Liz Gannes

Recent Posts by Liz Gannes

Released Google Exec Speaks on His Role in Egyptian Protests (Video and Transcripts)

Wearing a T-shirt bearing his employer’s name, Google executive Wael Ghonim spoke with reporters after being released today from 12 days of detention for his role in protests against the Egyptian government.

(Click on the “CC” button in the embedded video to see English subtitles, and if that doesn’t work try going directly to the YouTube page.)

Ghonim, who leads marketing for Google in the Middle East and North Africa, said in a later interview that he was the administrator of the Facebook page “We are all Khaled Said” (named after the young man killed by Egyptian police officers last year) that helped organize Egyptian youth.

Ghonim said he was blindfolded throughout his imprisonment but was not tortured. The Egyptian government did not confirm its role in Ghonim’s disappearance until yesterday.

Ghonim told an interviewer from the Egyptian channel Dream TV, “I tricked my employer so I could attend the protests in Egypt,” according to a translation.

Nearly 300 people have been killed in the protests. Ghonim urged viewers, “Please everybody, this is not a time to settle scores, this is a time to build our country.”

A cellphone recording of the second interview, sans subtitles, is here:

Video streaming by Ustream

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The problem with the Billionaire Savior phase of the newspaper collapse has always been that billionaires don’t tend to like the kind of authority-questioning journalism that upsets the status quo.

— Ryan Chittum, writing in the Columbia Journalism Review about the promise of Pierre Omidyar’s new media venture with Glenn Greenwald