Anti-war protests cause gridlock in SF

SF Gate: Waves of anti-war protesters made good on their promise to disrupt downtown San Francisco this morning, as they occupied intersections throughout the Financial District, South of Market and Civic Center, preventing buses and cars from navigating the streets.

Sorry, folks, but you're just going to turn off people to your cause this way. The public is not the enemy.

To add to the glamour of the event, some protesters have staged a vomit-in.

A medium meets its war

Leslie Walker in the Washington Post:

Never before have Internet news sites been so prepared for events so uncertain.

Hours before the United States attacked Baghdad yesterday, CNN debuted the Internet's first all-news streaming radio station, a free offering designed to pipe audio from the Persian Gulf to desk-bound American office workers. Just last week, ABC News created the Internet's first live video news channel, a $5-a-month service that will test people's willingness to pay for live news on their PCs.

CBS News and MSNBC.com, meanwhile, boosted the amount of free video they offer online. CBS stationed a writer for the Internet at its new "war desk" 10 feet behind Dan Rather. MSNBC.com sent its international Web editor to file special online reports from the Gulf.

DEBKA and misinformation

Howie Kurtz in the Washington Post reports on how independent sites like DEBKA can publish bogus news updates based on rumor. Bloggers might see this as big media picking on new, indie media, but I think Kurtz is right: We need to keep a careful eye on bad journalism, wherever it originates. Excerpt:

Even before first bombs hit, we had the first spectacular media blunder of the war.

"Kurdish sources confirm that Iraqi deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz is in their hands and is being questioned by US intelligence officials," the Israeli Web site Debka.com blared yesterday morning.

Shortly after that, Al Bawaba, which dubs itself "The Middle East Gateway," ran this lead: "The Iraqi opposition is trying to verify reports Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz may have been killed on his way to the Kurdish part of the country."

All of which evaporated when Aziz appeared live on Iraq's Al-Arabiya television to make clear that he had neither defected or been killed, declaring
instead that an invasion would be "a catastrophe" for America. The rumor had become the news, news that Saddam's regime needed to knock down.

Debka.com reported at the same time. in an "DEBKAfile exclusive," that "US warplanes taking off from the USS Abraham Lincoln are bombing Iraqi military targets along the US-IK line of advance." No other news outlet had word of this early start to the war. (It was a rumor that would turn out to be true--only it would happen much later. Jerusalem-based Debka, which also publishes a Hebrew edition, has been selected as a hot site by Forbes and USA Today.)

The good news is that the bogus reports weren't blared all over cable TV (although they covered Aziz's I'm-still-here appearance). But they underscore how quickly false information can surface in a wartime situation and how careful journalists must be not to get swept along by a tide of rumor and misinformation. ...

Online journalists jailed in Cuba

Wired News: The Cuban government has arrested 10 independent journalists, most of whom publish their work on the Internet. Havana says the reporters are part of a U.S. effort to foment political opposition in the country.

War, ethics and photojournalism

My latest column for the Online Journalism Review just posted:

Portraying the Graphic Face of War

It looks at how Corbis and washingtonpost.com are working with about 15 photojournalists in Iraq, Kuwait and the region to convey what's happening to readers in close to real time. Excerpt:

[Brian Storm, vp of news and editorial photography at Corbis,] has wrestled with the ethical issues of photojournalism during wartime. ìIt cuts to the heart of the profession and to the role of the photographer and editor,î he says. ìThe photographer has to make a deeply personal decision about when to put the camera down. Each publication has to decide whatís acceptable for its readership. Corbis distributes to a global audience, so we canít take on any one set of geographical value systems. I think itís critical that we see the horror of war. And I think weíll see it faster and it in more venues than in the past.î

Here's a page with pointers to terrific Digital Photojournalism During Wartime.

Meantime, my OJR colleague, Mark Glaser, has a new column up, War a Boon for News Sites, Blogs.

Grand designs in Iraq

I hope this isn't true: The president's real goal in Iraq.

War Edition of E-Media Tidbits

Poynter Online's E-Media Tidbits has a very good roundup that assesses early war coverage by online media.