Today we received a leaflet through the door, advertising a new citizen-news website; an alternate news source to the main stream media.

They claim that the main stream media has agendas which do not fall into the category of ‘spread the truth’. I don’t need much convincing to believe that this is true. It must be so frustrating for a journalist working in these times; having to put up with such restrictive tight deadlines and editors choosing Britney type stories (does that really sell papers?). Stand up and go independent I say. Please!

Until that happens I look for hope wherever I can, so when I saw the leaflet I thought I’d check it out.

I was rather surprised to find that a site which wanted to be an alternative to the main-stream would just be a blog full of links to main-stream articles. No original content; not even a commentary. How does that make sense? Isn’t that exactly the opposite of what you would expect them to be doing?

My non-surprise was to find another conspiracy site based on wild speculation and a side of mass paranoia.

Then I realised how stupid I was being. This isn’t a conspiracy site at all! They are simply pointing out examples of where main-stream-media have written particularly bad articles. It took this post to finally make me come to my senses. I must say they are doing a great job; that’s one of the worst pieces of main-stream journalism I have ever seen.

Anyway, I’ll keep dreaming that one day someone will do some real investigative journalism.

These days I mostly read my news via the internet. It’s becoming a totally different experience to consume the news in this way rather than through traditional means. Today I scanned through the Daily Mail to find just one report on Burma, buried deep within the paper. It had a full page, but it was hardly front page news. On the Internet, however, I have about 20 articles coming through every day. It’s a completely different weighting.

On the other hand, these reports tend to swamp news of other issues.

The reason is that I am have more control. I can choose to follow one issue in particular and follow other stories less so. It is becoming more customisable.

One part of that is my recent adoption of Google News. I googled ‘Burma’ a few days back to try and get some back story and Google News was the top result. I clicked on it, and found a stream of news stories covering the issue. Most importantly I could subscribe to the RSS feed, directing this stream into my feed reader.

Now, everyday, I’m receiving news reports from a wide variety of publishers each with their slightly different take on the subject.

Currently it is a little overwhelming, since there are so many reports. And it tends to drown out other reports. But it is a great way to get up to speed on an issue and stay committed to following it.

I’ve just signed up to the Darfur feed too.

World Changing has an article titled ‘How Mobiles and Blogs Don’t — and Do — Help Human Rights‘. The author, Emily Gertz, writes:

In the world of online activism, expectations have not inflated to the level of a few years ago, when a wave of techno-utopian optimism swept the activist ‘net that maybe a “technical intervention,” that is blogging, could stop the mass killings in Darfur — an effort which, on those terms, failed.

I think the mistake here is to believe that one story will suddenly change the world — and if it doesn’t it means failure. Change happens slowly, but each story raises awareness and gets people talking and thinking about it. One particular trait of the Internet over traditional media, is that it is active; and becoming much more so. It’s easy to move from story to story on TV news; with the sport or weather sticking as the last thing in your head. But the way we engage with the Internet (comments, Facebook groups, our own blogs, and even hyperlinks) encourages more of us to actively engage with it.

Meanwhile, globalisation is becoming ever more important; meaning every country that depends on it must think about the economic consequences before doing so.

It is difficult to make solid predictions based on Darfur or other historical events, because so much is different. Although it is a good reminder that we can sometimes get a bit carried away with our optimism.

Heading back into their archives, I also discovered this excellent interview with Ethan Zuckerman from mid-2004, discussing technology and the developing world. A few quotations:

In Ghana in 2000 we had a pretty critical presidential election. The leader who’d taken power in 1979 was stepping down. For the first time an opposition had a chance to stand and there was widespread fear — for good reasons — that there would be election fraud and intimidation.

The coping strategy that everyone came up with was fascinating. It basically involved cellphones and talk radio. What happened is guys would go out to polling places with their cellphones, they’d see someone obstructing access to the polls, and then they’d call a talk radio station and describe what was going on. That put enough pressure on the police that they had to show up and investigate. It proved remarkably effective.

and

It’s pretty hard to expect technology to turn non-democracies into democracies. Where I think technology can make a huge difference is where you have a young and fragile democracy. In those cases, I think what helps is finding ways to empower individuals.

and

It’s corruption when you’re a shopkeeper trying to get your shipment of widgets in and the guy won’t let them through unless you pay him a thousand dollars under the table. But it’s not corruption when you’re a farmer and you’re trying to buy a piece of land and literally no one knows who owns it. That’s just incompetence and bureaucracy and the challenges of dealing with legacy systems. In many developing nations, those challenges are at least as substantial as the problems of corruption.

Well worth a read.

I keep coming across interesting reports. Further to news that the junta military have cut off Internet access, it seems that they are taking much more of a proactive response to technology and the press.

From The Age:

Meanwhile, Government pressure and unresthas forced several of Burma’s private newspapers to stop publishing, an industry leader said today.

“Some publications may have been forced to close down because they refused to carry the government’s propaganda,” he said on condition of anonymity.

Censors in Burma, also known as Myanmar, always exert tight controls over the media to limit their reporting, but pressure has become unusually high.

People found with mobile phones or cameras were beaten by soldiers yesterday, witnesses said, while a Japanese photojournalist died after being shot.

The newspapers were also struggling to operate because unrest in the streets over the last two days made it impossible for vendors to sell papers, the source added.

“Their people can’t get out there selling them because of the problems,” he said.

Four weekly newspapers printed by the Eleven Media group, two weeklies by Yangon Media, and three weeklies titled Kamudra, Voice and Market have all stopped publishing, he said.

Another newspaper group, Pyi Myanmar, was planing to completely shut down, he added.

The Myanmar Times newspaper indicated it would continue publishing.

Somewhat of a tug-on-your-heartstrings production, but a rather nice first introduction to the crisis and to Auug San Suu Kyi. And a reminder for all those who already recognise her name. It may not seem like it will do much, but it is important for us all to learn her name. It will help us talk about it.

This is not just about Burma. If we can have some success here, it will be a story we can use to peacefully fight human violations around the world. But right now we are learning. Let’s see if we can make this the story we contrast with Iraq.

From Ko Htike’s blog:

Dear All,

I sadly announce that the Burmese military junta has cut off the internet connection throughout the country. I therefore would not be able to feed in pictures of the brutality by the brutal Burmese military junta.

I will also try my best to feed in their demonic appetite of fear and paranoia by posting any pictures that I receive though other means (Journos!! please don’t ask me what other means would be??). I will continue to live with the motto that “if there is a will there is a way”.

We probably need to lobby the Chinese government or UN envoy to Burma to ask the junta to switch on the Internet. Please!

This was inevitable, unfortunately. It will be interesting to see how much news can still get out. People can still record and document, and I’m sure it will get communicated eventually. But how quickly? And how much will it matter overall?

The mainstream media are reasonably good at reporting the extremes of the news. This means the coverage of news from, say, Iraq tends to be at the extreme edges — either extremely good, or extremely bad. Of the two, they tend to favour the extremely bad.

On the whole this is a good thing as these tend to be the most important things for us to know. Unfortunately, it can also give a skewed sense of reality. This is especially true when we have little to no personal experience.

This ‘little to no’ perspective is what I bring to each story I read about Iraq. My understanding of Iraq is almost entirely made up of various media accounts. My friends-in-service have balanced the account up slightly, but generally I know it is pretty skewed.

But reading an article on the blog ‘Iraq the Model’ has completely altered my view of life in Iraq. While my mental-model of life there is hardly the same as an Iraqi’s, it certainly feels much more real than it ever has before. It still seems bizarre and different from life on my street, but mostly it feels bizarre because it juxtaposes military action with ordinary real life.

This kind of news (the everyday) doesn’t really get reported in the main stream media. Amateur journalism seems to be balancing that out.

Iraq The Model: Midnight Company

Nobody is safe from the cameras now; not even the paparazzi. Joseph Gordon_Levitt fights fire with fire!

The speed of publication through blogging is both its strength and its weakness. The Kathy Sierra story [see previous post] is an excellent example of this.

• The Strength: It allows many more people to enter the conversation and work on getting to the route of the story. So in this case you can be sure that I will be able to get a much fuller and accurate picture of the truth than I would in a newspaper.
• The Weakness: I only get that full story if I read as much as I can from as many sources as I can. A single post will tend to be very biased and likely inaccurate.

It will be interesting to see what stories end up with the highest rankings at the end of the Kathy Sierra coverage. If it is a biased and angry post, then that will be a bad sign. If it is well researched reactions like Jim Turner’s post, then that’s a very good sign. I’m optimistic that the better quality posts will rank to the top, but I suspect search result #1 will be Kathy Sierra’s original post. If that’s the page people will read, I sure hope it gets updated.

I’m not going to attempt to follow the story closely on this blog as the greater insight will probably come only after this has died down.

One question I am actively seeking an answer to is whether it is a good idea to respond actively to a story, or to wait until there is less emotion before even trying to think of solutions. I lean heavily towards waiting since knee-jerk reactions are often the result of making decisions based on strong emotions. My original leaning towards fast reactions being a good thing, is that more people will actively seek to improve the state of affairs. However, that’s a misconceived notion since the risk of pushing an idea which would not succeed on its own merits is very high. Democracy works precisely because of this inefficiency in getting things changed. However, the free market works by allowing mistakes to happen and then fail. So the answer is certainly not simple.

For now may I encourage everyone to read Code v2 by Lawrence Lessig (available as a free download or in traditional published form). This provides an insightful argument to the possible course the Internet will take in order to govern itself. It is highly relevant to this story.

I also encourage everyone to read this post by Stephanie Booth… ‘Disturbed About Reactions to Kathy Sierra’s Post‘

Kathy Sierra writes:

As I type this, I am supposed to be in San Diego, delivering a workshop at the ETech conference. But I’m not. I’m at home, with the doors locked, terrified. For the last four weeks, I’ve been getting death threat comments on this blog. But that’s not what pushed me over the edge. What finally did it was some disturbing threats of violence and sex posted on two other blogs… blogs authored and/or owned by a group that includes prominent bloggers. People you’ve probably heard of.

The rest of the post is frankly disturbing.

I’m a little concerned over accuracy of information when names are flung around before a police investigation. And I really do hope there is a full police investigation.

Read Kathy Sierra’s post here.

It will be interesting to see how the blogging community handles this.

Will it become a big story?

Will it be resolved?

This is a test of the journalistic powers of said community. Some of the initial reaction can be found on Technorati. Most are of support, some people are angry.

In my opinion, the best thing we can do now is grow the story.

EDIT (29th March 2007 23:30 GMT):

Follow up post here.