Print
CloseBy Sandeep Junnarkar
With its coverage of Baghdad during the first Gulf War in 1991, the Cable News Network, or CNN, went from being derided as the "Chicken Noodle Network" to a global news power – onto the same stage as the network news broadcasters. During the initial bombing of the city, CNN reporters Bernard Shaw, John Holliman, and Peter Arnett were the only Western reporters with a phone connection, over which they sent live audio reports from al-Rashid Hotel. The reports aired over the grainy night-vision shots of U.S. and Iraqi artillery lighting up the Baghdad skyline. That well may have been the highlight of media coverage of the war to repel Saddam Hussein from Kuwait. In virtually all other circumstances, the U.S. military tightly controlled all media coverage, herding reporters into orchestrated briefings and allowing only censored interviews with military personnel.
By the time the tanks rolled into Baghdad during the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, the Internet was entrenched globally as a mainstream communications and entertainment system and had triggered seismic shifts in the way news is gathered and presented. This war spurred a new breed of Web-based independent projects to produce news not only from a different perspective but in a radically different form. Their reach is simultaneously limited (they don't have the mass audience reach of television) and unlimited (the content is accessible on the Web at all times). These video reports of life inside Iraq are posted to independent Websites or YouTube.com.
AliveinBaghdad.org is a leading example of this new generation of news services built on showcasing the war's impact on the daily lives of the ordinary Iraqis. The Website employs a growing number of Iraqis who interview on video other Iraqis of various religious backgrounds and political loyalties. The pieces range from interviews with mothers whose sons have died fighting to a report on the challenges faced by schools for girls in Baghdad.
At this nascent stage, these organizations are focused on telling these stories. But they are also preparing for a larger role they will play in the near future by steadily building a larger audience, and more importantly, by developing their reputation and credibility.
Currently, the pieces produced by AliveinBaghdad.org are helping to differentiate it from mainstream news styles. These pieces are not vehicles for "talent" to look glamorous in a Hijab, but offer intimate portrayal of how the war has affected the Baghdad residents' daily life from their own perspectives. The video has an unpolished quality that often makes it more powerful than the slickly-produced pieces that are aired by the mainstream broadcast news networks. AliveinBaghdad.org even offers uncut video, giving people another layer of reality.
This perspective is important, but it does not supplant the work of mainstream news networks whose strength is their access to U.S. and Iraqi generals, politicians and other leaders. A growing news audience, however, also increasingly wants a window into the daily struggles of ordinary Iraqis. In an age of downsizing at traditional news organizations, this development creates an environment in which mainstream and Internet coverage taken together provide a more complete picture than either can individually.
The two forms of media also need each other. Mainstream media organizations often interview Brian Conley, the founder of AliveinBaghdad.org, about the site and its videos, relying on AliveinBaghdad.org to provide a perspective they cannot. The attention in turn, helps drive traffic to the site – the currency of the Web. In July, AliveinBagdad.org was profiled in a segment on ABC's Good Morning America, reaching a far larger audience. Even if a fraction viewers click on the site after a television segment, traffic will spike. This spike might be unsustainable, but it will lead to steady growth as some of those viewers return or tell others about the site.
Just as people looked askance at CNN after it went live in 1980 about its journalistic integrity, one should question the objectivity and integrity of this new generation of Web-based sites that often blur the line between journalism and activism.
After all, neither Conley nor the Iraqi videographers have worked within a professional journalism structure. Still, Conley has taken important measures to bring journalistic standards to his project. He trains the videographers to maintain objectivity while avoiding leading questions. When AliveinBaghdad.org was contemplating posting an interview with a jihadi militant, Conley sought advice from journalism professors and professionals about the ethics of such a piece. After deliberating, he prefaced the piece by sharing his reasoning for giving voice to a military enemy of the United States.
Why did I write earlier in this piece that AliveinBaghdad.org is likely to play a larger role in covering the situation in Iraq? To understand, look at previous media patterns. When a natural disaster strikes, aid workers and the press convoy into the distressed area. The aid organization fundraising machinery kicks into high gear and collects a windfall in donations. But a piece in The New York Times showed, sadly, that once the press moves on, so do the aid organizations soon after – having invested locally only a small portion of the funds they collected. This pattern will play out once the U.S. military decamps from Iraq. As Iraq descends into civil war – as might be expected from the continued chaos – the American media spotlight will shift to other stories of the day. Most mainstream news organizations will have only fleeting interest in sinking funds for such coverage.
At such time, it will become even more important that the plight of ordinary Iraqis be documented lest they be forgotten completely. AliveinBaghdad.org is now preparing for that greater role.
Sandeep Junnarkar is an associate professor at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. He is also the editorial director of www.livesinfocus.org.