War News: Go Beyond the Usual Suspects

by Dan Gillmor March 21, 2003
<http://weblog.siliconvalley.com/column/dangillmor/>

What follows is this Sunday's column. I've gotten permission to post it
early, because it feels timely.

In the 1991 Gulf War, the American public was fed an a homogenized version
of reality. The news consisted of the same sound bites, presidential
declarations, Pentagon briefings, etc. -- essentially identical information
no matter what the media source.

In the first 24 hours of the latest Gulf War, the same situation prevailed
for the vast majority of Americans. This time around, however, a minority
-- but a growing one -- had learned a lesson from the aftermath of the
Sept. 11 attacks. They had a robust online alternative. The World Wide Web,
e-mail lists and other online sources offered content with context and nuance.

Maybe you didn't have time at the start of this war to check out the
alternatives. In coming weeks and months, please make the time.

The amount of information this time is going to be overwhelming. Hundreds
of professional journalists are in the Middle East covering the events, and
the Web gives us access to most of what they're going to tell us.

Many are "embedded" in combat units. They'll provide all manner of
on-the-ground reports, albeit censored, using modern communications
technology that will shock us with its immediacy.

Some of the coverage will come from media that do not parrot the U.S.
government's view of the conflict. In the weeks leading up to the war, when
much of the American press dismissively covered internal dissent and mocked
the rest of the world's misgivings as weak-kneed whining, many people
started looking to British media for the kind of information and opinions
they weren't finding here.

Several weeks ago, the London Observer broke a story of U.S. spying on the
United Nations delegations of Security Council members. It quoted a
memorandum by a National Security Agency official. The U.S. media
organizations that bothered to cover the story downplayed it, but it was
big news elsewhere -- and on the Web.

The rise of the passionate amateur, meanwhile, has given us valuable new
insights. Nowhere is that more true than in weblogs and other kinds of
personal media that transcend the soapbox genre. Collectively, they expand
the marketplace of ideas.

Some webloggers serve a clearinghouse function, becoming a collaborative
filter and conversation. They sort through the journalism, professional and
amateur, and point the rest of us to the most interesting coverage.

I also subscribe to a number of mailing lists where other subscribers do
much the same thing. They spot interesting new coverage, and tell everyone
else on the list. I'm a big fan of Dave Farber and his 'Interesting People'
list; Farber's readers tell him about useful material and he tells everyone
else.

The soapboxes have their own unique value. These are political weblogs that
deal mostly with policy issues, with the war and international politics at
the top of the current agenda. Sometimes they're the classic "sound and
fury, signifying nothing," but the best force us to reconsider our own
biases. I frequently disagree with Glenn Reynolds, but his postings are
always relevant, often enlightening.

The source and quality of information are as important online as in
traditional media, but more difficult to verify in some cases. As I write
this, meanwhile, there's a serious discussion online about the bona fides
of a weblogger who says he's in Baghdad, telling us how things look to an
Iraqi citizen. We're developing new hierarchies of trust for this new
medium, just as we have for the traditional publications and broadcasts.

I don't know if the most deeply interactive nature of the Net will emerge
fully in this war, not the way it will when information technology and
networks are even more pervasive than they are today. We'll get a hint of
it as on-the-ground journalists with fancy portable telecommunications gear
give us their perspectives.

If you want to be informed, roam widely. Watch and read things that support
your own beliefs. Then look for commentary and data that don't. It's all
out there.

The need for a better-informed citizenry has never been greater, not in an
era of such pivotal changes and world-shaping decisions. Yet there has
rarely been such prevailing shallowness in public discourse.

Our business and political leaders know that reality is an infinite palette
of grays, not starkly black and white. We know that, too, because we deal
with those subtleties in your everyday life. Yet our leaders -- and, yes,
major elements of the mass media -- reduce complex issues to simplistic
slogans. Why do we go along with this?

I'm not asking you to change your mind on fundamental issues. But I implore
you to use these new tools to keep it ajar.


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