Unemployed bloggers should apply
: Bill Hobbs finds a fascinating job ad for journalism trainers to go to Iraq and help jumpstart a free press there. Posted by the Institute London-based War & Peace Reporting:
IWPR trainers in Iraq will lead intensive personalised training through a combination of workshop (knowledge-based) training and practical on-the-job (skills-based) instruction and mentoring.
Workshop training cycles will lead participants through a significant curriculum of basic and specialist training modules (from fundamentals of journalism, to humanitarian, peace and human rights reporting) to provide grounding in the core tenets of fact-based reporting. As part of the project, a training manual in Arabic and Kurdish will be produced to support the training process, and IWPR trainers will play a significant role in its development.... The ideal candidate will have experience in international journalism, experience as an international journalism trainer and knowledge of Arabic or Kurdish language, though candidates with two of these three attributes may be considered....
IWPR's Anthony
Borden reports:
Efforts by the US-led authority in Iraq to establish responsible media are in crisis, with bitter inter-agency rivalry, senior staff changes and poor planning undermining early efforts to launch programming and lay out a framework for media development.
The stakes are high. A prerequisite for any kind of emerging democracy is a professional and trusted media, to convey facts, support responsible debate and represent the diversity of communities and views within Iraq. But the absence of a reliable Iraqi media exacerbates the frustration, and growing anger, felt because of the lack of an Iraqi authority and basic security and services. Powerless and uncertain, Iraqis need a voice.
There has been a dramatic post-war boom in local media, with the launch of up to 150 newspapers and many radio stations. Indeed, there is a bewildering - exciting - diversity of new voices for a changed Iraq emerging from decades of dictatorship. But the majority are highly partisan media established by rival political interests jockeying for position, and could be destabilising in a fragile post-conflict environment. Many are directly produced by political parties, or by former senior Ba'athists or other figures with a political, rather than a journalistic, orientation. Informed media with balanced reporting is largely absent.
If you've been reading this weblog for more than a few days, you know I'm eager to help Iraqis start weblogs, since they will allow a wide variety of voices to be heard around the world.
I also think that online media can inform this journalism training greatly. Iraqi newspapers do not need to -- in fact, cannot -- operate like newspapers in the U.S. or Britain or Europe; they can't afford to.
Online media have learned to do things in new, faster, cheaper, better ways and that is the best model for Iraq.
A new breed of newspaper in Iraq -- a "fact-based" paper, as this group puts it -- can learn from weblogs by pointing to and summarizing news sources around the world (see The Week magazine).
It can cram a tremendous amount of information into a small space (compare any weblog post to any LATimes story and tell me which is informative in less space and time).
It can use its audience to help gather news and the voice of the audience.
And these same lessons can be applied to local radio and TV: You no longer need hugely expensive equipment to gather audio and video.
Online can help teach all these media to remember that -- especially in a place like Iraq -- the audience is often the story. Listen to your audience and you will find the news. Listen first, then speak.
The irony of all this is that newspapers here and in Europe could end up learning from brand new newspapers in Iraq (if they're given the right jump start). Newspapers in the rest of the world will need to rethink themselves as online gives them more
competition for the attention of the audience and for classified ad dollars. They will need to rethink how to do their jobs, what makes them valuable, what makes them useful, what makes them unique, what makes them trusted, and what makes them profitable.
Iraq could turn into a great laboratory for the future of media, if it is given half a chance.
Tick... tick... tick...
: A day after announcing her weblog -- and telling us to look at it today -- Coulter is uncharacteristically silent. Enjoy it while it lasts.
'Unlike the streets of Paris, Berlin or Berkeley, anti-Americanism is not fashionable in Tehran'
: Iranian.com says these demonstrations are different and says that those who say that America should just sit back and shush are wrong [my emphases]:
The students, backed by ordinary people in the streets, are no longer asking for reform but for the removal of the clerical regime. They are chanting “death to Khamenei,” the Supreme Leader, which is by law a treasonous act....
The protests have now spilled into more areas than the streets around Tehran University. There are rumors that the youth of Naziabad, one of the poorest and traditionally most religious sections of Tehran, have extended their support to the students and offered to do the dirty fighting for them. Even in the well-to-do northern residential areas of town young and old have taken to the streets in support of the uprising.
Once again the regime blames the U.S. for homegrown problems. Both Rafsanjani, the powerful head of the Council of Expediency, and Khamenei have accused the U.S. of agitating and meddling in Iranian affairs. The chief of police, Baqer Qalibaf, claimed on Sunday that no students had been arrested -- only U.S. backed “hooligans” who have infiltrated student ranks.
The speaker of the Majlis, Mehdi Karrubi, defensively claimed on Sunday, “We already have democracy in Iran. The national elections are symbols of democracy in the country.” He even went as far as to remind people of the 1953 U.S. backed coup that brought the Shah back to power, claiming that American-style democracy is not what Iranians need.
But anti-Americanism here is staid. Tired of theocratic hard-line rule, the people are happy to get whatever help they can from abroad. The opposition radio and satellite television are widely used even in the poorer sections of Tehran. Accusations of American backing actually have given courage to the demonstrators. Unlike the streets of Paris, Berlin or Berkeley, anti-Americanism is not fashionable in Tehran. The regime, having adopted it for the past twenty-five years since the Islamic Revolution, has beaten the life out of it.
People are encouraged by the presence of U.S. in both the East (Afghanistan) and the West (Iraq) of Iran. The influence of opposition media from abroad cannot be under-estimated. But the accusations of American meddling are exaggerated and betray a certain helplessness on the part of the rulers in the face of their mounting unpopularity. This is a spontaneous uprising coming from the university and spreading out. It is an uprising that is unorganized, without leadership or ideology. A massive protest that comes from the deep discontent and frustration of a people tired of being bullied.
This is an indigenous movement of a youth who wants individual freedom and who has finally mustered enough courage to stand up and face the knives, clubs and guns of government thugs. It is exactly the improvisational nature of the uprising that gives it weight -- it is difficult for the regime to paint it as anything but genuine and indigenous. There are no leaders to assassinate or arrest and no ideology to detract - only an ever-growing frustration that has spilled into the streets....
Some say that America could not support the demonstrators so as not to give them coodies (as we used to say). Others, including this author, say our support and attention -- from government and media -- is vital.
Read it
all.
: And note with mirth that this Iranian writer includes Berkeley in a list of anti-American hotbeds.
: Kaveh sees the irony ruling Iran:
I can kill two birds with one stone. I wanted to discuss safety at work in Iran. If you come to Iran, you will see taxis with no seatbelts, people working on jackhammers without ear protection, people welding without masks, people riding girders at construction sites to the tops of buildings, and definitely no hard hats. Perhaps you will also see some graffiti about 18 Tir (July 9) which the construction workers partially erased out of fear. They are afraid of the government, but not bricks falling on their heads. They are also boiling tar in barrels with an open flame...
: A Washington Post
poll says: "By 56 percent to 38 percent, the public endorsed the use of the military to block Iran from developing nuclear arms." I hope not. This is yet another reason to support the popular democratic movement from inside Iran: so there is not intervention from the outside.
: Here's evidence that the mullahs are nervous about Washington: They're offering gifts:
Iran admitted yesterday that it had "identified" al-Qa'eda members in captivity and would extradite some of them to "friendly" countries.
After repeated claims by Washington that Teheran was harbouring al-Qa'eda terrorists, the government admitted that it had "several" in custody, but said it did not yet know who they were.
The admission that their identities had been established is apparently a gesture to appease Washington which has become increasingly frustrated with Teheran.
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