Alive in Baghdad: Powerful Citizen Journalism
The BBC reports on Alive in Baghdad, a series of videos that take us on to the streets and into the lives of Iraqis. The videos are very straightforward and at times hard to watch, but powerful in that we get to hear the voices of everyday people dealing with the consequences of the war.
BBC story says in part:
The site offers a series of short films documenting the lives of Iraqis in their own words.
These range from a piece on family men trying to protect their neighbourhood from death squads, to an interview with car bomb survivors.
The founder of Alive in Baghdad is Brian Conley, a 26-year-old American journalist and film-maker.
He went to Baghdad and gave equipment and training to the small team of Iraqis who now produce a new short film every week.
Brian is now in Mexico, setting up a similar operation there.
Here is Brian speaking:
“Essentially, there’s something lost when you send someone from another part of the world, or with a specific audience in mind, to tell another individual’s story.
“We are striving to build journalism in the voice of locals, so that people in different parts of the world can communicate almost directly to their audience around the world.”
The footage is shot by Iraqis and edited in the United States.
Here is the most important part, the final paragraph of Alive in Baghdad’s Mission Statement:
Above all, Alive in Baghdad is devoted to empowering Iraqi citizen journalists to share their stories with the world in a personal, candid and non-bureaucratic way. We endeavor to cut through the red tape and politics of corporate news and deliver the real stories, from real people, everyday.
