Super Powers
Shelley Powers over at Burningbird weighs in with a lengthy dissertation impelled, at least in part, by some of the stuff I’ve been posting here, and others have been commenting on elsewhere.
I find it hard to argue with quite a lot of what she says. Quite apart from anything else, she’s entirely right to be knocking the shine off my perky idealism.
I do have a tendency to go a little dewy-eyed from time to time and need a wet slap across the puss with the cold haddock of reality. Thanks for that, Bb.
She’s got me thinking harder about this one though.
A number of Shelley’s points spark further lines of consideration in my continuing attempt to figure out what the hell I think about the apparently inevitable war against Iraq, the Google/Blogger deal and weblogging in general.
This bit, for example:
“I've heard two common threads this last week: Weblogging is a whole new form of individual expression, without hinderance from editor or government; weblogging is a movement with power to report and shape the news. You can't have it both ways...”
Um. I don’t think the important thing is either of these. The important thing to me is the unprecedented speed at which the ‘Net in general, and weblogging in particular can move news.
By analogy, CNN wasn’t radically different from the TV news systems it surpassed – it was just faster, always on, and apparently able to cover more ground. Similarly, weblog-based reporting is not that much different from grass-roots journalism – it’s just faster, always on, and covers more ground.
Does this mean I think weblogs will completely supplant “Capital-J Journalism”? No. Indeed, I’ve argued this exact point in the past...
Bloggers and journalists exist in an AND relationship.
These persistent questions: “is blogging journalism?”; “are blogs the new new media?”; “can webloggers replace mainstream Capital-J Journalism?” are, frankly, valueless.
It really doesn’t matter whether one considers weblogs to be a “real” form of media or a threat to established media or not. In effect, the question (as much as it was ever remotely pertinent) has already been answered anyway.
As I’ve said before: Blogito ergo sum.
(and no – it didn’t get much of a laugh the first time around either).
Later in her piece, Shelley points out the rather hopeless fallacy in the heart of my earlier posts.
In response to my call for an army of mobile ‘bloggerists’ to be deployed to the frontlines in Iraq to report the unvarnished truth, she responds:
“What Michael forgets is that there would have been no witnesses because the people would be dead. In the starry eyed rush to show the glory of weblogging, and it's full unleashed power via Google, he neglected to remember that the people were dead. Dead people don't weblog.”
True, of course. She’s completely right here. Charlie don't surf. Dead Iraqis don’t blog.
I guess in my enthusiastic table thumping I wasn’t really clear enough about the iniquity that first lit my ire and the real direction in which I was trying to spin my wheels.
One step back to the first point I was trying (evidently failing) to make. The key factor that sent me off on one this time was my mounting outrage over the very widely documented concern that Bush Sr.’s administration, in collusion with the Pentagon, managed to almost completely control the flow of news from the Gulf War.
And I have checked this. No, I’m not a journalist – nor do I want to be. But FWIW, I have taken steps to do the research, and fact check for accuracy.
I quoted complete source references in my few posts on this subject, because I was able to – I’ve done the legwork. More – I’ve spoken directly with two journalists who were there in 90-91.
Go back to this comment I cited in reference to the Gulf War:
“The military...manipulated the packaging of information so as to favor television over other news media…by controlling the information through time, military authorities successfully maintained television's supportive role...effectively circumvented critical journalism, and ensured the war would be portrayed in the desired manner.”
I know it’s naïve and optimistic to think we can fix this stuff (I thought I’d even said so much in one of my posts, but when I went back to check just now I couldn’t find it – must have got lost in edit).
But all the same – the apparent fact of the military’s mendacious media meddling during Desert Storm v1.0 appears to me to be a clear case for the application of Gilmore’s law:
My hope is that the Internet, as the transport medium for bloggers everywhere, will route around the Pentagon’s Infowar techniques to at least some degree – to give us something approaching full and factual information flow for at least part of the time.
And before you all leap in to point out my innocence once again – I do know what I’m missing here. I’m well aware that the counter to Gilmore’s thesis might be:
Echelon, RIP, Carnivore, Yada, Yada, FUD, FOAF and suchlike bollockio.
If the U.S. military machine can filter the majority of hard news flowing out of Iraq via regular print and broadcast media, it can certainly find means to manage the flow of information on the ’Net – even to the extent of taking large parts of Iraq effectively offline, I’d imagine.
We certainly can’t underestimate the ability of the U.S. government to run an infowar with as much aggression and ruthlessness as their land war.
But there is also a noteworthy precedent here. Think about the way the world learned the story of Tianamen Square. Email, newsgroups (and plain old fax) helped spread the story, essentially bypassing all Chinese government censorship.
If one mobile blogger, standing in front of one tank, can get one uncut story out of Baghdad before the city falls – that will indeed be an inflection point worth celebrating.
Interestingly, last Thursday’s Guardian (in an article that I’m vainly tempted to think was at least partly inspired by my bloggling) addresses this subject in rather more depth and with more balance than my ramblings.
Well worth reading the whole thing, to get some additional perspectives on this discussion. Take this, for example:
"If things go wrong in Iraq, the first news most will get will be through the web," says Chris Hables Gray. "It's one thing to restrict a handful of reporters to sanitised news opportunities; it's another to keep all soldier/civilian accounts off the internet. Impossible really." Hables Gray points out that, during Vietnam, the underground press and the stories of the soldiers coming home helped spread anti-war sentiment along with TV news. "Now, the underground press is the web, and the stories of soldiers and civilians who experience the war will spread much quicker than they did 35 years ago."
Unfortunately, the Guardian piece also pursues one of the same red herrings as Bb:
“There have been suggestions that during a conflict, the internet could now be used by "moblogging" journalists, who could now, in theory, upload photos and video from the frontline direct to the net. [Brown University professor] Der Derian has doubts about this. "The mistake of the antiwar movement against the first Gulf war was to think that you could mobilise, as with Vietnam, after the war had started." But modern war happens too quickly.
Again – not quite the point and not really true, IMHO.
There’s a lazy elision here of two separate thoughts: the idea that “mobloggers” might be able to capture instant reports from deep within Iraq, on the one hand; and the suggestion that this is all something to do with the general anti-war movement.
The ability or otherwise of any anti-war campaigners to mobilise before, during or after the coming war is not the question. I’d submit that my rant is motivated by anti-censorship leanings; not necessarily anti-war, per se.
For the record – I’m not feeling too well qualified to judge whether I should be pro or anti the war at all, to be honest. I just don’t know. Saddam Hussein is a bad man. But war starts with Dubya.
I’m naturally predisposed to take the anti position, but then my brother points me to something like this, which should probably tip me further towards the anti camp, but I’m not sure I know where the hell I net out.
I should also point out that I really don’t, for even a nanosecond, “think everything will be different if we all just weblog” (to don the rose-tinted lenses Shelley lends me).
But I do think weblogging has already and will continue to make a difference. A difference measured primarily in terms of speed.
And I still think the combination of blogs and Google is an important one, the full impact of which we can only begin to grok.
Back on topic: I don’t think weblogging or Internet-supported communications make the prospect of war any less likely.
Nor do I think a handful of anti-censorship bloggers will make much of a discernible dent in the government’s ownership of the newsflow – even if they are able to blog from the Iraqi frontlines.
But it’s something to wish for.
I’d cite the example of Tianamen Square, again, and the positive impact of Net-based communications from that particular frontline. We’d do well to remember that one of the things that made the Democracy Movement’s rallies in Tianamen Square possible was the fact that the Chinese government did not yet have control over the means of communication.
Same deal with Vietnam, to a degree. If the American government had had better control over the flow of information back then, they might have been able to keep their messy, horrible war going a lot longer.
One of the journalists I heard from (not one of the ones with Gulf experience, fwiw) commented that the Pentagon “learned its lesson about press management from their disastrous Vietnam experience”. Indeed.
A good deal of the news from Iraq will still get out via traditional media. Of course it will. But much of it will be filtered, sanitized, spun. Blogs are, if nothing else, an alternative medium – and one I think we’re badly in need of.
So.
Shelley’s right - blogging won’t stop the war. But it might give us an alternative view – one occasionally undiluted by government spin engines.
Shelley Powers over at Burningbird weighs in with a lengthy dissertation impelled, at least in part, by some of the stuff I’ve been posting here, and others have been commenting on elsewhere.
I find it hard to argue with quite a lot of what she says. Quite apart from anything else, she’s entirely right to be knocking the shine off my perky idealism.
I do have a tendency to go a little dewy-eyed from time to time and need a wet slap across the puss with the cold haddock of reality. Thanks for that, Bb.
She’s got me thinking harder about this one though.
A number of Shelley’s points spark further lines of consideration in my continuing attempt to figure out what the hell I think about the apparently inevitable war against Iraq, the Google/Blogger deal and weblogging in general.
This bit, for example:
“I've heard two common threads this last week: Weblogging is a whole new form of individual expression, without hinderance from editor or government; weblogging is a movement with power to report and shape the news. You can't have it both ways...”
Um. I don’t think the important thing is either of these. The important thing to me is the unprecedented speed at which the ‘Net in general, and weblogging in particular can move news.
By analogy, CNN wasn’t radically different from the TV news systems it surpassed – it was just faster, always on, and apparently able to cover more ground. Similarly, weblog-based reporting is not that much different from grass-roots journalism – it’s just faster, always on, and covers more ground.
Does this mean I think weblogs will completely supplant “Capital-J Journalism”? No. Indeed, I’ve argued this exact point in the past...
Bloggers and journalists exist in an AND relationship.
These persistent questions: “is blogging journalism?”; “are blogs the new new media?”; “can webloggers replace mainstream Capital-J Journalism?” are, frankly, valueless.
It really doesn’t matter whether one considers weblogs to be a “real” form of media or a threat to established media or not. In effect, the question (as much as it was ever remotely pertinent) has already been answered anyway.
As I’ve said before: Blogito ergo sum.
(and no – it didn’t get much of a laugh the first time around either).
Later in her piece, Shelley points out the rather hopeless fallacy in the heart of my earlier posts.
In response to my call for an army of mobile ‘bloggerists’ to be deployed to the frontlines in Iraq to report the unvarnished truth, she responds:
“What Michael forgets is that there would have been no witnesses because the people would be dead. In the starry eyed rush to show the glory of weblogging, and it's full unleashed power via Google, he neglected to remember that the people were dead. Dead people don't weblog.”
True, of course. She’s completely right here. Charlie don't surf. Dead Iraqis don’t blog.
I guess in my enthusiastic table thumping I wasn’t really clear enough about the iniquity that first lit my ire and the real direction in which I was trying to spin my wheels.
One step back to the first point I was trying (evidently failing) to make. The key factor that sent me off on one this time was my mounting outrage over the very widely documented concern that Bush Sr.’s administration, in collusion with the Pentagon, managed to almost completely control the flow of news from the Gulf War.
And I have checked this. No, I’m not a journalist – nor do I want to be. But FWIW, I have taken steps to do the research, and fact check for accuracy.
I quoted complete source references in my few posts on this subject, because I was able to – I’ve done the legwork. More – I’ve spoken directly with two journalists who were there in 90-91.
Go back to this comment I cited in reference to the Gulf War:
“The military...manipulated the packaging of information so as to favor television over other news media…by controlling the information through time, military authorities successfully maintained television's supportive role...effectively circumvented critical journalism, and ensured the war would be portrayed in the desired manner.”
I know it’s naïve and optimistic to think we can fix this stuff (I thought I’d even said so much in one of my posts, but when I went back to check just now I couldn’t find it – must have got lost in edit).
But all the same – the apparent fact of the military’s mendacious media meddling during Desert Storm v1.0 appears to me to be a clear case for the application of Gilmore’s law:
“The Internet treats censorship as damage, and routes around it.”
My hope is that the Internet, as the transport medium for bloggers everywhere, will route around the Pentagon’s Infowar techniques to at least some degree – to give us something approaching full and factual information flow for at least part of the time.
And before you all leap in to point out my innocence once again – I do know what I’m missing here. I’m well aware that the counter to Gilmore’s thesis might be:
“The Pentagon treats the Internet as subversive, and rolls right over it.”
Echelon, RIP, Carnivore, Yada, Yada, FUD, FOAF and suchlike bollockio.
If the U.S. military machine can filter the majority of hard news flowing out of Iraq via regular print and broadcast media, it can certainly find means to manage the flow of information on the ’Net – even to the extent of taking large parts of Iraq effectively offline, I’d imagine.
We certainly can’t underestimate the ability of the U.S. government to run an infowar with as much aggression and ruthlessness as their land war.
But there is also a noteworthy precedent here. Think about the way the world learned the story of Tianamen Square. Email, newsgroups (and plain old fax) helped spread the story, essentially bypassing all Chinese government censorship.
If one mobile blogger, standing in front of one tank, can get one uncut story out of Baghdad before the city falls – that will indeed be an inflection point worth celebrating.
Interestingly, last Thursday’s Guardian (in an article that I’m vainly tempted to think was at least partly inspired by my bloggling) addresses this subject in rather more depth and with more balance than my ramblings.
Well worth reading the whole thing, to get some additional perspectives on this discussion. Take this, for example:
"If things go wrong in Iraq, the first news most will get will be through the web," says Chris Hables Gray. "It's one thing to restrict a handful of reporters to sanitised news opportunities; it's another to keep all soldier/civilian accounts off the internet. Impossible really." Hables Gray points out that, during Vietnam, the underground press and the stories of the soldiers coming home helped spread anti-war sentiment along with TV news. "Now, the underground press is the web, and the stories of soldiers and civilians who experience the war will spread much quicker than they did 35 years ago."
Unfortunately, the Guardian piece also pursues one of the same red herrings as Bb:
“There have been suggestions that during a conflict, the internet could now be used by "moblogging" journalists, who could now, in theory, upload photos and video from the frontline direct to the net. [Brown University professor] Der Derian has doubts about this. "The mistake of the antiwar movement against the first Gulf war was to think that you could mobilise, as with Vietnam, after the war had started." But modern war happens too quickly.
Again – not quite the point and not really true, IMHO.
There’s a lazy elision here of two separate thoughts: the idea that “mobloggers” might be able to capture instant reports from deep within Iraq, on the one hand; and the suggestion that this is all something to do with the general anti-war movement.
The ability or otherwise of any anti-war campaigners to mobilise before, during or after the coming war is not the question. I’d submit that my rant is motivated by anti-censorship leanings; not necessarily anti-war, per se.
For the record – I’m not feeling too well qualified to judge whether I should be pro or anti the war at all, to be honest. I just don’t know. Saddam Hussein is a bad man. But war starts with Dubya.
I’m naturally predisposed to take the anti position, but then my brother points me to something like this, which should probably tip me further towards the anti camp, but I’m not sure I know where the hell I net out.
I should also point out that I really don’t, for even a nanosecond, “think everything will be different if we all just weblog” (to don the rose-tinted lenses Shelley lends me).
But I do think weblogging has already and will continue to make a difference. A difference measured primarily in terms of speed.
And I still think the combination of blogs and Google is an important one, the full impact of which we can only begin to grok.
Back on topic: I don’t think weblogging or Internet-supported communications make the prospect of war any less likely.
Nor do I think a handful of anti-censorship bloggers will make much of a discernible dent in the government’s ownership of the newsflow – even if they are able to blog from the Iraqi frontlines.
But it’s something to wish for.
I’d cite the example of Tianamen Square, again, and the positive impact of Net-based communications from that particular frontline. We’d do well to remember that one of the things that made the Democracy Movement’s rallies in Tianamen Square possible was the fact that the Chinese government did not yet have control over the means of communication.
Same deal with Vietnam, to a degree. If the American government had had better control over the flow of information back then, they might have been able to keep their messy, horrible war going a lot longer.
One of the journalists I heard from (not one of the ones with Gulf experience, fwiw) commented that the Pentagon “learned its lesson about press management from their disastrous Vietnam experience”. Indeed.
A good deal of the news from Iraq will still get out via traditional media. Of course it will. But much of it will be filtered, sanitized, spun. Blogs are, if nothing else, an alternative medium – and one I think we’re badly in need of.
So.
Shelley’s right - blogging won’t stop the war. But it might give us an alternative view – one occasionally undiluted by government spin engines.
