Video of Journalists’ Arrest in Egypt Seen as Threat to Media

A leaked video of the arrest of two journalists offered a cinematic close-up of the new military-backed government’s crackdown on dissent: slow-moving footage of a hotel room full of telecommunications equipment set to the thumping, sinister score of the recent superhero movie “Thor: The Dark World.”

The video, broadcast Feb 2 on a private channel that supports the government and circulated widely over the Internet since then, is the latest salvo in a propaganda campaign by the state-run and pro-military news media. The goal is to paint the arrested journalists -- known here as “the Marriott Cell,” for the hotel they were arrested in -- as part of a terrorist conspiracy. One journalist, an Arabic speaker, is interrogated on camera for several minutes and repeatedly refuses to give up the names of his colleagues.