While the crises in Iraq led global news coverage in the past year, the effects of escalating violence on journalists’ mobility and ability to report safely in the war-ravaged country are sad footnotes to every headline.
According to the US-based Committee to Protect Journalists, of the 92 journalists who have died in Iraq since the American-led invasion in 2003, 32 were killed in 2006, continuing a two-year spike.
What’s more, 30 of those 32 were Iraqis.
A new Iraq news portal website called IraqSlogger (iraqslogger.com) aims to improve the quality of information coming out of Iraq amid the security dangers by relying on a network of Iraqis reporting on everyday life in their country.
In addition to daily summaries of Iraq’s newspapers and video content, the site, launched in mid-December, includes diary-type entries from Iraqis, reports on the costs of bullets and groceries in Baghdad, and a “Kirkuk Police Blotter.
The website’s name refers to an infamous Donald Rumsfeld quote that Iraq was “a long, hard slog.
Much of the Iraq-focused content of the news site is the kind of local, highly specific descriptions of daily life there that might otherwise be read on personal weblogs.
“By creating local networks, we could get news out faster, with greater accuracy, Robert Young Pelton, Presient of Praedict, the war-zone focused media company behind IraqSlogger, told The Daily Star Egypt.
“We re essentially trying to apply big news standards on blog-type content.
IraqSlogger has approximately 50 Iraqis contributing to the site.
“Iraq is the story of our time, Eason Jordan, CEO of Praedict, told The Daily Star Egypt in an e-mail.
“While there are thousands of information sources including news about Iraq, there until now has not been a major 24/7 English-language news service dedicated exclusively to Iraq, he said.
“We strive to be that first ever, one-stop source for Iraq-focused breaking news, enterprise reporting, and commentary.
Jordan is a former Chief News Executive at CNN, where he worked for 23 years.
The formation of Praedict and the launch of IraqSlogger, according to Jordan, Pelton and other contributors, was a direct response to the deteriorating security situation in Iraq and its effects on news gathering there.
“Iraq is by far the most dangerous place on Earth for journalists to operate, said Pelton, an author who writes on working and traveling in the world’s most dangerous places.
“Typical news has a top down news bureau [that] sends someone out from there, from one place to another, Pelton explained, “and that s actually the most dangerous way of getting news in Iraq now. So when someone goes and covers a car bombing [for IraqSlogger], they live there.
The abilities of local Iraqis to move around the country and have the kind of access to news stories that foreign correspondents in the Green Zone in Baghdad cannot was echoed by Nir Rosen, whose career as a journalist began in Iraq in 2004.
“There s a dearth of good information about Iraq given the security situation, Rosen told The Daily Star Egypt.
A founding member of Praedict and IraqSlogger and regular contributor to the website, Rosen added, “What we really need are Iraqis to tell their own stories of survival, he said, admitting that “at this point there’s really no choice, because Western journalists can’t get around at all.
“As Iraq becomes more and more difficult to work in, and more and more important in the region, that information vacuum becomes larger.
Popular Cairo blogger Issandr El Amrani, who edits the blog The Arabist (arabist.net), posted about IraqSlogger when it launched, and continues to link to the site. “It makes sense to me that, on a topic on which so many people are interested such as Iraq, you have a merger of news and blogging, El Amrani said.
The current political climate in the region has expanded the authority and popularity of Middle East blogs, as more online readers turn to Lebanese, Iraqi, and Egyptian blogs to explain the realities of life under bombardment, occupation, and dictatorship.
“These days there is a thin line between a professional journalist and a blogger, said Wael Abbas, who runs the blog Misr Digital (misrdigital.blogspirit.com).
“For myself, I think that a blogger should give the picture as it is, as clear as possible, no matter if he likes it or not, which I don t think applies to professional journalists because each news agency has its own agenda, things they don t want to talk about. They are driven by advertising, by censorship.
