My favorite Iraqi Blogger Zeyad in NYC gives talk about the war and blogs

[beachmom]

From Jeff Jarvis at Buzzmachine.com

http://www.buzzmachine.com/index.php/2006/10/08/ona-the-definition-of-civil-war-in-iraq/

Great stuff here. Really great. Read the whole thing, but here's a few quips:

Zeyad was interviewed on the stage at the Online News Association by USA Today’s Mark Memmott and the room was pin-drop-silent from start to end. I thought it was riveting and so did many others.

Zeyad told the story of the beginning of his blog and then about milestones in its life and the transformation of his thinking about the war — from the start of the war, when Zeyad was optimistic for Iraq; to the lack of media coverage of prodemocracy demonstrations in Baghdad in 2003; to the death of his cousin at the hands of American soldiers; to his current view of the war. When Zeyad pushed for and got an investigation into his cousin’s death (which found the Americans at fault), he said he saw a backlash among his readers. “They accused me of all kinds of things, particularly because I optimistic. I realized some people were supporting me just because I was saying things they wanted to hear.”

Memmott asked about the accusation that news media here are not covering enough good news in Iraq. “That what I thought in the beginning,” Zeyad said. “Over the last year, I think they are not covering how bad it is.” What are they missing? “Most of the coverage revolves around attacks on American forces and, of course, I understand that. But they are missing the sectarian violence going on around the country. And it’s also extremely difficult for Western media to get that story.” He praised a story in the Washington Post a week ago profiling a neighborhood and also praised some Times coverage. “But it’s not enough.” He said the TV coverage he has seen has been dreadful.

On the civil war:

He painted a terrifying picture of life in Baghdad, of “neighborhood shelling neighborhood.” In his Sunni area, “almost every night there is an exchange of mortar shells between neighbors and I haven’t seen that in any Western media. It goes on every night…. Sometimes, it’s just ordinary people from both neighborhoods. Trust is gone.” (Later, with Paul Brennan of the BBC, we sat in the hall and watched an Alive in Baghdad report about local patrols and Zeyad recognizes his own neighborhood.)

Asked whether this is civil war, he said: “I ask you back: How do you define a civil war? Does what I describe sound like a civil war — neighborhoods fighting each other? Yes, I think that’s a civil war.”

From the audience, he was asked whether he has feared for his life. “Yes, I was fearful for my life all the time and I had to weigh everything that I posted.”

Another article here:

http://editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003222368&imw=Y

A Baghdad native, Zeyad began blogging in 2003 -- mostly for a Western audience -- to help give this kind of on-the-ground perspective he felt was missing in Western news reports. He would collect information from family and friends, read as many local blogs as he could, write about demonstrations and other events in his neighborhood, take pictures, and post commentary.

"I thought I could spare an hour every day and write about what was going on," he said. " was very appropriate. It's immediate, you can write about things as they happen, you can post photos immediately, and there's no editing."

For the most part, he says, his blog entries were positive, about his hopes for democracy in Iraq, and, as a result, he built a following of people who shared his views. When President Bush visited the country for Thanksgiving in 2003, Zeyad wrote "To tell the truth I'm still shocked to this moment that he took the risk to come here. I used to like him before, but now I admire the guy."

Two months later, Zeyad wrote about the death of his cousin, who was caught by American troops while violating curfew, and drowned after being pushed into a river by the troops. His story was eventually picked up by media around the world, and one of the soldiers received prison time for his part in the incident.

As Zeyad turned, at times, more critical of the U.S. in his posts, he himself became the object of criticism. "I realized that some people were supporting me just because I was telling them what they wanted to hear. When I started saying something different, I lost some of that support."

Another words, all the right wingers used to read his blog when it contained only more Kool Aid, but once reality set in, they turned on him. I had read somewhere else that he had once contemplated quitting blogging because of the visciousness of the comments. Hmmmm . . . now that wouldn't be from the wingnuts, would it? Those idiots still post on Iraq the Model (the guy who wants us to invade every country in the Middle East and do regime change), and they really are the most vile, awful people ever!

He also mentioned, interestingly, that reporting on the Iraqi government is a waste of time, because they are irrelevant. They control nothing, not even the Green Zone.

Zeyad was probably the reason why I decided there was a civil war in Iraq back in Feb./March, so he is THAT astute a reporter. Currently, he is attending school at City College, and has an assignment to cover elections in Brooklyn, for which he is thoroughly confused -- I got a kick out of that!.