Blogger Zeyad A.: Western Media Missing Human Perspective in Iraq

Blogger Zeyad A.: Western Media Missing Human Perspective in Iraq: "By David S. Hirschman

Published: October 07, 2006 3:00 PM ET

The celebrated blog Healing Iraq has chronicled daily life in Baghdad since October of 2003,

Speaking at the Online News Association's annual convention in Washington, Iraqi dentist-turned-blogger Zeyad A. called local blogs a "main source of information" in Iraq, and said that Western media coverage was becoming more and more limited by increasing violence. He said Saturday that the Western media is missing a human perspective in its coverage of his country, and suggested reporters focus less on the government and more on what is being written on blogs by ordinary Iraqis."

"Over the last year [the Western Media have not been] covering how bad it is," he said. "Most of the coverage revolves around attacks against American forces. ... They're missing the sectarian violence that is going on in the country. It's extrememly difficult for the Western media to get those stories because they have to be in the [local] neighborhoods." He said that most Western reporters are "locked up" in certain parts of Baghdad, only able to file stories generated by local stringers (much as New York Times reporter Dexter Filkins described in a recent E&P story).

Western reporters put a disproportionate focus on "irrelevant" news about the Iraqi government. "[The government] doesn't control anything," he said. "It doesn't even control the Green Zone."

Zeyad said the media reports should try to put more focus on the Iraqi people, and, in particular, on the stories they share on blogs and other online forums.

"You get a great insight," he said, referring to blog entries from an 18-year-old Iraqi girl who describes her daily routine of passing through checkpoints simply to get to school.

"You can put a face on it."

Zeyad a Baghdad native, began blogging in 2003 -- for a mostly Western audience -- to give the kind of on-the-ground perspective missing in Western news reports. He collected information from family and friends, read as many local blogs as he could, wrote about demonstrations and events in his neighborhood, take and posted both pictures and commentary.

"I thought I could spare an hour every day and write about what was going on," he said. "[The blog medium] was very appropriate. It's immediate, you can write about things as they happen, you can post photos immediately, and there's no editing."

The early blog entries were, mostly, positive, about his hopes for democracy in Iraq, and, he developed a following of people who shared his views. Until Zeyad wrote about the death of his cousin, caught by American troops violating curfew, who drowned after being pushed into a river by the troops. One soldier received prison time for his part in the incident. The story was picked up by media around the world.

The more critical of the U.S. Zeyad turned in his posts, the more he became the object of criticism. "I realized that some people were supporting me just because I was telling them what they wanted to hear. When I started saying something different, I lost some of that support."

While blogging in Iraq, Zeyad was fearful for his life, and carefully reviewed his posts to make sure he wasn't revealing too much about himself or where he was. A synopsis of Zeyad's blogging is found at the Web site Hearing Zeyad..

About the current situation in Baghdad, Zeyad describes violence both random and fierce, mortar shells shot each night by Sunnis and Shiites into one another's neighborhoods, young people with machine guns spraying bullets in the street. Small gangs kidnap and murder people from rival neighborhoods.

Asked if he called the situation in his country a "civil war," he pointed to what he had described and said the answer depended on whether those conditions could be called a "civil war."

"I think that's a civil war," he said. "I don't know why the media does not use that word."

Zeyad is currently living in New York, where he is studying at the City University of New York's recently founded graduate school of journalism. He said he hopes to develop his reporting and editing skills so that he can later go back to his country (or to Jordan) and teach others.

http://editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003222368&imw=Y

A Federal Case? Federal Property?

Josh Wolf: video blogger at the center of controversy over journalists' rights:

“Wolf’s willingness to go to prison rather than turn over unpublished video of a July, 2005 anti-globalization protest in San Francisco to a federal grand jury has earned him the support of journalists and civil liberties advocates across the United States. Prosecutors say they need the video outtakes to help them determine how a police officer was injured and a police car was damaged. Wolf and his lawyers say the video contains no information about the alleged crimes, and that as a journalist, he should not be compelled to turn them over. Further, they charge, the prosecutors' actions in this case endanger not only the First Amendment rights of journalists, but the civil liberties of ordinary citizens with dissident political views.”

“After a six-month court battle that has gone as for as the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, Wolf was imprisoned on charges of civil contempt on September 22, 2006 at the Federal Correctional facility in Dublin, California.

Normally, they maintain, such a case would be tried at the state or local level, where California's shield law would apply. That law protects journalists from being required to disclose unpublished
information gathered for a news story. According to news reports, federal prosecutors say the case falls within their jurisdiction because the San Francisco Police Department receives federal funding and thus, the damaged police car is federal property. In an August, 2006 interview, Wolf asked, "If an S.F. police vehicle is considered federal property, then what isn't federal property?"

"As unconventional and non-traditional as [Josh Wolf's] work in journalism may be in many respects, he is contesting an age-old argument... and that's that journalists never should be arms of law enforcement," says Christine Tatum, president of the Society of Professional Journalists. "Josh has, at great personal cost, taken quite a stand – an admirable stand, and he has said..., 'I am not divulging unpublished, unedited, unaired material...for a grand jury's review. And we stand wholeheartedly behind him."

So much so that the SPJ donated $30,000 for Wolf's legal fees and convinced his lawyers to cap those fees at $60,000. Tatum said the grant is SPJ's largest-ever award from its legal defense fund.

According to an e-mail from Luke Macaulay, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's office, "The incident is under investigation so that the [Grand Jury] can determine what, if any, crimes were committed... As we have argued in our court filings, the GJ is therefore entitled as a matter of law to all of the evidence in Wolf's possession related to the demonstration. Six separate judges or panels have now ruled unequivocally that we have lawfully issued a subpoena for a legitimate investigative purposes, and that the material in question should be furnished to the grand jury."

The case law on journalists' efforts to withhold information from grand juries rarely favors reporters. The most frequently cited precedent is Branzburg v. Hayes, a 1972 Supreme Court case in which it was determined that, with rare exceptions, journalists have no greater protection than other citizens when it comes to complying with a grand jury. The exceptions are when the prosecutor's actions can be reasonably considered harassment, or when disclosure would violate the journalists' Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination.

Coincidentally, at the time Branzburg was handed down, the presiding judge in Wolf case, William Alsup, clerked for Justice William O. Douglas, author of a key Branzburg dissent. Douglas wrote:

"Forcing a reporter before a grand jury will have two retarding effects upon the ear and the pen of the press. Fear of exposure will cause dissidents to communicate less openly to trusted reporters. And fear of accountability will cause editors and critics to write with more restrained pens."

However, in a redacted transcript of Wolf's June 15, 2006 hearing before Alsup, the Judge departed from Douglas' view, declaring, "The U.S. Supreme Court said there is no journalist newsman's privilege under the First Amendment."

For Wolf's supporters, one of the major problems with his case is the fact that it's being prosecuted in Federal court. Normally, they maintain, such a case would be tried at the state or local level, where California's shield law would apply. That law protects journalists from being required to disclose unpublished information gathered for a news story. According to news reports, federal prosecutors say the case falls within their jurisdiction because the San Francisco Police Department receives federal funding and thus, the damaged police car is federal property. In an August, 2006 interview, Wolf asked, "If an S.F. police vehicle is considered federal property, then what isn't federal property?" ”

Is this a Republican Administration or Marxist?

It sure isn't American.

http://www.ojr.org/ojr/stories/061002pearson/

A New Strategy on Insurgency - Years Too Late

Military Hones a New Strategy on Insurgency - New York Times:

The doctrine warns against some of the practices used early in the war, when the military operated without an effective counterinsurgency playbook. It cautions against overly aggressive raids and mistreatment of detainees. Instead it emphasizes the importance of safeguarding civilians and restoring essential services, and the rapid development of local security forces.

“The doctrine warns against some of the practices used early in the war, when the military operated without an effective counterinsurgency playbook. It cautions against overly aggressive raids and mistreatment of detainees. Instead it emphasizes the importance of safeguarding civilians and restoring essential services, and the rapid development of local security forces.…

The doctrine is outlined in a new field manual on counterinsurgency that is to be published next month. But recent drafts of the unclassified documents have been made available to The New York Times, and military officials said that the major elements of final version would not change.

The spirit of the document is captured in nine paradoxes that reflect the nimbleness required to win the support of the people and isolate insurgents from their potential base of support — a task so complex that military officers refer to it as the graduate level of war.

Instead of massing firepower to destroy Republican Guard troops and other enemy forces, as was required in the opening weeks of the invasion of Iraq, the draft manual emphasizes the importance of minimizing civilian casualties. “The more force used, the less effective it is,” it notes.

“The more force used, the less effective it is,”

Stressing the need to build up local institutions and encourage economic development, the manual cautions against putting too much weight on purely military solutions. “Tactical success guarantees nothing,” it says.

“Tactical success guarantees nothing,”

Noting the need to interact with the people to gather intelligence and understand the civilians’ needs, the doctrine cautions against hunkering down at large bases. “The more you protect your force, the less secure you are,” it asserts.

“The more you protect your force, the less secure you are,”

The military generally turned its back on counterinsurgency operations after the Vietnam War. The Army concentrated on defending Europe against a Soviet attack. The Marines were focused on expeditionary operations in the third world.

“Basically, after Vietnam, the general attitude of the American military was that we don’t want to fight that kind of war again,” said Conrad C. Crane, the director of the military history institute at the Army War College, a retired Army lieutenant colonel and one of the principal drafters of the new doctrine. “The Army’s idea was to fight the big war against the Russians and ignore these other things.”

A common assumption was that if the military trained for major combat operations, it would be able to easily handle less violent operations like peacekeeping and counterinsurgency. But that assumption proved to be wrong in Iraq; in effect, the military without an up-to-date doctrine. Different units improvised different approaches. The failure by civilian policy makers to prepare for the reconstruction of Iraq compounded the problem.

The limited number of forces was also a constraint. To mass enough troops to storm Falluja, an insurgent stronghold, in 2004, American commanders drew troops from Haditha, another town in western Iraq. Insurgents took advantage of the Americans’ limited numbers to attack the police there. Iraqi policemen were executed, dealing a severe setback to efforts to build a local force.

Frank G. Hoffman, a retired Marine infantry officer who works as a research fellow at an agency at the Marine base at Quantico, Va., said that in 2005, the Marines sometimes lacked sufficient forces to safeguard civilians. As a result, while these forces were often effective ‘in neutralizing an identifiable foe, they could not stay and work with the population the way the classical counterinsurgency would suggest.’”

We've almost lost as many soldiers in Iraq as we lost people on September 11, 2001. When we invaded in 2003 most Americans believed that there were Iraqis on board the planes that attacked the Pentagon and World Trade Center. A large number of the troops on the ground believed it too.

We didn't do the basic preparation. Now we're finding, and paying, the high price of doing over what could have been done right. Thousands, of ours, too late. Tens of thousands, of Iraqis, too late. Maybe too late to accomplish any goal at all.

Emperors Anonymous

The 12 Suggested Steps of Emperors Anonymous

1. We admitted we were powerless over reality -- that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that the Constitution was greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the faithful execution of our Constitutional duties as we understood them.
4. Made a searching and fearless legal inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves and to the public being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, including the detained, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with reality, as we understood it, praying only for knowledge of what the facts are and the power to act justly based on them.
12. Having awakened to the real world as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to other power gluttons, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.