Daniel Bennett - Reporting War

Social media from the front line

2012-02-02T11:50:24Z

Major Paul Smyth is one of the people responsible for changing the Ministry of Defence's approach to social media particularly in the context of front line operations.

I've spoken to him previously for the Frontline Club about his Frontline bloggers project.

In this interview with David Bailey, Maj. Smyth talks in some detail about how he used social media to tell the story of British military deployments from Kosovo to Afghanistan.

These are a few of the things that caught my eye (after I'd spent a few moments puzzling over the indoor brick wall):

1. In Kosovo, Maj. Smyth began making 2 minute YouTube videos and sending the URLs to journalists in Sarajevo to try to capture their interest. Putting these videos online meant they could also be viewed by military wives, girlfriends and families in the UK.

2. He says that in order to get coverage in national newspapers or on the BBC, he needed an "incredible story". But a blog allowed him to provide "behind the scenes" footage and to publish smaller stories for interested audiences on a regular basis.

3. He targeted influential defence correspondents and outlets such as CNN's i-Report spreading his news "footprint over a wider area".

4. He describes how his blogging team inadvertently trumped the established news procedures of Buckingham Palace and the MoD Press Office.

The team had published a blog post revealing a visit by Princess Anne to Camp Bastion an hour too early. He claims the subsequent coverage of the post on the BBC and in The Times and The Telegraph "surprised a few people".

MSF aid workers shot in Somalia

2011-12-29T15:40:41Z

Associated Press is reporting that two people working for the aid group, Médecins Sans Frontières, have been shot in Mogadishu. At least one person is believed to have been killed.

The incident is reportedly related to an internal staffing issue - AP quoted MSF worker Ahmed Ali, who claimed that a recently fired employee was responsible for the shooting.

The news appears to have been broken by @HSMPress, a Twitter account run by Al Shabaab, the Islamist insurgent group:

A fierce battle is now raging inside #MSF office building in #Mogadishu. A gunman has stormed the building & opened fire on MSF staff inside
— HSM Press Office (@HSMPress) December 29, 2011

HSMPress continued to provide updates on the situation as it developed including information regarding the possible identities of the gunman and the victims.

General Richards: The media "frequently draw the wrong conclusion" on Afghanistan

2011-12-15T09:50:15Z

The Chief of the Defence Staff gave an annual lecture to the Royal United Services Institute last night. General Sir David Richards spoke broadly about the global environment, the response of the armed forces and particular strategic challenges.

He argued that Britain's main challenge was economic and emphasised the cultivation of strategic alliances to compensate for a smaller national military.

He also spoke about media coverage of the UK armed forces in relation to Afghanistan:

"The operation is on track. We are succeeding and the population supports our efforts, as the latest Asia House analysis shows. Still the Taliban can play one card. They operate in the world of perceptions and convince many in the UK and elsewhere to see the operation as it was, not as it is.
"Perception lags reality by some 18 months. While we are, like a chess player, planning three or four moves ahead we cannot signal our plans openly. That leaves the media frequently, and understandably, to look only at what has happened.
"They frequently draw the wrong conclusion. If you want to see how those on the ground perceive the situation, and have a view on the commitment, resolve and optimism of the Afghan people, I commend this excellent Asia House report."

Not a particularly unusual assessment of media coverage of Afghanistan by a military representative. For what it's worth, I'm not convinced that it is only the Taliban that operate in the "world of perceptions" and that actually the UK armed forces operate there as well with reasonable success. Distinguishing the 'reality' of Afghanistan from this "world of perceptions" is an exceptionally difficult task.

(I'm afraid I can't find the Asia House report online...drop me a line if you know where I can find it.)

Five links from 2011: 'Twitter'

2011-12-14T14:13:56Z

I am picking out a few of the more interesting links from my 2011 delicious bookmarks. On Monday, I selected five from my 'war reporting' tag.

Today, I've selected another five from among the bookmarks I labelled 'Twitter' in my delicious account.

Enjoy!

1. 'Visualising the New Arab Mind'

Computational historian Kovas Boguta visualises the Twitter influence network around the revolution in Egypt.

2. 'The man who tweeted the attack on Osama Bin Laden - without knowing it'

In May, computer programmer Sohaib Athar provided Twitter updates of the US mission to kill Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan. Athar was unaware of the significance of what he was tweeting at the time but he knew something was up:

"Helicopter hovering above Abbottabad at 1AM (is a rare event)."

The Washington Post collected his tweets using Storify.

3. 'Taliban join the Twitter revolution'

Meanwhile, Twitter's rapid uptake by all and sundry included the Taliban in May and Somali insurgent group Al Shabaab by December.

A rather surreal interactive war of words online now accompanies serious military activity on the ground as ISAFMedia and alemarahweb engage in disputes over Afghanistan while HSMPress take on Kenya's military spokesperson Major Emmanuel Chirchir.

4. Libya air strikes: NATO uses Twitter to help gather targets

"Potentially relevant tweets are fed into an intelligence pool then filtered for relevance and authenticity, and are never passed on without proper corroboration. However, without "boots on the ground" to guide commanders, officials admit that Twitter is now part of the overall "intelligence picture"."

5. British Prime Minister considers curbing Twitter use after UK riots

August's riots in the UK prompted consideration of whether the use of Twitter and social media should be restricted.

As it turned out, BlackBerry Messenger appeared to be the communication tool of choice and recent research by the LSE/Guardian claims that Twitter was more useful in the aftermath to organise clean ups than to incite disorder.

Five links from 2011: 'War Reporting'

2011-12-12T11:30:00Z

This year I bookmarked at least 530 links on delicious. I know that because I try to tag each bookmark by year - I'm three hundred or so links down on last year's total of 854.

Seeing as we're coming to the end of the year I thought I'd pick out a few of the 'best', 'most interesting', 'memorable' or simply 'random' links on various topics from among the 530.

In this post, I've selected from those that are also tagged 'war reporting'.

1. Sebastian Junger remembers Tim Hetherington

In April, photojournalist Tim Hetherington was killed while reporting from Misrata in Libya. Colleague and friend Sebastian Junger reflects on his life and death:

"That was a fine idea, Tim—one of your very best. It was an idea that our world very much needs to understand. I don’t know if it was worth dying for—what is?—but it was certainly an idea worth devoting one’s life to. Which is what you did. What a vision you had, my friend. What a goddamned terrible, beautiful vision of things."

2. Libya conflict: journalists trapped in Tripoli's Rixos hotel

"It's a desperate situation," [the BBC's Matthew] Price told Radio 4's Today programme. "The situation deteriorated massively overnight when it became clear we were unable to leave the hotel of our own free will … Gunmen were roaming around the corridors … Snipers were on the roof."

3. War, too close for comfort

Simon Klingert talks to some people on a train about his life as a photojournalist:

““So have you ever seen someone die?” It was about two minutes into our conversation when the question had popped up. The question. Not that I minded though. After all, it seems like a natural question to ask when you tell people you’re trying to make a living as a war correspondent and it dawns on them you actually like what you are doing..”

4. The hazards of war reporting from behind a desk

BBC journalist Alex Murray reflects on reporting the conflict in Libya from his computer screen:

"But the war has been very close to me, too close sometimes. Viewing them [videos from Libya] in a corner of the newsroom on a screen with nobody else sharing the experience at that moment is a dissociative experience. The process of analysing it, effectively repeatedly exposing myself to the same brutal events, does not make it easier."

5. Image of the child of fallen soldier trends on Facebook

I typed 'Afghanistan' into the Kurrently search engine one day and noticed that this photo was being passed rapidly around Facebook in the United States. I find the photo jarring and unsettling: the artificial neatness of a homely, yet staged photograph here represents the tragic consequences of a chaotic, complicated and distant battlefield.

Russian blogger arrested after post-election protests

2011-12-07T10:03:21Z

Russian blogger and anti-corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny has been arrested after participating in post-election protests in Moscow against the Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

The BBC has a good profile of Navalny which explains how his Livejournal blog gained traction for exposing corruption:

"The popularity of his blog allowed him to start mobilising internet users to take an active part in his anti-corruption campaigns by means of what he called his "unstoppable mass complaints machine".
"The "machine" worked by getting internet users to send hundreds of online complaints to investigative and oversight bodies demanding that they look into the case that Mr Navalny was pursuing at the time."

In March this year, the Russian business daily Kommersant was forced to retract an article which attempted to discredit Navalny's exposure of large scale fraud at Transneft, the state-owned pipeline company in 2010.

Russian bloggers complained earlier this week that Livejournal was down for several consecutive days around the day of the election, alleging that a cyberattack had been designed to stop them discussing Sunday's vote.

The head of Livejournal, Ilya Dronov, believed the perpetrators had "a mountain of money" in order to sustain the distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack.

Twitter memorial for members of the Canadian Forces

2011-11-10T11:01:43Z

The Ottawa Citizen has started a memorial Twitter account for members of the Canadian Forces who have lost their lives in conflict.

The account will tweet the name of one service member at 11 minutes past every hour. The name is chosen at random by a computer from a list of more than 119,000 Canadians killed in two World Wars, the Korean war, the war in Afghanistan and other conflicts.

It will take 13 years to tweet all the names on the list, meaning the Twitter account will have to be running until June 2025.

The managing editor of the Ottawa Citizen, Andrew Potter, said there is no reason why people should only remember once a year, "when we march and mourn and pray and lament."

"Through this Twitter account, and through more extensive use of social media down the line, we hope to make the act of keeping faith a more subtle, but in many ways more permanent feature, of the lives of Canadians."

BBC Editor says he was advised to pull journalists from Libya by Foreign Office

2011-10-20T10:20:10Z

On the eve of the fall of Sirte, the BBC's World News Editor has revealed that the Foreign Office "strongly recommended" to broadcasters that they pull their journalists out of Libya prior to the start of NATO's bombing campaign.

Speaking at yesterday evening's Frontline Club event on the pressures of reporting conflict, Jon Williams said officials at the Foreign Office were concerned that they could not guarantee the safety of journalists on the ground.

Williams playfully described the advice as "very generous", but said broadcasters told the Foreign Office that they would "accept responsibility" for having their journalists report from dangerous locations.

Williams also claimed there were "lots of hints from the British" that BBC Correspondent Jeremy Bowen's interview with Colonel Gaddafi in February "really wasn't very helpful".

NATO officially took control of all aspects of the military campaign in Libya on 31 March although British, French and US airstrikes had begun on 19 March two days after UN Resolution 1973 had been passed.

The resolution called for a no fly zone and measures to protect the civilian population from Colonel Gaddafi's forces.

Notes on 'Libya and the Arab Spring' at the Media Society

2011-10-12T12:15:49Z

So yesterday I tried to fit too many things at too many different places into one day and ended up being late for the Media Society event on reporting Libya and the 'Arab Spring'.

But here are a few incomplete notes on the panel discussion...

1. BBC vs Sky News reporting of Tripoli

I think this has largely been put to bed. The general consensus seems to be that while Correspondent Alex Crawford and her Sky team did a great job of covering the fall of Tripoli, criticism of the BBC's reporters on the ground was not justified.

ITV's Bill Neely described flak levelled at the BBC team who decided not to proceed with the rebel convoy as "grossly distasteful". But...

2. BBC: Live vs Bulletins

....we did learn from Kevin Bakhurst, Deputy Head of the BBC Newsroom, that one of the reasons Correspondent Rupert Wingfield-Hayes and his team did not follow the story into Tripoli was because they stopped to file a piece for the Six O'Clock News.

While they were doing this, Bakhurst said they became detached from the rebel convoy and the team adjudged that it would have been highly dangerous to try to rejoin it - "the right decision for the situation they were in".

Of course, the team may still have made a decision that it was not safe to travel with the convoy even if they had not become detached. It is worth pointing out that Rupert Wingfield-Hayes was caught in an ambush the following morning while travelling with the rebels.

Although secondary to safety concerns, therefore, this does nevertheless raise the question of whether the BBC should prioritise rolling news or bulletins.

On the 'bulletins' side of the argument is the fact that bulletins have much larger audience figures than rolling news (Ten O'Clock News, 5 million; BBC News Channel 9.6 million per week).

For the 'rolling news' case, Sky's Alex Crawford was deemed to have "owned the story" and there is a feeling that increasingly audiences are consuming news live, a point raised by the BBC's Jon Leyne. Further research anyone?

3. Blown budgets

It appears that money for international news in 2011 has already run out.

Both Kevin Bakhurst and Sky's Head of International News, Sarah Whitehead, said they had blown their budgets and had asked bosses for additional funds.

Ben De Pear from Channel 4 News said he had spent his "tiny" budget by July and had been forced to raid the coffers of other departments.

When Bakhurst was asked what he would do if another major international news story broke later in the year he said: "I don't know".

4. Social Media

(Unless I missed something at the beginning)...there wasn't much discussion of social media.

Professor Tim Luckhurst argued that the 'Arab Spring' had stressed the importance of traditional media journalists. Initially, he was talking about 'citizen journalists' not replacing professional reporters which I'd agree with.

But I'm not convinced about the statement that followed from that premise:

"Yes, social media makes a contribution but it makes the least contribution when you need it most. And it cannot always be relied upon. And it can only be relied upon when it is curated by professional journalists".

The first problem here is the identification of 'social media' with 'citizen journalists' when all and sundry are now using social media - especially professional journalists.

Leaving that aside, the crux of the issue is the idea that people who are not professional journalists make least contribution to the news through social media when 'we' need it most. I'm just not sure I agree.

I would argue that generally people who are not professional journalists have much less desire to spend the time, energy, trouble and money to report the news on social media platforms when there is no great pressing need.

The Arab Spring has shown that in the context of state censorship of traditional media and political repression, social media provides a (nevertheless contested) space where people who have a frustrated need to share news, ideas and information can do so.

You might call this a very different form of 'journalism'.

You might reject that understanding of 'journalism', but surely the contribution of these individuals to the news and even 'traditional journalism' when 'we' needed it, has been rather important (even if their contribution was subsequently often curated and brought to a broader audience by professional journalists)?

It's both, not one or the other.

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I'd be interested in your thoughts...feel free to comment at Mediating Conflict.

The book launched at the event, Mirage in the Desert? 'Reporting the Arab Spring', is available on Amazon and includes a chapter by me on the Gay Girl in Damascus blog.

Reporting the Arab Spring: the mirage of the 'authentic voice'

2011-10-03T15:24:45Z

I'm breaking the radio silence on the blog to post the introduction to my latest book chapter for Mirage in the Desert: Reporting the Arab Spring. (Not to be confused with Mirage in the Dessert...that is something entirely different.)

My chapter uses the case of the Gay Girl in Damascus blog, (a hoax which purported to chronicle the uprisings in Syria earlier this year), to explore how journalists are approaching the challenges of a world where the 'real' and the 'virtual' are becoming increasingly blurred.

(It's an issue that seems relevant at the moment. Only last week, an ITV documentary about Colonel Gaddafi's support of the IRA mistakenly represented material from a computer game as footage from a secret film.)

If you want to read more, come to the launch next Tuesday and buy yourself a copy of the book. It also features contributions from more illustrious types such as Alex Crawford, Lindsey Hilsum, Jon Leyne and Kevin Marsh among others.

In the meantime here is your teaser...

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A ‘Gay Girl in Damascus’, the mirage of the ‘authentic voice’ and the future of journalism

Amina Abdallah Araf al Omari regarded herself as the “ultimate outsider”. On her blog, “A Gay Girl in Damascus”, she claimed to be 35 years old, female, half-American, half-Syrian and gay.

Inspired by the revolutionary fervour of the “Arab Spring”, her blog posts compellingly documented her personal life as a gay woman and her involvement in the political protests against the Syrian President, Bashar al-Assad.

In April 2011, a post describing how her father had stopped Syrian security services from arresting her led to coverage in the Guardian, CNN, CBS and Global Voices.

Amina Araf was a pseudonym which had been adopted to conceal her identity, but based on her blog posts and email correspondence with journalists she was represented in the media as an “authentic voice” for the movement against al-Assad’s repressive government.

She was “an unlikely hero of revolt in a conservative country”.

Too unlikely, as it happened. Several months later Amina Araf was unmasked as a fictional character created by Tom MacMaster – a 40-year old American studying at Edinburgh University.

In an apology to the blog’s readers, the postgraduate student maintained that “while the narrative voice may have been fictional”, “the facts on this blog” were “true and not misleading as to the situation on the ground”.

He believed he had created an “important voice” for issues which he “felt strongly about”. Members of the gay community in the Middle East, however, claimed that he had put people at risk, while journalists criticised his“offensive”, “arrogant” and “Orientalist” fantasy.

MacMaster’s fictional blog had spiralled out of control but his experiment had inadvertently exemplified the difficulties of performing journalism in the digital era.

By removing the physical body and collapsing the geographic, the internet allows us to alter, switch, conceal and simulate our identities more easily and to a greater extent than we have done in the past. (See Turkle, Life on the Screen, 1990).

In contexts such as the Syrian uprising, when it was difficult for journalists to access individuals in “real life”, many reporters were reliant on the digital representations of individuals as a starting point for their journalism.

The story of “A Gay Girl in Damascus” highlights how journalists and readers alike can be seduced by the mirage of the “authentic voice”online, but it also demonstrates that traditional journalistic fact-checking and verification practices were inadequate despite news organisations’ emphasis on them in the aftermath.

Uncovering “the truth” of Amina Araf’s blog was, instead, made possible by a collaborative investigation and verification process facilitated by online networks.

Libya: Reporting the advance on Tripoli

2011-08-22T13:35:38Z

Rebel forces have jubilantly entered the Libyan capital Tripoli, although fighting still continues in several parts of the city.

For a round up of the latest news check out this list on the Small Wars Journal website.

Here are a few articles that have caught my eye relevant to the reporting of the rebel advance.

The BBC's reporting

A) Blogger Iain Dale apologises for his tweet about the "wimp of a reporter on the BBC wearing a flak jacket" at the Rixos hotel.

B) BBC: Why war reporters are a breed apart

"Last night in a highly volatile situation, the BBC team in Zawiya, along with other major broadcasters judged it was not safe to continue with the rebels on the road into Tripoli."

C) The convoy that Correspondent Rupert Wingfield-Hayes was travelling with runs into sustained fire from government forces.

Praise for Sky News' Coverage

Correspondent Alex Crawford wins praise for her live coverage from the advance towards Tripoli facilitated by an Apple Mac Pro, a mini-satellite dish and a car cigarette lighter socket.

The Libyan Blogosphere

An analysis of coverage available on blogs by Global Voices:

"Six months on and it is heartbreaking to look at how eerie the Libyan blogosphere is, row upon row of bloggers in Libya are silent because of the Libyan war. From the silent ones you realize that they are in the cities under Gaddafi control and therefore have no access to the internet."

Libya Twitter list

A useful list of Twitter users in Libya compiled by Mike Hills.

US Navy "burning the boats" to join social media conversation

2011-08-16T15:37:14Z

A speech on the US Navy's approach to communications by Admiral Gary Roughead has surfaced in my Twitter feed.

The Admiral is the US Chief of Naval Operations and he gave these remarks to a Public Relations Strategic Communications Summit in June.

The general message is that the US Navy realised it could no longer afford not to participate in social media despite potential security risks and the challenges of a "dizzying" communications environment.

The speech marks a significant departure from the guidance in the US Navy's social media handbook issued last year.

The 2010 manual discouraged Navy leaders from allowing too many individual units to set up social media accounts and urged commanders to establish a single "command presence".

In this speech, Adm. Roughead instead argues that the Navy's leaders need to understand that they command a "workforce of communicators".

He emphasised a transparent approach so that Navy leaders could listen to their subordinates and connect with the communities they were serving.

The Admiral cited the response to the earthquake and Tsunami in Japan as an example of how local commands could provide speedy updates on the crisis situation and reply to questions from the United States.

He recognised, however, that the Navy has "only recently started to come to terms with the demand for radical transparency."

The full speech is available here, but a few other sentences that I think are worth picking out:

1. "For whether we embrace the fundamental communications changes underway today or not, our talented young workforce not only embraces them, they know nothing else. As leaders, then, it’s not enough that we keep pace with these changes – we must lead the change."

2. "I submit to you that in today’s media environment, as leaders – whether we recognize it or not – we are no longer simply leading a workforce of employees or, in my case, Sailors. We are leading a workforce of communicators."
3. "...it soon became clear to me that opting out [of engaging in social media] neither guaranteed security, nor served our interests in transparency, outreach, and advocacy. Rather than consider whether we could afford to participate, we came to the conclusion that we couldn’t afford not to participate."
4. "So we joined that conversation, and the term that I’ve used is, “we’re burning the boats.” There’s no going back. We’re committed irreversibly, and in the end it was one of the easiest decisions I’ve made as the Chief of Naval Operations."

The role of social media in the UK riots

2011-08-11T08:41:47Z

"The ability to communicate to groups of people easily and on a regular basis is more powerful than previous incarnations of 'word of mouth' technologies."

Click here for more on the BBC College of Journalism website...

BBC journalist detained in Egypt

2011-08-02T10:20:47Z

The BBC's Shaimaa Khalil has been arrested in Egypt while reporting from Cairo.

She had travelled to Tahrir Square after Egyptian security forces had moved in to clear the area of protesters.

The demonstrators have been demanding swifter political change from Egypt's military generals amid concerns that the revolution which brought down President Hosni Mubarak in February is stalling.

They had set up a camp in the square three weeks ago.

Shaimaa Khalil was tweeting from Tahrir Square and uploaded a number of pictures to Twitpic.

Her last tweet before her arrest revealed that the atmosphere was "extremely tense" and that the area was surrounded by "military", "riot police" and "armoured vehicles".

She also said she had been told by somebody at the square to be "careful" as security forces "arrest anyone taking photos".

The BBC's World News Editor, Jon Williams, said he was "very concerned" at Khalil's detention and that the BBC was doing all it could to "secure her release".

He noted that "arresting journalists" for doing their job was "not a great advert" for a new Egypt.

Update 3.40pm

Word is coming through that Shaimaa Khalil has been released from the military base where she was being held by Egyptian authorities.

Photo: Daniel Bennett, Shaimaa Khalil working for the BBC's World Have Your Say in 2008.

BBC journalists reflect on the nature of war reporting

2011-07-19T08:24:33Z

BBC World Affairs Producer Stuart Hughes recently gave a talk on war reporting to a summer school at the London School of Economics. He has uploaded his slides and videos onto YouTube.

Inevitably there are a few slides which won't mean much without the benefit of Hughes's words overlaid but he has included several interviews with BBC correspondents discussing the nature of war reporting.

He speaks to Allan Little about eyewitness reporting, discusses the term 'war correspondent' with Caroline Hawley and hears Caroline Wyatt's views on embedding with the military.

Well worth taking a look...