Where to get first-hand news
: Reporters in Iraq can’t give us first-hand news… but bloggers can.
The head of CNN laments that the violence in Iraq means that reporters are not getting out to find out what is going on firsthand and that means we’re not getting good reporting from Iraq:
I think news consumers are being shortchanged to a degree, not just on television but in print, because journalists are not able to do their jobs effectively, and certainly the depth and breadth of reporting that you saw even a month ago was far more vast than what news consumers get today.
This makes Cori Dauber sputter:
We’re being shortchanged to a degree? Well I suppose that we are. And I applaud him for making that clear and explaining the limitations on reporting clearly and explicitly so that we can evaluate what we’re getting from Iraq knowing that.
All the more reason for us — and for news organizations! — to watch what the Iraqi bloggers are saying and to hope that more start publishing. It’s not their job to cover all the news. But they give us the news they know from their perspectives. On many days, Zeyad’s blogroll has news from the front.
See, for example, this report from Alaa.
: River also criticizes media coverage — Western media coverage — of Iraq.
