How reporting is done in the 21st century
Please read the whole story, but here is the kicker:
- How ‘Hotel-Room Journalism’ Uncovered a Qaddafi Bunker
By Uri Friedman May 16, 2011
Foreign journalists in Tripoli, who are in Libya at the invitation–and whim–of Muammar Qaddafi’s government, spend a lot of time holed up at the five-star Rixos Hotel, and it’s not just because they want to avoid the NATO airstrikes raining down on the capital. As Sky News’s Mark Stone explains, it’s also because they can’t venture outside without government “translators” in tow, spinning the regime’s side of the story and restricting the reporters’ movements. Over the weekend, however, Stone managed to challenge the government’s narrative of events without ever leaving the Rixos, in what he’s calling “hotel-room journalism” and what Foreign Policy’s Blake Hounshell is describing as a “great example of 21st century reporting.”
Through it all, Stone never left his hotel, making use instead of the digital tools available to today’s journalists. Ibrahim has told Stone that he doesn’t know anything “about bunkers in Brega,” and Stone is now investigating whether religious leaders were truly killed. If they were, he writes, “the Libyans still need to explain why religious leaders were invited to stay above one of Colonel Gaddafi’s command & control bunkers.”