Citizen Journalism by Josh Mull

[Cross posted from Small World News]

The television media was covering the abduction of one Captain Richard Phillips almost non-stop over the week leading up to Easter. When it was announced that 3 of the 4 pirates holding the captain were killed and he was rescued, the commentators on all the major networks exploded in an orgy of nationalist hoo-rah fervor. They succeeded in showing they could Faux News with the best of them.

They did not succeed, however, in helping us better understand the Somali piracy issue. What might a news agency need to provide insight into the causes of Somali pirac? First of all, they need you the viewer/reader/listener/audience to take a vested interest in learning more about Somalia’s pirates, or pirates in general.

Somalia is a great example of a situation where pirates have a very clear cause and a very clear, though incredibly difficult, solution.

But as I was saying, let’s imagine we have a news agency funded initially through small investment or foundation money. If we establish a bureau in Nairobi, we can cover many subjects in sub-Saharan east Africa. One of the easiest ses of tools available to mobile journalists was presented in the form of the Reuters Mobile Toolkit. Unfortunately, in the last 18 months since it was made public, we’ve seen little in the way of new and innovative journalism being done with these basic tools.

So this is where I suggest a new way to create media, community funded and supported, i.e. community invested news. This has been discussed before, here for example. I’m just going to take the idea, and suggest how we can apply it, in this case to learning more about Somali pirates.

Let’s assume we’ve funded the equipment for a team based in Nairobi-more about how to fund that in a later post, but my previous model for Afghanistan looks a bit similar to what I’ll be proposing.

So, imagine if you could tweet your own questions for Somali pirates and have them answered via audio or perhaps even video within a few days? We can do that right now, utilizing skype, mobile phone networks, and even Utterli or drop.io. When news came that the pirates were killed and Captain Phillips freed, our correspondent in Harardhere could have provided immediate access to the response of locals in the pirate village. Viewers at home could have asked their own questions of the locals supported by Somalia’s pirate economy.

In the days after Captain Phillips was freed, rather than speculation about the potential for Somalia’s pirates to band to join forces with Islamist militias, rather than interviewed so-called “experts” about what might or might not happen, our community-funded team could be asking local residents.

The most affordable form they could be producing content in would be text blogging. With the support of the audience, our local producer will be able to produce audio, video, photo, or perhaps more interactive reports. The quality, and quantity of coverage depends on the audience’ level of interest and willingness to support.

Wouldn’t you like to know that you could influence Anderson Cooper, Brian Williams, or Keith Olbermann’s coverage? With Small World News, of course you have a say in the coverage, because you’ll help write our paychecks.

As always, please email us or leave a comment below, especially if you have assistance or advice to offer!

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It’s rare to hear about Afghanistan these days, despite the so-called re-deployment of forces and a new direction for the “war on terror” under a new president. But when we do hear about Afghanistan it often looks something like this:

KABUL (AP) — The U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan says its troops have killed four suspected militants and detained two others during a raid in the country’s south.

A coalition statement says the raid targeted a Taliban bomb-making cell in Maywand district of the southern Kandahar province Monday.

Southern Afghanistan is a center of the Taliban-led insurgency, where thousands of new U.S. troops have been ordered to join the fight by President Barack Obama to try to reverse militant gains of the last three years.

I’ve re-posted that in full, because it’s the ENTIRE ARTICLE. That is what often passes as an article fro Afghanistan these days. Where are the photos? What did the “militants” look like? Who did they work for? Where is the evidence of the “bomb-making cell?”

Re-read the article. Its quite clearly a republishing of a Coalition press release. Now let’s imagine this story in another way. You visit a news website and see the headline “4 insurgents killed in southern Afghanistan.” On the site in front of you, you see a series of photos, in this case, the house that was raided. Next you notice there is an icon with a ubiquitous “play” triangle, you click it and are brought immediately to the scene in Afghanistan, you can hear the ambient noise and a voice in English, perhaps stilted, or a local language, voiced-over in English, describes the scene and proceeds to interview a number of neighbors, “what did you know about this house? Did you see what happened? What do you think about the coalition forces?”

And below this, a brief update written in text, contextualized with an idea of what the government/security situation is like in this area, speculation as to who these “militants” might be, something about the number of incidents in the region lately.

Or better yet, perhaps you came to read an article titled something like “Life in Khost, a day on the border with Pakistan.” You’ve come to read this article because via Twitter you posed the question “what do locals think about the increase in US troops in the border region of Afghanistan?”

You find a detailed piece describing life and the livelihoods of several Afghani residents, including photos, and, again, an audio clip that can be played immediately from your browser with a series of Afghanis relating their opinions about the presence of US troops and a short description of their daily life. In this case there is also a series of short video clips you can play back, for once you’ve really gotten a feel for what life might be like in Afghanistan, and from the Afghani perspective.

This isn’t a bizarre “Reality television” pitch, but a real possibility, right now, that could be implemented within a few months, possibly even weeks. What it lacks is funding and the clear presence of an interested and supportive community.

An internet connection in Kandahar will run $300/month for enough bandwidth to post stories, photos, and perhaps highly compressed video. A decent salary for an Afghani would be 300/month. So for $1800/month 5 producers with a decent internet connection could begin producing media in Afghanistan.

The other start-up costs depend on the quality and type of the media desired. Using Utterli its possible to record and post audio dispatches via mobile phone directly to the web, in this case the added cost to cover would be the phone credit and travel.

For $1500 we could purchase 10 Flip Video cameras which would be enough to produce basic quality video as a start, with the added advantage of extra cameras for loaners and backups in the predictable case of broken or stolen equipment.

Of course this can’t be done without sending someone to Afghanistan to courier equipment and training for the local producers, setting an initial cost, besides equipment, at perhaps 15k for airfare, a stipend, and basic expenses.

If we can raise 25k we can start a journalism project in southern Afghanistan, where there are no longer ANY journalists based full-time. Proving the model in southern Afghanistan is a big step towards building a nation-wide news organization, as well as beginning a project on the other side of the border, inside Pakistan.

I’m certain 25 thousand dollars sounds like a lot, given the state of the world economy. However, given President Obama’s policies of escalation in Afghanistan, and our utter lack of knowledge about the situation on the ground, can we afford *not* to be getting quality on-the-ground news from southern Afghanistan?

I look forward to working with each and every one of you to build a crowd-funded news organization to provide the information we truly want to be reading/watching/hearing.

More models to come.

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[The following is cross-posted from Small World News]

Brian Conley on RocketBoom

John Yemma writes about the speech given last Thursday by Marty Baron, Boston Globe editor, in the CS Monitor “Editor’s blog” Connecting the Dots.

Mr. Baron raised the hopeful image of a “new era of entrepreneurship.” This very image has been raised before many times. The question we should concern ourselves with is of course, where will it lead?

The New York Times purchased the Boston Globe in 1993, at the time one of its top regional competitors, and one of the nation’s most acclaimed and profitable newspapers. Although analysts say its been losing money since then, and the Globe had a 10% circulation drop in a six month period in 2008, the question has to be asked yet again why this occurred?

I remember the Boston Globe being the only paper covering the 2000 Presidential Debates with the courage to clarify the fact that police officers were the first to use violence against demonstrators, which later escalated into something resembling a full-scale riot by the end of the evening. However, I can’t help feeling that the quality of the Globe’s coverage decreased dramatically from this highlight in 2000 until the present-day.

I also can’t help feeling that the cause of such a decrease is directly tied to the profit motive. There was a previous era of entrepreneurship, just after World War I, when journalism truly began to flourish. Unfortunately individuals such as William Hearst and others, the first media moguls, were the ones whose motives for an earlier version of “a million page views” led to the eventual situation we find ourselves in today.

But it wasn’t their profit motive alone, it was also our failure to recognize that although freedom of speech must be a vehemently defended right, where there is a tendency toward profit and a bottom-line motive, regulation is a necessity.

Had the New York Times been prevented from purchasing its rival the Boston Globe in 1993, and other similarly monopolistic moves throughout the US media industry, perhaps a new era of entrepreneurship might have flourished sooner, one that recognized if we wish to have honest, forthright, quality journalism, we need to protect, cultivate, and value journalism as something which should never have a primary directive of selling soap. Either we are in the pursuit of honest, informed journalism, or we are in the business of selling soap. I don’t believe it can be both.

Last week I started to imagine for you a new world of journalism. I’d like to continue that with a few questions,

What do you want to see from journalists and newsmakers in the future?

What do you desire most that’s not available in your news currently?

Would you pay a subscription fee to support journalism that mattered to you?

What if it provided you the ability to ask questions of those interviewed?

What if it enabled you to interact with the producers and subjects of content?

What else might convince you to pay to support journalism that matters to you?

______

Please comment below and reblog!

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[The following manifesto is reprinted from Small World News]

Award Winning Web Video from Small World News

I’d like to imagine a world where an alternative global video news and documentary network has been established. A network that enables those in the areas most at-risk from human-trafficking, destruction of the environment, availability of deadly weapons worldwide, and internal disputes due to ethnic rivalries, competition for resources, and others. Such a network might have enabled Iraqis to learn from Rwandans and others about the dangers of ethnic conflict, and alternate realities behind its origins. It could enable those at risk from genocide or ethnic cleansing to speak directly to the international community rather than, as in Darfur, forcing refugees to depend on NGOs and States with their own agendas at work.

But the best thing about such a network is that its possible now. The only thing that limits our capability to build such a network is a moderate amount of funding and a vision. With the affordability of DV equipment, and more and more, HD and mpeg4 equipment, a broadcast quality mobile production studio, with archiving capabilities, can be outfitted for well under $10,000.00.

I believe within a few years time we can create an international network, with community video units, aka “bureaus” operating in five regions or more, producing and distributing content for their local community. However, what gets me really excited, is knowing that utilizing the internet we can now broaden the reach of those teams to one that is truly global. We can create a new “60 Minutes” style program, where the stories are defined by those most affected, where using twitter and blog commenting and other outlets the viewers and community members alike can drive the discussion and offer questions and feedback.

But we can also broaden our reach beyond video, utilizing tools such as Utterli to enable members of the community to make radio reports on an individual basis(see our work on Alive in Gaza), or partner with Ushahidi to assist mobile phone users to contribute from areas where a video unit has worked recently or is preparing to travel.

We can utilize video to build a focus, a groundswell of attention, and then broaden to other social media tools that in some communities will be better suited for long-term and regular usage.

Alive in Baghdad, as one of the most award-winning, though arguably one of the least-funded, web video projects, has shown the viability, the strength of this medium. We can distribute the stories of individuals and communities in crisis across not only their community, country, or continent, but the globe. In so doing, we may be able to curb many of the great intractable issues of our day.

All we need to accomplish this is possess the will to do it and, as always, a little funding.

We need your support to make this happen. If you’re a grant writer, or you know grant writers, please write.

If you have suggestions about funding sources, or locations you’d like to see us put this model into action, please write.

If you have resources, whether funds, equipment, skills or otherwise that you’d like to contribute, please write.

Comment below or email us at smallworldnews at Gmail dot com, and let us know how you can help or give us your own testaments about our work.

Together we can imagine a world of many voices, a big world made small. Together we can build Small World News.

On behalf of my colleagues worldwide, from Kenya to Iraq, Mexico to Afghanistan, I look forward to working with you in the future,

Brian Conley

Director, Small World News

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[The following is an essay written for Enduring America]

In Scott Lucas’s recent article “Mr. Obama’s War: The Fantasy of the Pakistan Sanctuaries,” he analyzes US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’ appearance on Meet the Press, pointing out the cognitive dissonance in Gates’ assertion that the US understands safe havens in Pakistan because it has used those same Pakistani safe havens so effectively before. But Prof. Lucas also raises some very interesting questions, particularly over Gates’ apparent non-answer to host David Gregory’s question regarding the consequences of the US campaign to the Pakistani state. This is my attempt to answer those questions, as well as an attempt to parse out a broader US “grand strategy” from Gates’ appearance.

David Gregory asked Gates, “the trouble and consequences of jihadists making significant gains in either Afghanistan or Pakistan is perhaps more acute in Pakistan given its nuclear potential. True?” In reply, Gates’ offered this: “Well, as long as we’re in Afghanistan and as long as the Afghan government has the support of dozens and dozens of countries who are providing military support, civilian support in addition to us, we are providing a level of stability in Afghanistan that at least prevents it from being a safe haven from which plots against the United States and the Europeans and others can be, can be put together.”

The key is this: Gates isn’t answering the question about Pakistan to David Gregory. He’s answering the question about Pakistan directly to the Pakistanis.

I read that as “Well, as long as I can go on Sunday morning Prime Time and say 9/11, Taliban, Osama bin Laden and my Commander in Chief can draw crowds of 200,000 screaming Europeans, Pakistan can suck it up and deal with whatever we want to do, including destabilizing or overthrowing their corrupt government and/or stealing or destroying their illegal nuclear weapons, which by the way, I already have the authority to do from a little thing called the Lugar-Obama bill.”

In short, it’s not the responsibility of the Secretary of Defense to keep Pakistan stable, it is his responsibility to attack extremist safe havens in Pakistan in order to prevent a catastrophic terrorist attack against the US, Canada, or the European Union. President Obama, and by extension the plans of his secretary of defense, enjoys bipartisan political support as well as stable international credibility, and accordingly, the US will act, as Prof. Lucas said in his article, as if “there are no consequences whatsoever for the internal Pakistani situation,” or more appropriately, without regard to these consequences.

But there is more we can glean from Secretary Gates interview than it appears. Beyond the purposes Prof. Lucas pointed out, pitching Obama’s Iraq withdrawal plan and articulating US Afghanistan policy, it’s possible Gates was offering us, and the international audience, insight into the broader strategic calculations of the United States, particularly the role the Department of Defense and US military power abroad.

President Obama has shown himself to be somewhat of a Centrist, if only in regard to his desire to hear from all sides of an argument or debate. One thing all foreign policy and national security analysts, from the Conservative “Fall of Rome” crowd to the Realist “Second World” type all the way to the Neoconservative “Team America” folks, can agree on is this: The United States of America is now and will continue to be Earth’s preeminent military force, at least for the foreseeable future.

There is a saying amongst foreign policy elites, always some paraphrase of “Who has the world’s largest air force after the US Air Force? The US Army.”

With Pakistan, Gates is essentially saying that, as long as the US, Canada, and Europe are threatened by extremist attacks from Afghanistan and Pakistan, the US will continue to act aggressively with its military force, in any manner and on any territory of its choosing, provided they have the support and cooperation from Europe and NATO (whose members will suffer from terrorism long before the US). What’s absent is any mention of India, implying the support of India in Afghanistan and protection from Pakistan-launched, “Mumbai-style” attacks are not part of the US calculation. (“Your problem, not ours.”)

It may seem like Gates casually forgot to mention India and Mumbai in his response on Pakistan, after all, “AfPak” is an extremely complicated subject and it’s easy to leave things out or get things mixed up. At least, that will be the talking point if this becomes an issue. However, we know two things: that India and Pakistan are inextricably linked together in any strategic calculus, and second, that this wasn’t just a casual visit to Meet the Press by Bob Gates. It was the public coming out ceremony for George W Bush’s former and now President Obama’s current Secretary of Defense, civilian leader of the United States Military.

The importance of this public appearance can’t be understated. It was not necessarily designed for the domestic audience of NBC viewers, but rather was aimed at a more global audience. As I noted above with Gates’ answer on Pakistan, he was answering it directly to the Pakistanis. And this is what makes the apparently deliberate absence of India from the “AfPak” equation so significant. The absence, the answer, and the entire interview together could lead us to presume that Gates is essentially articulating the prototype for what will later be called “the Obama Doctrine.”

The “Obama Doctrine” looks something like this: The United States will continue to use its military power as its premiere tool in international affairs, and may even act preemptively, however not on issues it deems outside of reasonable American national security concerns, and only with support and cooperation from the international community. To put it frankly, something like a cross between “walk softly and carry a big stick” and the Buddy System. While still violent, imperial and aggressive, it is a marked departure from the so-called Bush Doctrine and even the Global War on Terror.

The India-Pakistan(/Kashmir/Bangladesh) conflict is the perfect illustration. Under the old rules of the Bush Doctrine, the response to something like the Mumbai attacks might be airstrikes, special forces, or some other combination of clandestine military force. Under the “Obama Doctrine,” the Defense Department under Gates, and thus the US military, are not responsible for the India-Pakistan conflict. Rather this would fall under the portfolios of US Attorney General Eric Holder and his FBI as well US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her cadres of ambassadors and envoys, not to mention support and cooperation from that throbbing heart of diplomacy in Brussels (European Union), law enforcement agents with Interpol and NATO, and the mediation and oversight of the United Nations.

Obviously it’s an extreme departure from George W Bush’s radical Napoleonic-cum-Bolshevik strategy of the Global War on Terror, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the “Obama Doctrine” will turn out any more successfully than the Bush Doctrine. In fact, the strategy is brimming with vulnerabilities.

Sticking with Pakistan-India, though the US may be the most powerful military, it is not the only military on the planet. In the fall of 2007 as civil unrest was broiling in Pakistan under General Pervez Musharaff, then-Senator now Vice President Joe Biden campaigned in the Democratic Party primaries on a promise to pull strategic military aid from Pakistan, that is weapons used against India, in order to pressure Pakistan to focus on the insurgency rather than more ethereal, strategic conflicts. In response, however, the Chinese offered to sell Pakistan a new fleet of MiG fighter jets, similar to the American planes Biden was threatening to withdraw. Now, as then, there is a constant danger that any diplomatic “sticks” threatened by the US can simply be neutralized by other international actors willing to take its place.

Furthermore there is the problem caused by the global financial meltdown and the massive economic depressions its causing. While Secretary Gates may have in his authority to bomb Pakistani safe havens as well as police the Straits of Malacca, the United States may not ultimately be able to afford the high price of imperialism. And if the US is forced to cut back on its imperalist designs, it will create some extremely uncomfortable strategic questions for policy makers. For example, what is the higher priority between preventing a bus bombing in London or preventing a missile exchange between Korea and Japan when you can’t afford both?

But so we don’t end on such a morbid tone, let me point out that this prototypical “Obama Doctrine” has some very powerful advantages over the Bush Doctrine, the Global War on Terror, and the so-called Long War/Great Game theories. The most important advantage is that it is absolutely conscious of and constructed on the idea of a “Multi-Polar” world. That is even though the US seeks to dominate international affairs, it acknowledges and plans for the participation of other actors, state or non-state. By allowing for participation, it allows for competition, and as President Obama displays with his choice of Hillary Clinton for Secretary of State, competition has both winners and losers who can still join together for a common purpose. There is no absolute victory or defeat of good and evil, but rather a competition among partners.

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