­ser­v­a­tives – don’t seem to under­stand that press reports don’t “make a coun­try look bad.” Press reports do show us when a coun­try has gone bad, and jour­nal­ists are to be praised for hold­ing up that mirror.

I’ll close with a series of tweets from the excep­tion­al Nadia El-Awady, an Egypt­ian sci­ence writer and the pres­i­dent of the World Fed­er­a­tion of Sci­ence Jour­nal­ists. Deb­o­rah Blum has more on the amaz­ing work Nadia was doing before this cri­sis erupt­ed, and a lov­ing trib­ute to her work right now. Once the Egypt­ian inter­net was restored, Nadia began tweet­ing up a storm, and post­ing pho­tos and video from the days when the inter­net was out. Her cam­era was destroyed dur­ing the attacks by police on Feb­ru­ary 2, inspir­ing this manifesto:

I did not cry or cringe when I was tear gassed and shot at by Egypt­ian police (cont)

I did not cry when I saw dozens injured, uncon­scious or dead emerge from the front lines of fight­ing with Mubarak police/civilian thugs cont

I cried when my cam­era was bro­ken by Mubarak thugs. My cam­era was my weapon in this revolt. It was the tool that cre­at­ed a role for me (cont

Today I leave home with­out my cam­era. I will not be able to afford a new one for a long time (cont)

But I will not be intim­i­dat­ed to stop report­ing. I am equipped with two phone bat­ter­ies and will tweet as long as I have inter­net (cont)

I will con­tin­ue to give eye wit­ness accounts to inter­na­tion­al, region­al, and local media of what is hap­pen­ing on the ground (cont)

And I will resort to old school jour­nal­ism. I will WRITE. I will write what I wit­ness. (cont)

I will con­tin­ue to play my role as a reporter as long as there is still breath with­in me. My tools are chang­ing but my role remains #egypt

When Rush Lim­baugh mocks attacks on jour­nal­ists, this is what he is attack­ing. This fierce dri­ve to bring the truth to the world, to expose ugli­ness where it exists, and to expose love and beau­ty where it exists.

This is the impulse that led Souad Mekhen­net and Nicholas Kul­ish to report the ugli­ness of the secret police’s tor­ture cham­bers, and it leads Nadia El-Awady to report on the beau­ty inside Tahrir Square: “Mil­lions in tahrir today. Very fes­tive. Poet­ry recit­ed in 1 cor­ner, music in anoth­er, pray­ing in a 3rd #egypt.”

That is the face of the true Egypt, nur­tured and pro­tect­ed now in a few pock­ets like Tahrir, but ready to spread across all of Egypt very soon. And reporters like Nadia allow us to see that process unfold, as they show us the hor­rors these rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies seek to erase. Hacks like Lim­baugh can­not begin to fath­om the courage and depth of char­ac­ter it takes for jour­nal­ists to cov­er these events on the ground.