Of all the things I have read and heard about the torture in Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison — from the ignorant rantings of the blowhard Rush Limbaugh agreeing with a caller that it was no harsher than a fraternity prank to the Bush administration’s defense of the practices to all the stories and debates —  nothing, not even the photographs, have struck me as hard as reading the letters that Harman wrote to her partner stateside. Here they are from the New Yorker article. Remember as you read this she is not a squeamish person, indeed, you might define her as a bit ghoulish, so it makes her words here even more poignant.  

Kelly,
The lights went out in the prison so here we were in the dark—in the prison. I have watch of the 18 and younger boys. I hear, misses! Misses! I go downstairs and flash my light on this 16 year old sitting down with his sandal smacking ants. Now these ants are Iraqi ants, LARGE! So large they could carry the family dog away while giving you the finger! LARGE. And this poor boy is being attacked by hundreds. All the ants in the prison came to this one boys cell and decided to take over. All I could do was spray Lysol. The ants laughed at me and kept going. So here we were the boy on one side of the cell and me on the other in the dark with one small flashlight beating ants with our shoes. . . . Poor kids. Those ants even Im scared of.

So that was the start of my shift. They’ve been stripping “the fucked up” prisoners and handcuffing them to the bars. Its pretty sad. I get to laugh at them and throw corn at them. I kind of feel bad for these guys even if they are accused of killing US soldiers. We degrade them but we don’t hit and thats a plus even though Im sure they wish we’d kill them. They sleep one hour then we yell and wake them—make them stay up for one hour, then sleep one hour—then up etc. This goes on for 72 hours while we fuck with them. Most have been so scared they piss on themselves. Its sad. It’s a little worst than Basic training ie: being naked and handcuffed. . . .

But pictures were taken, you have to see them! A sandbag was put over their heads while it was soaked in hot sauce. Okay, that’s bad but these guys have info, we are trying to get them to talk, that’s all, we don’t do this to all prisoners, just the few we have which is about 30-40 not many.
The othernight at 3, when I wrote you, the firefight . . . 3 killed 6 injured—Iraqis. . . .
Its time to wake them again!!!

And later that same day, on her next night shift, Harman wrote:

 

Oct 20, 03
10:40pm
Kelly,
Okay, I don’t like that anymore. At first it was funny but these people are going too far. I ended your letter last night because it was time to wake the MI prisoners and “mess with them” but it went too far even I can’t handle whats going on. I cant get it out of my head. I walk down stairs after blowing the whistle and beating on the cells with an asp to find “the taxicab driver” handcuffed backwards to his window naked with his underwear over his head and face. He looked like Jesus Christ. At first I had to laugh so I went on and grabbed the camera and took a picture. One of the guys took my asp and started “poking” at his dick. Again I thought, okay that’s funny then it hit me, that’s a form of molestation. You can’t do that. I took more pictures now to “record” what is going on. They started talking to this man and at first he was talking “I’m just a taxicab driver, I did nothing.” He claims he’d never try to hurt US soldiers that he picked up the wrong people. Then he stopped talking. They turned the lights out and slammed the door and left him there while they went down to cell #4. This man had been so fucked that when they grabbed his foot through the cell bars he began screaming and crying. After praying to Allah he moans a constant short Ah, Ah every few seconds for the rest of the night. I don’t know what they did to this guy. The first one remained handcuffed for maybe 1 ½-2 hours until he started yelling for Allah. So they went back in and handcuffed him to the top bunk on either side of the bed while he stood on the side. He was there for a little over an hour when he started yelling again for Allah. Not many people know this shit goes on. The only reason I want to be there is to get the pictures and prove that the US is not what they think. But I don’t know if I can take it mentally. What if that was me in their shoes. These people will be our future terrorist. Kelly, its awful and you know how fucked I am in the head. Both sides of me think its wrong. I thought I could handle anything. I was wrong.
Sabrina

Then back to the story again:

On Tier 1A, Harman liked to sneak cigarettes and doses of Tylenol or ibuprofen to prisoners who were being given a hard time. These small gestures gave her comfort, too, and it pleased her that prisoners sometimes turned to her for help. But Harman was generally as forgiving of her buddies as she was of herself. When toughness failed her, and niceness was not an option, Harman took refuge in denial. “That’s the only way to get through each day, is to start blocking things out,” she said. “Just forget what happened. You go to bed, and then you have the next day to worry about. It’s another day closer to home. Then that day’s over, and you just block that one out.” At the same time, she faulted herself for not being a more enthusiastic soldier when prisoners on Tier 1A were being given the business. When she was asked how other M.P.s could go at it without apparent inhibition, all she could say was “They’re more patriotic.”

As I have said, nothing is as strong an indictment as her own words. Then coupled with her own photos, the true picture of what happened in Abu Ghraib is all the more sad for a country that once prided itself on being on the side of human rights. Yet, for all the power of her words, which are more powerful than those of Philip Gourevitch and Errol Morris, who wrote the story, it required journalistic digging to put it all into perspective.

Indeed, that’s a lot of what this citizen journalism, we media talk is all about. It is a fine weaving of the personal and the professional into a higher grade of journalism. It can be done and must be done for us to better to understand who we are.

Any how, read the story, it is a great piece of journalism — and watch for Errol Morris’ documentary Standard Operating Procedure. Of course, the whole package, the New Yorker Story, all the video sidbars, make for the kind of multi-media package that most news organizations only dream of having, but apparently can have with a little more investment in time and money.

That’s excellent point number one, excellent point number two for me is that the media’s so called experts are not really experts at all. Here is one example:

The current generation of political reporters has based its bid for election-year authority on its horse race and handicapping skills. But reporters actually have no such skills. Think: what does a Howard Fineman (Newsweek, MSNBC) know about politics in America? I mean, what would you logically turn to him for? It’s got to be: Who’s ahead, what’s the strategy, and how are the insiders sizing up the contest? That’s supposedly his expertise, if he has any expertise; and if he doesn’t have any expertise, then what is he doing on my television screen, night after night, talking about politics?

Even if Fineman and company had it, the ability to handicap the race is a pretty bogus skill set. Who cares if you are good at anticipating events that will unroll in clear fashion without you? Why do we need people who know how this is going to play out in South Carolina when we can just wait for the voters to play it out themselves?

Then Rosen adds:

 Among the “bogus narratives” the campaign press has developed so far, the Politico editors chose three to illustrate their humiliation. John McCain’s “collapse” in the summer of 2007, which meant we could write him off; Mike Huckabee’s win in Iowa, where the candidate without an organization took a state where electoral success, we were assured, was all about organization; and Obama’s “change the tone in politics” campaign which, according to the Gang, was not going to be in tune with the voters’ rawer, more partisan feelings in ‘08. All three were a bust, suggesting political journalists have no special insight into: How is this going to play out? What they have are cheap, portable routines in which you ask that kind of question, and try to get ahead of the race. This, too, is what I mean by mindlessness.

Rosen also picks up on this Nation piece by Christopher Hayes:

WHY CAMPAIGN COVERAGE SO OFTEN SUCKS.” He starts with something that is known to everyone in the pack: Campaign reporting is an essay in fear.

“Reporting at events like this is exciting and invigorating, but it’s also terrifying. I’ve done it now a number of times at conventions and such, and in the past I was pretty much alone the entire time. I didn’t know any other reporters, so I kept to myself and tried to navigate the tangle of schedules and parking lots and hotels and event venues. It’s daunting and the whole time you think: ‘Am I missing something? What’s going? Oh man, I should go interview that guy in the parka with the fifteen buttons on his hat.’ You fear getting lost, or missing some important piece of news, or making an ass out of yourself when you have to muster up that little burst of confidence it takes to walk up to a stranger and start asking them questions.”

Whereas he had once thought of it as a rookie’s experience, this year he learned that the fear never goes away. “Veteran reporters are just as panicked about getting lost or missing something, just as confused about who to talk to. This why reporters move in packs. It’s like the first week of freshman orientation, when you hopped around to parties in groups of three dozen, because no one wanted to miss something or knew where anything was.”

 I looked Hayes’ short piece and here is the key to what he says is needed:

You need to deal with the structural issues that reinforce these tendencies.

Rosen nails it when he writes the central problem is that the politcal journalists’ primary question is “Who is going to win?” The whole premise, as the New Hampshire debacle proves, is flawed; it is a horse-race question to which none of them have an accurate answer.

Instead Rosen writes:

… the job of the campaign press is not to preempt the voters’ decision by asking endlessly, and predicting constantly, who’s going to win. The job is to make certain that what needs to be discussed will be discussed in time to make a difference – and then report on that.

• McCain’s campaign is doomed.
• Clinton’s nomination is inevitable.
• Obama is too effete and inexperienced to win.
• Giuliani is running surprisingly strong.
• Huckabee has no shot.

He adds:

Watching the cable channels cover Tuesday night’s results, I was struck by how little anyone told me about why people in New Hampshire voted as they did. At one point, I heard the briefest of snippets on one channel that exit polls showed New Hampshire voters had been most concerned with the economy. And yes, I saw charts that told me Clinton had reclaimed much of the women’s vote she had lost to Obama in Iowa.
 
But no one was telling me why.

The argument used to be bloggers vs. journalists, now it is bloggers vs. blowhards. Here is my solution, give each of the pundits a blog, that’s it. No national pedestal unless they build one. Save the national pedestal for the real journalists who are collecting information and helping us understand the world around us.  

Update: Somehow this post crashed and most of the original disappeared and I had to rebuild it as best I could from memory.

Here are highligths, starting with Maier writing about one of his own initiatives:

When I founded Readers Edition, the term “citizen journalist” was not yet as confusingly common and widespread as it is today. Too many media organizations had hastily recruited readers as cheap contributors, promoting these “citizen journalists” as a great innovation, when in fact their goal was cost savings. With Readers Edition we saw the readers’ role differently; we really wanted to give them a voice. I was curious to learn what readers were really interested in, as opposed to what journalists think is important for their readers to know, or as opposed to what topics the marketing department pushes (I sometimes think that if the marketers had their way, papers would consist solely of car, cosmetic, and watch sections.). I had two different editions of the same paper in mind: one produced by journalists, the other by readers. What would be alike, what would differ? What rules should be established? Would it work at all? What if none of the readers was willing to write?

Of course, this allows me to make one more pitch for Representative Journalism my concept to reinvent journalism.

He adds:

Sometimes, when a very long, self-loving text about some bizarre topic arrived, I considered renaming the paper Writer’s Edition. People write what they like. They write about “things they care about, in their own voice and in the formats they think are best fit for them,” as German media-scientist Stefan Büffel puts it. Readers who write hardly think about other readers. They are driven by self-realization.  

Paraphrasing Bill Kovach, founder of the Committee of Concerned Journalists, Maier writes:

Engagement through interactive databases; interactive engagement in conceiving stories, providing expert input and advising on sources of data; and engaging in direct conversation with the audience in blogs as part of the reporting on a series of stories.

Here is how the blogging landscape has changed:

While a fellow at Harvard, Maier conducted a small survey of political bloggers which he says:

In the comments on the new design the words hate and terrible recur so often I started to think maybe one person is writing the comments under various email accounts. Any how, here is an example:

I have had USA Today as my home page for years. The redesign is absolutely horrible. Bring back the old page. If not, I will switch to a new home page and site for my current events highlights. You really missed the mark with this one!!

Or this:

Your new layout is more disastrous and embarrassing than the Jack Kelley scandal.

So now what do you do? Will be interesting to see how USA Today folks communicate and work with their audience. In the news business after every redesign the designers ready themselves for criticism, writing it off that readers don’t like change.

However, maybe, like the Atlanta Journal-
Constitution, they took the Web 1.0 approach rather than the Web 2.0 approach. The redesign might have been an excellent place to tap into the collective intelligence. Why not, while having the old site in place, run a parallel Beta site at which they released early and often with plenty of user input and refine it over and over again until they get a site that meets the needs of all Robert Picard’s stakeholders — investors, management, journalists, consumers, advertisers and the general society.

USAToday.com, Collective Intelligence, crowdsourcing, Journalism,Network Journalism

J-FLASH
J-Lab: The Institute for Interactive Journalism
www.J-Lab.org January 3, 2007

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Powered by Zoundry

Debbie a Montclair, New Jersey Local, saw a desire for news in her community that made her decide to try her hand at online reporting…The target audience of Montclair suburbanites is an intellectual group who”live right think left.” Most Barista users check the site numerous times throughout the day at work to keep up on local events. As expected, traffic often cuts in half on weekends.

Here is an interesting tidbit, (unfortunately with no rebuttal response from the editor):

The area local paper, the Montclair Times, has had mixed opinions about Galant’s initiative. The Times’ editor-in-chief seems to have developed a dislike for the site even going as far as putting pressure on police sources not to talk to the Baristanet crew saying they weren’t a real newspaper.

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As the profits of commercial operations dip, there is more talk of the possible roles of nonprofits like the Center for Public Integrity. This might be the right time to be at the helm. The PJNet will be looking for partnership possibilities.

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The bloggers’ role in the scandal grew this week, beginning with the news conference that Reynolds held to defend the actions he took months ago after learning of the e-mails.

(Marc J.) Odien and BuffaloGeek blogger Christopher Smith went there with plans to ask a few questions of Reynolds, part of the Republican House leadership, and to record it.

The mainstream media reported afterward that children – mainly those of Reynolds’ political supporters – were at the news conference. But the bloggers were able to freely criticize Reynolds for bringing them.

“I think there are limitations to what the standard media outlets can say,” said Smith, who criticized the use of the children as “political theatrics.”

Here is more:

After posting the video early Tuesday, Odien and Smith watched as first blogs from across New York State and then from across the country linked to the video on BuffaloGeek and other blogs.

The video clip of the Reynolds event had been viewed 14,112 times in the 2¹/2 days since it was posted on YouTube, a video file-sharing Web site.

The footage drew the attention of a producer for “The Daily Show,” which aired snippets of the video Tuesday night, accompanied by sarcastic commentary from host Jon Stewart. “That made my day,” Odien said.

Independent blogs picked up the thread that Reynolds’ chief of staff, Kirk Fordham, who previously held that job in Foley’s office, advised Foley in the days before he resigned.

Smith, writing in the Buffalo Geek blog, which covered the press conference in question, provides the We Media point of view of how things unfolded. It includes a link to the conference video clips which were eventually posted to YouTube.

You can decide whether the citizen journalists by not following traditional journalism mores added to the truth or detracted from it.

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Here is a must-read quote that Glaser included from an OpenBusiness interview with Kenneth Neil Cukier, a technology correspondent for The Economist specializing in public policy matters, particularly intellectual property:

I … welcome the development of the ‘amateur journalist,’ akin to the ‘gentleman scientist’ of the 18th century, which did so much to advance knowledge. I believe journalism is undergoing its ‘reformational moment.’ By that I mean that the Internet is affecting journalism just as the printing press affected the Church – people are bypassing the sacrosanct authority of the journalist in the same way as Luther asserted that individuals could have a direct relationship with God without the intermediary of the priest. The Internet has disintermediated middlemen in other industries, why should journalism be immune?

The tools of broadcast media have gone from owning paper mills, presses, million-dollar transmitters and broadcast licenses, to having a cheap PC or a mobile phone in one’s pocket. That gives everyone the ability to have a direct rapport with the news as either a consumer or a producer, instantaneously. This is like the advent of literacy: it threatened elites and sometimes created problems. But it empowered individuals and led to a far better world. The new literacy from digital media will do the same, even as it creates new problems. Ultimately, I believe it is a positive thing for journalism, because it enables something journalism has lacked: competition from the very public we serve.

The Cukier interview dates back to June, but the whole interview is a must read and is a primer in itself. Here is one other powerful quote:

There is a presumption that in this new world of decentralized, open-source, peer-produced content – where individuals go from being consumers to creators of media – that the quality of journalism will decline. The dirty little secret is that it may actually improve!

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