[WikiEN-l] News agencies are not RSs

[George Herbert]

On Mon, Jun 29, 2009 at 9:07 PM, stevertigo<stvrtg at gmail.com> wrote:
> Three more points:
>
> 1) Rohde's experience in reporting the mass murder of Bosnian Muslims by
> Serbian Christians may have drawn sympathy and support from Muslim
> officials, including perhaps some who may have sway with the kidnappers.
> Publishing details of his kidnapping in a Muslim country would have raised
> the issue of his work on behalf of human rights - of Muslims in particular -
> and gotten significant airplay in the Muslim context.

The NY Times presumably analyzed that, talked it over with security
professionals in government and private employ, and decided against
it.  They have correspondents abroad in danger areas, and have had
them kidnapped before.

I think they know better than Wikipedians - though I do not presume
they know perfect.

> 2) Not publishing the story and then creating an issue after the fact, makes
> such tactics unlikely to be successful in the future. Tactics have the
> problem of being exactly that - overt and discernible forms of movement that
> after study can be countered. That's again assuming that these tactics were
> substantially contributive to any success in this case.

You're assuming that terrorists and professional kidnappers in the
hinterland of Afghanistan have networks that include sophisticated
Wikipedia and web history analysis experts.  This is true for some
organizations - but not many.  The level of ignorance of advanced
information sources is suprising even among groups that use some
advanced high-tech tools such as websites and encrypted internet
communications.  Even on topics they were acutely interested in, Al
Qaeda (who have doctors and engineers on staff) failed to gather
useful information on modern chemical and biological and nuclear
weapons.  All the key info they're looking for is on the web and
searchable - they didn't have much better than random stuff pulled
from Google.

The pirates in Somalia have good communications - but poor
intelligence other than regarding shipowners.

That this was done in one case does not mean it won't work again.
Most intelligence gathering methods remain useful for quite a while
after they're generally disclosed.  Government intelligence agency and
military targets harden rapidly, others tend to learn slowly.

> 3) Are the participating Western news orgs, just like the previous U.S.
> administration, now to consider Al Jazeera as hostile? Or perhaps as an
> organization that does not follow the same professional standards that
> Western news orgs claim to follow?

I don't know of anyone who feels Al Jazeera is hostile.  They're
trying to be an independent, honest, neutral actor in newsgathering in
the Mideast, from a natively middle eastern perspective.  They're
smart, sophisticated, and pissing just about everyone off on all
sides.  Around here, that usually means they're both accurate,
zealous, and impartial.

That does not always serve US short term interests.  But then, from
the US government's perspective, neither does the NY Times at times.

My hopefully enlightened perspective is that the rise of middle
eastern based honest modern newsgathering will be a major part of the
ultimate enlightened modernistic muslim refutation of the reactionary
islamic terrorists.  I think Al Jazeera's staff see themselves that
way and I hope and think that they're right.


-- 
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com