[SOC] Do-it-yourself war coverage

[Lloyd Lachow]

Do-it-yourself war coverage 

By Alex Beam, Globe Columnist, 3/25/2003 

If you have ever bought a computer online, you
understand the concept of assembling your own product
on a website and then having it sent to your home.
That's what I have been trying to do with the Iraqi
war: put together my own war coverage, mainly using
cable television, radio, and my broadband Internet
connection. 

It first became clear to me that I might need some
alternative sources of information on the war when I
read a Reuters dispatch reporting on grisly Al-Jazeera
television footage of 50 Iraqi civilians killed by
coalition bombing on the outskirts of the southern
city of Basra. ''It's a huge mass of civilians,'' one
angry woman told Al-Jazeera. ''It was a massacre.'' 

The report seemed credible to me because I am not as
devout in my worship of ''smart'' ordnance as many
seem to be. (Wasn't that the ''super-smart'' Patriot
missile that shot down a British fighter two days
ago?) Furthermore, I doubted this footage would ever
be shown on American TV. 

I would watch Qatar-based Al-Jazeera if I could; I was
able to visit the station's home page using the Arabic
language translation program provided by journalist
Paul Boutin at
www.paulboutin.weblogger.com/2001/11/06. A friend of
mine is using a dial-up modem to watch Lebanon-based,
Hezbollah-created Al-Manar television
(www.manartv.com), but I can't pick it up.
Furthermore, its archived broadcasts are several days
behind the news. 

This same man directed me to the Saudi Arabian
English-language website (www.arabnews.com), which I
suspect is at a minimum anti-Israeli and probably
anti-Semitic. But its weekend editorial wasn't too far
off the mark, commenting on our secretary of defense's
condemnation of TV stations that air footage of
American prisoners of war: ''Rumsfeld's newfound
affection for the Geneva Convention is remarkable,
given that there were images broadcast continuously
the day before on US news networks of long lines of
Iraqi prisoners surrendering, in US President George
W. Bush's words, `gleefully, enthusiastically.' '' 

Iraqi state media, which I have been unable to access
on the Internet, is certainly chock full of
propaganda. But for propaganda to be even mildly
effective, it has to contain elements of truth. The
Iraqis' Sunday morning claims that they held American
prisoners -- initially denied by the Pentagon --
turned out to be true. Three days earlier, when
Kuwait's official news agency reported US and British
troops had seized the Iraqi border town of Umm Qasr,
Iraqi TV denied the claim. Imagine my surprise,
hearing the British Broadcasting Corporation's Sunday
newscast reporting serious casualties at Umm Qasr,
''which the Allies claimed to have secured on
Saturday.'' 

There is an intriguing ''blog,'' or Internet diary,
being transmitted out of Baghdad, at www.dearraed. 

blogspot.com. The site was dead for a couple of days
but has come back to life with descriptions of what
passes for everyday life in the Iraqi capital. On the
home front, I've become a fan of the so-called
''embedded'' journalists, several of whom seem to be
traveling with the lead units of the Army's Third
Infantry Division on the western flank and with the US
Marines in the south. Inevitably, they will face
accusations of promilitary bias, but most of their
dispatches convey the sights, sounds, disturbances,
cock-ups, and, yes, the horror of war. 

I am a terrible cynic, and I wonder if we would have
received such timely reporting on the awful killing
that took place at the 101st Airborne Division's
encampment if a Time magazine reporter hadn't been
present and filing promptly to Time's website. 

The last but not the least element of my
do-it-yourself war coverage includes the amazing
photojournalism cropping up in newspapers and on the
Web. My only complaint is that some media outlets
credit only the source of the picture -- for instance
the photo agency, like the Associated Press -- and not
the brave photographers who have already filed Robert
Capa-quality images of men and women at war. Credit
for the dramatic photo atop the front page of
yesterday's Globe, for instance, was given only to the
Getty Images agency and not to its photographer, Joe
Raedle. 

You can see more combat photography on the websites of
The New York Times, The Washington Post, MSNBC, and at
the home pages of the major wires services -- the
Associated Press, Reuters, and the Agence
France-Presse. 


Alex Beam is a Globe columnist. His e-dress is
beam@globe.com. 


This story ran on page E1 of the Boston Globe on
3/25/2003. 
� Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company. 


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