<nettime> RE: The Net as the best medium for war reporting.

[Richard Reynolds | emthree <richard@emthree.com>]

Jon Snow is absolutely right. 

Availability does not imply influence.

Just because IWPR is doing something noteworthy on the Net does not mean it
is actually playing any meaningful part in influencing public opinion.

If you put the IWPR reports, no matter how thorough, original and wonderful,
alongside tradional televison (or even newspaper) reporting, there is no
comparison.

For all the wonderful stats about Internet useage, the overwhelming majority
of the world gets their news diet from radio, television and newspapers - in
that order, and that's if they pay attention at all.

And I'm not even venturing into (well, maybe briefly) the equally important
issue of credibility. Whilst the BBC and other mainstream western news
agencies may have dubious claims to credibility, the kind of third-hand
hearsay "reporting" that the IWPR was frequently engaging in is, while
interesting, not on the same plane.

Richard Reynolds


-----Original Message-----
From: Carlos Pi [mailto:carlos@dircon.co.uk]
Sent: Sunday, November 28, 1999 10:53 AM
To: nettime-l@bbs.thing.net
Subject: <nettime> The Net as the best medium for war reporting.


Last week, I attended a panel discussion in London about the nature of war
reporting, chaired by Jon Snow of Channel 4. When asked by Anthony Borden,
Director of the Institute for War & Peace Reporting (www.iwpr.net) about
the value of new media as a journalistic channel for war reporting versus
traditional media, he replied: 

"The effect of the Internet is, as yet, not wide-spread enough to have a
significant influence on the general public." 

Yet, while BBC reporters ventured a few miles inside Kosovo to video a KLA
soldier dying, IWPR was publishing reports from journalists all over
Republica Sprska whose names had to be withdrawn to avoid reprisals from
Milosevic's repression machine. Some of them were themselves victims of
ethnic cleansing; they witnessed (and suffered) the atrocities first-hand.
Their invaluable reports went straight from their laptops to the IWPR
website through London. 

IWPR has been publishing several weekly reports from the Caucasus since
October, and from the Balkans since February.

They recently won UK's Best Online Journalism Award ahead of the BBC,
online Guardian, etc. 

It seems the Internet, as yet, has not had a significant influence on Jon
Snow. 

Carlos Pi
Digital Artisan
_______________________
www.carlos.dircon.co.uk

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