BuzzMachine

The media pundit's pundit. Written by NYC insider Jeff Jarvis, BuzzMachine covers news, media, journalism, and politics.

News at the front

7 comments on News at the front

Good on Reuters for supporting the creation of an Iraqi wire service.

The charitable foundation of the Reuters news agency plans to announce this week that it is turning a grass-roots Iraqi news Web site into that nation’s first independent commercial news service.

For the last several months, the Web site, Aswat al-Iraq (Voices of Iraq), has relied on a team of 30 stringers and the help of three of Iraq’s independent newspapers, as well as feeds from the Reuters Arabic-language service, to publish hundreds of stories a month on politics, culture and even the taboo topic of AIDS in Iraq.

Now the site, http://www.aswataliraq.info, will become a full-fledged newswire, managed and staffed by Iraqi journalists in Baghdad and operated independently of Reuters. It will use $800,000 from the United Nations to create a newsroom and post reporters in each Iraqi province. When the service goes live in a few months, it will feed breaking news to both Iraqi and foreign news outlets.

Yes, I can anticipate the cracks in the comments: Reuters and the U.N., what a team… we’ll never see the word “terrorist” there. But I say give it a chance to prove its journalistic value.

7 responses to “News at the front”

  1. Jonathan Barnes Avatar
    Jonathan Barnes

    Thanks for the post on Reuters and its inroads in Iraq.
    I am a stringer for Reuters. I think it’s a good organization that has treated me and other part-timers very well. While Reuters is a bit on the conservative side in how it presents the news, its news gathers are ethical and thorough.

  2. Tony Avatar
    Tony

    A free press will be more effective in planting democracy than any bomb or bullet. Not that we should abandon the war, of course, but the pen really is mightier than the sword.

  3. Yehuda Cohn Avatar
    Yehuda Cohn

    Jeff:
    Why should we see the word “terrorist” there? In Iraq, I believe it is technically correct to call them “insurgents,” not terrorists.
    Only the Bush administration and their Kool-Aid drinking acolytes call them terrorists.

  4. Vincent Avatar
    Vincent

    Why the hell is a foreigner to Iraq like Abu Musab al-Zarqawi an “insurgent?”
    If the United States is an invader, Zarqawi and his merry band of non-Iraqi jihadists are no less invaders. And they’re terrorist invaders, too.
    Sheesh.

  5. Andrew Tyndall Avatar
    Andrew Tyndall

    At the Tyndall Report, we find it useful to use the word “terrorist” to describe the act rather than the perpetrator. A terrorist act consists of violence against civilians for political motives.
    Almost all terrorism is criminal but most crimes are not terroristic, since most crimes are perpetrated for non-political motives such as greed or revenge or hatred or whatever.
    Violent acts against military, security or infrastructure targets may share a tactic with terrorist acts (using suicide attacks, carbombs or hijacks, for example) but are not strictly speaking terrorist, since the military is supposed to be trained and prepared to defend itself against attack, unlike civilians going about their daily business.
    Under this definition the attack on the USS Cole was not terrorist. The terrorist component of the attack on the Pentagon on September 11th was the initial hijacking of the civilian airliner not the subsequent crash into the building, a military target.
    While “insurgent” is a clear word for such irregular attacks on military targets, we prefer to use “guerrilla” for the reasons Vincent cites: “guerrilla” describes the type of conflict; “insurgent” implies homegrown.
    According to this argument, Yehuda Cohen’s either-or choice between insurgents and terrorists does not apply. abu-Musab al-Zarqawi’s cell has engaged in both types of violence. Obviously, the latter is the more despicable.
    The BuzzMachine implies that every decision not to use the term “terrorist” is on its face suspect. I disagree. And so does Jarvis, in his own practice, as he did in his “Angry Young Men” post, where for appropriate reasons he stripped away the “terrorist” label from the London suicide bombers in order to diminish the credibility of their political motives.
    “What they did is a crime. That’s all it is, nothing more. A crime,” he asserted. That is a fine example of avoiding the T-word.
    And a liberal use as well: as Karl Rove reminds us, when faced with terrorism, liberals seek indictments; conservatives resort to war.

  6. penny Avatar
    penny

    In Iraq, I believe it is technically correct to call them “insurgents,” not terrorists.
    For starters, “insurgents” implies someone at odds against the formal government as in a civil war situation.
    The terrorists in Iraq are overwhelmingly foreigners with a very small handful of ex-Baathists thrown in. The Shiia, Sunni, and Kurds are not at odds with each other or the government at this point.
    Only the Bush administration and their Kool-Aid drinking acolytes call them terrorists.
    Give it up. Two minutes googling by any reasonable person kills your “only”.

  7. doit Avatar
    doit

    I’m in Iraq – we call them (what the left calls “freedom fighters” or “insurgents) degenerate murdering scumbags, or DMS for short.
    Hope this is helpful.
    Yehuda Cohn – your mother must be very proud of you.