Is the Baghdad Blogger for real?

Paul Boutin: Is the Baghdad Blogger for real?

Webcast of tonight's journalism & blogging session

I'm told that my appearance at Berkeley tonight with Rusty Foster, founder of Kuro5hin, will be webcast. We'll be discussing why news organizations and journalists should establish weblogs. It's scheduled for 10:30 Eastern, 7:30 pm Pacific time (US).

Live from Rio! The Internet Law Program

This is terrific: While I'd love to be in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, right now, my schedule and budget haven't cooperated. So here's the next best thing to being there: Donna Wentworth blogging the Internet Law Program live on her Corante Copyfight blog.

Among the participants: Larry Lessig, John Perry Barlow, Gilberto Gil and a cast of Harvard whizzes: Yochai Benkler, Charles Nesson, Terry Fisher and Jonathan Zittrain.

I'll be tuning in repeatedly.

Alterman on media coverage of the war

NY Times:

Critics of the war against Iraq are not reserving their anger exclusively for President Bush. Some also blame the news media, asserting that they failed to challenge the administration aggressively enough as it made a shaky case for war.

In an interview, Eric Alterman, a liberal media critic and author of "What Liberal Media?" (Basic Books, 2003) argued, "Support for this war is in part a reflection that the media has allowed the Bush administration to get away with misleading the American people."

Sunday, the great David Shaw interviewed Alterman for the LA Times: 'Bias' that bends over backward to right itself.

The always-readable Alterman holds forth on his own MSNBC weblog here.

Meantime, Michael Wolff has a similar critique of the media in New York magazine, saying that the US press is "cowed" by the Bush administration.

A different perspective

Al-Jazeera's website is now available in English, though its servers are getting hammered. By users, presumably.

Article on war blogs

USA Today: Web logs convey 'raw stuff' of war.

CNN: 'The Old Fart Network'?

Jeff Jarvis agrees with my two postings that CNN is shooting itself in the foot by pulling the plug on Kevin Sites' weblog. Jeff writes in part:

I have no idea what CNN's problem is. I can imagine a few scenarios -- e.g., some editor worries that Sites won't do his work (he's in a warzone; what else is he going to do?) or some editor worries that they're not editing what he writes (if you don't trust him, don't hire him). Bottom line is that CNN proves it is out-of-date. ...

CNN is not only disrespecting Sites, it is disrespecting his audience, and it is disrespecting bloggers as a whole -- which is a mistake, since we, fellow bloggers, are now influencers. Ken Layne says CNN is the old fart network. We're quoting that. It is a meme that can take over -- unless some wise CNN executive sees the trouble and slaps some bureaucratic underling on the wrist and begs Sites to begin again.

CNN used to be the cutting edge network. It is no more. It needs blogs to get back to the future again.

Well said.

Networks begin showing clips of POWs

In followup to yesterday's posting about whether news organizations ought to air video of the captured U.S. POWs, against the wishes of the Pentagon's top brass: NBC and CNN have begun airing small snippets, noting that the families of the servicemen in question have been notified by the military and the condition of the POWs is unarguably newsworthy.

Bin Laden and Saddam's blood hatred

I had missed this from NYU prof, author and IP scholar Siva Vaidhyanathan last week: A Letter to a Concerned Friend in the United States. Excerpt:

Al Queda has nothing to do with Saddam Hussein's regime. Everyone who knows the situation (and everyone in the CIA and State Department -- as they have reported on many occasions) knows this. Everyone in the White House and Pentagon knows this as well, but they prefer to lie about it to fool people into supporting a war they thought up back in 1992, when they were still friends with Bin Laden.

Bin Laden hates Saddam so much that he offered to run the war against Iraq after it invaded Kuwait in 1991. The Saudi royal family rejected the offer. Everyone in the world seems to understand this except a handful of Americans who still believe all the forged evidence and demonstrated lies that Bush and Blair keep pushing on us.

Bin Laden loves the idea of the United States taking Saddam out. It not only removes Al Queda's greatest nemesis in the Middle East and clears the way for theocratic nuts to assert control in Iraq, but it rallies Arabs and Muslims against American imperial aggression. The blowback will likely come from uncoordinated centers of Arab and Muslim anger and passion.

Customers don't like DRM

Kevin Marks points to a new survey by Jupiter that shows consumer dislike of DRM.

According to the study, nearly twice as many online consumers are willing to pay $17.99 for a CD that has unrestricted copy abilities versus a CD at only $9.99 that cannot be copied.

The un-Oscars

Here are some images from outside last night's Academy Awards ceremony. They appear to have been taken with a less-than-robus 2-megapixel camera, perhaps.