[This is an updated and edited excerpt from a talk I gave in Beijing in July 2012 at a program sponsored by April Media.]

Part I – The Houla Massacre

The Houla massacre occurred in Syria on May 25, 2012.

This was but a few days before Kofi Annan, who was at the time the joint Arab League-UN envoy, was scheduled to visit Syria.

Immediately after the massacre, there was a media campaign in much of the western media to blame the Syrian government for the deaths. There were 108 deaths reported which included men, women and children. A short time after the massacre, an alternative account was made available by a Russian online media group, Anna News.(1) The day following the massacre, a news team for this online site visited the area where the massacre had occurred. Their report appeared on a number of alternative news sites soon… weiter lesen

At a press conference held on June 4 marking the beginning of China’s presidency of the UN Security Council for the month of June, Li Baodong, China’s Ambassador to the UN, observed that there are different versions of the facts of the Houla Massacre. “Now we have different stories from different angles,” he noted. “Now we have the story from the Syrian government, and from the opposition parties, and from different sources.”

Since the Security Council has “ a team….on the ground,” he said, “We want to see first-hand information from our own people.” He hoped this would make it possible to put the different pieces of information together and to come “to our own conclusion with our own judgment.”(1)

The expectation was that Joint UN-Arab League Envoy Kofi Annan would be able to provide further information from the UNSMIS Observer mission when he came to speak with the Security… weiter lesen

The Special Issue (vol 21 no 1) of the Amateur Computerist on Netizen Journalism and the story of the resistance to the NATO aggression against Libya is now available at the ACN website.The url is:
http://www.ais.org/~jrh/acn/ACn21-1.pdf

This issue is a collection of articles documenting what happened in Libya in 2011. It presents a critique of the inaccurate reports that were used to justify the NATO war against Libya.

The focus in this collection is on the role played by the UN in making possible the aggression against Libya. The actions taken by the Security Council and other United Nations bodies like the Human Rights Council were contrary to the obligations of the UN charter and other principles of international law. The articles in this issue document the process by which the UN became an accomplice in a NATO war against a sovereign nation that is a member of… weiter lesen

The current international situation raises important questions for discussion and analysis. In a complex world, how can one have a means to understand what is happening? While the mainstream media often project one view of the world, online discussion and analysis have begun to play an ever more important role in offering alternative viewpoints and analysis.

Around the world there has been a recognition that the mainstream western media can play a harmful role for those trying to develop an accurate understanding of the events of our times.The example of the US media promoting the US government misrepresentation that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction led to a number of critiques of how such a falsification could occur. The question was raised as to what is the means to prevent similar occurrences in the future. One such answer was to recognize that a serious problem with much of the… weiter lesen

“New Media and the Challenge of Reporting from the UN”

[Note: This is a slightly edited version of a talk I presented at "The International Conference on Soft Power" on September 8, 2009, at the Tsinghua International Center for Communication Studies, in Beijing, China.]

I want to share some lessons that have been learned in the three years I have been reporting from the United Nations (UN) as a resident correspondent for the online South Korean newspaper, “OhmyNews International”.

This past December, I won the Silver Award for Excellence in Print and Online Journalism presented by the United Nations Correspondents’ Association in honor of Elizabeth Neuffer, a Boston Globe reporter who died while on assignment reporting from Iraq.

In the brief remarks I made accepting the award I referred to the importance of the judges presenting this award not only for me, but also for other reporters at the… weiter lesen

Part I – Netizen Journalism Panel: The Internet, Netizens, and Journalism

[Note: In October, 2008 there was a panel about Netizen Journalism at the 9th annual conference of Internet researchers (IR9.0 is the tag) which was held in Copenhagen. Following is an abstract for the panel, and then a summary that Axel Bruns posted on his blog of the session. A slightly edited version of one of the talks at the panel, my talk about Candlelight 2008 in South Korea as an example of Watchdog Journalism, is online in an earlier post on my blog.]

In his pioneering research about the impact of the Internet, Michael Hauben recognized that the nature of the Net made possible a new form of citizenship, a participatory form that is oriented toward a public purpose. He called the people who were developing this new form of citizenship, netizens.(1)

What would be the… weiter lesen