After getting over an inaccurate Telegraph article that attempted to shed light on the Lebanese party scene, genius reporters at the Daily Mail in London concocted quite a gripping story of a public sexual harassment, live on air, at a recent Beirut rally.
In a now-deleted article, imaginative Daily Mail reporter Simon Tomlinson painted a jarring scene for MailOnline where a female reporter covering the anti-government protest in Beirut on Saturday was assaulted by a mob of oversexed beasts trying to tear her clothes off live on air.
Was it Tahrir Square or Riad al-Solh? We frankly couldn't even tell. And why bother fact-checking when you're sitting cushioned in a London building trying to find the next viral hit? We know, life's hard when your editor is breathing down your neck to get those click rates up, so what's easier than creating a story that has the three most attractive components a story can have: Scary Arabs, sex and violence.
But in the actual video, Nada Andraos Aziz, the LBCI journalist who was covering the events Saturday, appeared to back into the scene of the protest just as riot police advanced on protesters. Water cannons were employed on the peaceful protesters as well as tear gas.
Aziz and her crew weren't spared from police beatings despite it being clear that she was a reporter. A crowd of protesters encircled the reporter to protect her from harm. She even gave an interview later explaining how she had been attacked by the police:
Arabs pictured as uncivilized, dirty, women-hating and violent is a trope that has withstood the test of time. From the early years of the colonial era, and into the Bush administration's "war on terror," the Arab was the West's boogeyman. Add to it a little sex to spice things up and a dangerous area akin to a war zone, and you've got the perfect, viral hit.
And despite literature, rigorous campaigns, and the advent of globalization (wait what? We can meet other people through the Internet?!), the image of the barbaric Arab remains popular in Western media today.
Remember: keep your women safe, because we might rip their clothes off in public, take them as our slaves, and ride together on our camels into the sandy desert.