Category: Future of News
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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.”
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From this “…Brisbane is the NYT’s ombudsman, and today he describes the way that the paper broke the news of Osama Bin Laden’s death. Well, he can’t do that, because the NYT didn’t break the news of Osama Bin Laden’s death. But he ignores the people who did break the news, and just tells the story of how the official NYT machine worked. “ to this, “The debate started on Facebook, between war photographers Teru Kuwayama and Mike Kamber, who wrote a “muted eulogy” in the NYT for photographers Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros; it then moved on to a discussion board called Lightstalkers, and although that debate seems to have disappeared for some reason, it lives on, for the time being, in Google’s cache. Meanwhile, Teru has put his side of the debate here, at Gizmodo. Teru’s point is that the NYT spends vastly more money, effort, and resources on Americans and Europeans with names like Tim and Chris than it does on locals with names like Mohammed or Ali or Raza. ”
Barbara K Iverson 