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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From FreeTibet2008.org

Beijing – Brian Conley, creator of the well-known videoblog, Alive in Baghdad,
was detained with his friend, Jeffrey Rae, early Tuesday, August 19th
in Beijing. Their detention appears to have taken place at the same
time as that of international artist James Powderly, whose detention
was reported Tuesday. Three other bloggers and activists, Jeff Goldin,
Michael Liss, and Tom Grant, have also been missing since Tuesday
morning. Conley, 28, Rae, 28, Goldin, 40, Liss, 35, Grant, 39 are all
American citizens.

So first off, let me just point out how absolutely pathetic it is that, as I’m sitting down to write on this terrible no-name unpopular zit of a blog, the big time zillion dollar mainstream media CNN is showing Larry King reruns and not bothering at all to cut away to the story of 5 American citizens being arrested by a foreign government. Now, I know Brian Conley. We’re not buddies, we don’t send each other christmas cards or nothin,’ but I have talked to him enough to know the he understands and cares way more about this stuff than any of the blowdried corporate chuckleheads the big networks have covering Beijing.  The fact that my unheard of ass has to blog about this while CNN sits back and runs repeats is absolutely outrageous and a complete and utter disgrace. These cheesy dipshit network goons in Beijing are all drooling and prawning around for the next chance to give Michael Phelps a handjob on live television while the real journalists who came to cover actual important stories are left to rot in a Chinese jail. I could puke.

And here’s the thing: I actually like China! Or at least I did until they threw my friend in jail. But I had their back on Tibet. I looked at it from the point of view of an American. We engaged in all kinds of wickedness and genocide in our quest to conquer North America. I understand that China is absolutely convinced that Tibet belongs to them. It’s “their California,” as so many people are fond of saying. I was willing to be very lenient with them during their growing pains as a superpower.  It doesn’t make it okay for the Chinese since the US did it first, but I was willing to be…patient.

But then I remembered this article I read a while ago about some writer or another visiting and reviewing the Native American museum in Washington, DC. It was in Salon, or Slate, or one of those similar snotty liberal rags that you wind up at on one of those days where you just want to read something you agree with. Anyways, what the reporter found was that the US government was essentially whitewashing the entire native affair. No mention of the forced deportations, the broken treaties, the naked genocide. None of it. The timeline basically went thanksgiving, civil war, casinos, visit the gift shop on your way out. I remember very distinctly sharing the author’s shame with our country’s blatant cover up of crimes against humanity. I remembered that, and that’s when I decided what we can do about our pal Brian.

Even though we can’t stop China, whatever happens, we can’t let China get away with the same cover up we did. The slobbering, snaggletooth old slags who run the Communist Party in China must be exposed, must be laid bare as the vicious, psychopathic war criminals that they are. And how are we going to do that? By supporting independent journalism, of course! Obviously, we can’t count on the prostitutes at the big networks to cover these issues, so we need to make sure people like Brian Conley are completely free to tell the truth about China. Let’s make sure that when Brian gets back to America, he has absolutely nothing to do but kick ass for human rights, independent journalism, and let’s be honest, for us.

To do that, let’s head over to the support page at Brian’s flagship project “Alive in Baghdad.”

Alive in Baghdad was started with money primarily gathered through
grants and donations. Today we are struggling to get by, and have made
it this far on a combination of donations and footage licensing. We
have begun taking voluntary monthly subscriptions, in the hope that our
viewership will step forward and provide financial support for the
Baghdad reports you have come to love. Please make a subscription
pledge today of 5, 10, or 25 dollars. If you don’t feel you can make a
regular commitment, consider donating even a few dollars in a one-time
donation today.

If you go to that link above to the support page, you’ll also notice that you can pick up a copy of the Alive in Baghdad DVD and also some t-shirts and assorted swag and stuff. In fact, if you haven’t been watching AiB, now would be a great time to pick up a copy of the vol. 1 DVD. Iraq will be a major issue in this year’s election, and Alive in Baghdad will teach you everything you need to know about life in Iraq. Grab one for yourself, for somebody else, whatever you want. Besides that, just give whatever you can. It is absolutely critical that we support independent journalists like Brian Conley. If he doesn’t have the funds to keep bringing you the truth about Iraq, China and so many other places, these stories will not get covered, period. Please, give whatever you can so that when Brian gets back he’ll know that even though the Chinese government doesn’t like citizen journalists, the rest of us are hungry for more.

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