So you want to cover a revolution?

Sitting at my desk in Washington, scanning the latest photos from Tahrir Square streaming in and reading live blogs that pull together the latest disparate strands of information, I can’t help but wonder whether I know more about the protests happening in Cairo than the reporters who are actually there. That’s how I sometimes felt, at least, when I was in Tehran in 2009 covering the Iranian presidential elections and their alternately inspiring and bloody aftermath. Observing an incipient revolution on the ground wasn’t always clarifying so much as it was harrowing and confusing and exhausting.

I wonder how much work reporters in Egypt have had to devote to mitigating the dangers and intimidation suddenly associated with their jobs. The Iranian government rescinded all press passes the day after the 2009 election and were eager to arrest journalists thereafter on charges of espionage: it seems that in the early days of the Egyptian protests, security services were similarly targeting journalists, though that may no longer be an issue. I’d guess that only a fraction of the correspondents in Cairo right now are credentialed, but the Egyptian government seems to have deteriorated to such a point that there’s probably little danger involved in filing stories.

But that begs the question of how to file at all after the government’s shut down all Internet and mobile phone communications. It’s easy to feel adrift when the modern correspondent’s toolkit of laptop, cell phone and digital camera is suddenly and completely rendered useless. Any reporter worth his or her salt is going to find a way to get the story out, but it may involve risks that aren’t calculated in advance. When the adrenaline subsides, paranoia can begin to cloud one’s thoughts. Am I being monitored? Which of these protesters I’m interviewing are actually plainclothes police? The technological isolation also produces a certain practical myopia: it’s hard to know if you’re ever reporting at the right place at the right time.

But there are advantages to myopia as well. On the ground, reporters can observe the motley collection of personal motivations being expressed in these public events. The political upshot of the Green Revolution was to challenge the legitimacy of the Iranian theocracy. But the individual protesters I encountered were most often motivated by a longing for dignity, a concept that is not strictly political: many told me about their economic frustrations, others about grievances against the regime that they had harbored for years or decades, still others told me they were seeking to test their manhood. No one mentioned geopolitics, or the support or lack thereof of President Obama. (Who would choose to risk their lives for the sake of the president of another country?) Outside observers inevitably see too much of themselves and their own ideas in these stories.

It’s clear that the Egyptians have done something politically momentous, but that doesn’t mean they calculated its political import. Before we interpret what the Egyptians have done, we should try to listen to what they have to say, even — especially — if it’s not yet what we want to hear.