Mumbai Attacks

Hey everyone it's Sarah. I'm a lead blogger this week. I thought this story from the New York Times was an interesting follow up to the recent Mumbai events. The article focuses on citizen reporters and how technology is really changing the field of communications and journalism. I think the media is rapidly becoming very dependent on citizen reporters for their ability to report on events immediately especially when otherwise the media outlets may have trouble gathering information about the story or event.

Citizen Journalists Provided Glimpses of Mumbai Attacks

By BRIAN STELTER and NOAM COHEN

Published: November 29, 2008

From his terrace on Colaba Causeway in south Mumbai, Arun Shanbhag saw the Taj Mahal Palace & Tower Hotel burn. He saw ambulances leave the Nariman House. And he recorded every move on the Internet.

Mr. Shanbhag, who lives in Boston but happened to be in Mumbai when the attacks began on Wednesday, described the gunfire on his Twitter feed — the “thud, thud, thud” of shotguns and the short bursts of automatic weapons — and uploaded photos to his personal blog.

Mr. Shanbhag, an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, said he had not heard the term citizen journalism until Thursday, but now he knows that is exactly what he was doing. “I felt I had a responsibility to share my view with the outside world,” Mr. Shanbhag said in an e-mail message on Saturday morning.

The attacks in India served as another case study in how technology is transforming people into potential reporters, adding a new dimension to the news media.

At the peak of the violence, more than one message per second with the word “Mumbai” in it was being posted onto Twitter, a short-message service that has evolved from an oddity to a full-fledged news platform in just two years.

Those descriptions and others on Web sites and photo-sharing sites served as a chaotic but critically important link among people across the world — whether they be Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn tracking the fate of a rabbi held hostage at the Nariman House or students in Britain with loved ones back in India or people hanging on every twist and turn in the standoff while visiting relatives for Thanksgiving dinner.

“When you look at TV, you see one channel at a time, then you go to another channel,” said Dina Mehta, an ethnographer and social media consultant in Mumbai. “On Twitter, you get feeds from many different people at the same time.”Citizen journalists avoided some of the bureaucratic headaches faced by media organizations. At the end of the day on Friday, CNN’s license to transmit live video in India expired, forcing the network’s correspondents to report via telephone. CNN and other channels in the United States relied on live coverage and taped reports from Indian networks.

The cameras and phones carried by people swept up in the attacks were not subject to any such rules. Mr. Shanbhag photographed one of the fires at the Taj hotel and the wreckage outside a popular cafe that was attacked on Wednesday and posted them on his Flickr stream. Some people transmitted video from inside the Taj hotel to news networks via cellphones. And reporters used cellphones to send text messages to hotel guests who had set up barricades in their rooms.

Much of this activity flourished early in the crisis, while there was a vacuum of official information either from government sources or from mainstream media outlets still struggling to understand the extent of the attacks.

Sreenath Sreenivasan, the dean of student affairs and a professor at the Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, said, “A little bit of information is better than no information at all.”

For a small segment of the Lubavitch Hasidic community in the United States, Twitter became a way to follow the fate of their rabbi, Gavriel Holtzberg, his wife, Rivka, and their son, who were being held hostage in Mumbai.

“I relied on Twitter heavily,” said Mordechai Lightstone, 24, a freelance journalist and Lubavitcher with a Twitter account. “As a person interested in what is going on over there, it gets frustrating when the news cycles on itself.”

Mr. Lightstone said that only a week or so ago he persuaded the leaders of his community to use Twitter as a publishing tool. He has been running that Twitter account, as well as his own.

Reading Mr. Lightstone’s posts, as well as those of another Lubavitcher, Reuven Fischer, gave a glimpse into a community fearing for one of its own but wanting to remain hopeful about its mission.

Mr. Lightstone wrote, “This is pure hearsay, but I was told that the shlucha was rescued — again this unsubstantiated #chabad #mumbai,” using the Yiddish word for the rabbi’s wife and marking keywords with pound signs so that the post would be easier to find in a search of Twitter.

As the news that the rabbi and his wife had been killed emerged, and the Sabbath approached, Mr. Lightstone and Mr. Fischer took pains to temper their sadness with the joy of the day of rest.

Mr. Fischer wrote, “We should Honor Shabbos with joy this week. We can mourn after Shabbos doing Mitzvot in honor of ALL effected by this tragedy.”

Though traditional in dress and beliefs, Lubavitchers pride themselves on harnessing all of the available tools to spread their teachings.

“We are not afraid of using the world to further our goal and tasks,” Mr. Lightstone said. “It’s really amazing, sitting in a basement in Brooklyn, we are all sharing a common goal, looking for good news, staying in touch.”

Siege ends at Mumbai Jewish centre

I don't know how many of you have been following this, but the situation in Mumbai is unbelievable. The terrorist attacks going on there have been outrageous, and many Westerners from American and Britain have been taken as hostages in the ordeal. Over 150 people have been recorded as dead, and the madness continues. They even took people hostage at the Taj Mahal, and many of the guests were either killed or trapped for a multitude of hours. These attacks are supposedly an attempt to gain attention, but hopefully it ends soon.

Siege ends at Mumbai Jewish centre

Indian commandos have ended the siege of a Jewish centre in Mumbai, storming the building and recovering the bodies of five hostages, while fighting continued at a luxury hotel elsewhere in the city. The siege at the Nariman House ended on Friday, the private NDTV news channel said, two days after attackers carried out a series of co-ordinated attacks across India's financial capital. Al Jazeera's Matt McClure, reporting from outside the Nariman House in south Mumbai, said several gunmen have been killed in the assault by the security forces . "Now we are told they [security forces] are slowly moving room-to-room there to make sure there are no booby traps," he said. Raging battle The bodies of five hostages were recovered from the building, an Israeli emergency medical crew that entered the building after the raid, said. Among the bodies were those of Rabbi Gavriel Noach Holtzberg, who ran the centre, and his wife, the Chabad Lubavitch organisation said. A day earlier, two workers and the rabbi's son had escaped from the building. The battle at the building that houses the headquarters of Chabad Lubavitch, included a team of at least nine commandos rappelling onto the roof from helicopters. Several large explosions were also heard. Elsewhere in the city, gunfire and grenade blasts were heard at the Taj Mahal hotel and security forces at another hotel, the Trident-Oberoi, found 24 bodies after gaining control of the building. More than 150 people are now known to have been killed since the attackers launched a series of assaults across Mumbai on Wednesday night. Indian troops earlier took control of the Trident-Oberoi hotel, which had also been the scene of a hostage standoff, killing two attackers, the chief of India's national security guard said. "We are just now sanitising each and every room," J K Dutt said. Some frightened civilians inside the hotel are refusing to leave their rooms, he said. Twenty-four bodies were found inside the hotel, Hasan Ghafoor, Mumbai's police chief, said. Meanwhile, at the Taj Mahal hotel at least one gunman was said to still be inside. "The Oberoi-Trident is completely clear, there is one terrorist left in the Taj who is giving us trouble and he could hold hostages and that is why we are very cautious," Gafoor said. Hundreds trapped James Bays, Al Jazeera's correspondent outside the Taj Mahal hotel, reported: "The authorities believe they have secured the majority of the Taj hotel. We were told some time ago their attention was focused on the ballroom, but it's still a confused situation." The chief of India's Marine Commando Force said that his troops had come across "12 to 15 bodies" while sweeping through the Taj. "The [attackers] were the kind of people with no remorse - anybody and whomsoever came in front of them, they fired," the commando said. "We could have got those terrorists but for so many hotel guests ... The bodies were lying strewn here and there. There was blood all over and in trying to avoid the casualty of those civilians, we had to be that much more careful," he said. Foreigners killed Ratan Tata, who runs the company that owns the Taj Mahal hotel, said the attackers had detailed knowledge of the layout of the buildings. The strikes by small bands of armed men starting on Wednesday night shocked Mumbai, the nerve-centre of India's growing economic might and home to the Bollywood film industry. At least eight foreigners, including an Australian, a Briton, an Italian and a Japanese national, have been killed. Fourteen policemen, including the head of Mumbai's counter-terrorism force, have also been killed, police say. A US investigative team is heading to Mumbai, a state department official said on Thursday evening. Media speculation Police said they had taken nine suspected attackers into custody. The Indian media, citing unidentified police investigators, reported that three alleged attackers had confessed to being members of Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistan-based group which aims to end Indian rule in Kashmir. Lashkar-e-Taiba, which means army of God, had earlier denied any role in the attacks. The Hindu newspaper said interrogation of the suspects revealed that Lashkar operatives had left Karachi in Pakistan in a merchant ship early on Wednesday and went ashore at Mumbai on a small boat before splitting up into teams to attack multiple locations. Earlier, a little known group calling itself the Deccan Mujahidin claimed responsibility for the attack in emails to news organisations. Dipankar Banerjee, a retired Indian general, told Al Jazeera that he does not rule out the possibility that the Indian Mujahidin, blamed for previous attacks, were responsible for the Mumbai assaults. In a speech on Thursday, Manmohan Singh, the Indian prime minister, blamed "external forces", a phrase sometimes used to refer to Pakistan-based fighters. Pakistan has condemned the attacks and has said it will fully co-operate with an Indian investigation. But in a diplomatic exchange that raised the prospect of renewed tension between India and its neighbour, Pranab Mukherjee, the Indian foreign minister, urged Pakistan to dismantle infrastructure that supported armed groups. Al Jazeera's Kamal Hyder, reporting from Islamabad said: "More and more people here are inclined to think that this is an indigenous, internal Indian phenomenon and that India is scapegoating Pakistan. "Since yesterday the Indian media insinuated that elements within Pakistan were involved. However on the Pakistani side there has been relative quiet and also a sense of responsibility shown by the journalists not to jump to conclusions," he said.

American media aided Bush

What must be done now!
26/11/2008 05:02:00 PM GMT
America’s right-leaning media imbalance was a big reason why Bush was able to misgovern the U.S. for eight years.
By Robert Parry
Having spent more than three decades in Washington, I’ve seen enough mistakes made – and opportunities missed – for a lifetime. So, at this turning point in American history, I’m venturing beyond my normal role as reporter to offer a few ideas about what must be done now.
For one, the progressive side of American politics must invest much more in media and do so immediately.
Looking back over the past three decades, the cost of the Left’s complacency on media – i.e. its failure to create a reliable way to get important facts to the public and to counter the Right’s propaganda machine – has been almost beyond calculation.
America’s right-leaning media imbalance was a big reason why George W. Bush was able to misgovern the United States for eight years, leaving the nation in two bloody wars and wallowing in the worst financial crisis since World War II. Hundreds of thousands are dead and millions may soon be out of work.
Despite Barack Obama’s election victory, this media asymmetry will not go away. Indeed, it is almost certain to limit his ability to bring about significant change and could tilt the country back in the direction of the Republicans in the not-to-distant future.
It is a pattern I have seen often since 1977 when I arrived in Washington as a reporter for the Associated Press.
During that time, while the American Left has been largely absent from the national media landscape, wealthy right-wingers (from foundations like Olin and Scaife to media moguls like Sun Myung Moon and Rupert Murdoch) have poured tens of billions of dollars into media.
Over those years, the Right built a towering – and vertically integrated – media structure reaching from newspapers, magazines and books to talk radio, cable TV and the Internet, an apparatus concentrated in the power centers of New York and Washington.
The Right also invested money in attack groups to go after mainstream journalists who dared dig up information that put right-wing policies or politicians in a negative light. Offending journalists were accused of “liberal bias” and often found themselves hounded from the national press corps.
Over time, this imbalance had a spillover effect. Many right-wing and neoconservative pundits landed prime spots on mainstream TV news shows and the Op-Ed pages of leading newspapers, such as the New York Times and the Washington Post.
Even the most dangerous of right-wing ideas – such as free-market absolutism at home and neoconservative imperialism abroad – got respectful if not reverential treatment across the mainstream-to-right-wing media spectrum, the news outlets that most Americans read, heard and watched.
Left’s miscalculation
The Right’s bullying was made more effective by the fact that the progressive side of American politics chose – also starting in the mid-to-late 1970s – to withdraw from any serious commitment to national media.
One of the Left’s favorite slogans became “think globally, act locally.” In practice, that meant favoring local activism (such as direct philanthropic spending on projects like feeding the poor or buying up endangered wetlands) over national media (i.e. building the kind of informational infrastructure that the Right had).
So, it was not so much that the Left lost the “war of ideas” to the Right over the past three decades; it was more that the Left abandoned the battlefield.
The Left’s neglect of media proved disastrous. The Right, with its three-decade project of building media and controlling the federal government, showed it could create far more poor people than well-meaning progressives could feed – and put more wetlands at risk than could ever be bought up.
Another result of the Left’s media miscalculation has been that even when moderately progressive politicians have managed to claw their way to power – as Bill Clinton did in 1993 and the congressional Democrats did in 2007 – they must operate within a hostile environment, fighting relentless media assaults and often scaling back plans.
It has been no accident that the last three decades have been dominated by three Republican presidents who have held the White House for a combined 20 years. At each step, the media played a pivotal role, most notably in promoting the incompetent George W. Bush over the well-qualified Al Gore.
Only in the last few years has there been a modest pushback from the Left. Adding to a few earlier media standbys – such as Amy Goodman’s “Democracy Now!” radio/TV program and some liberal magazines – there were these new developments:
--Often operating on a shoestring, Internet sites rose up to challenge both Bush and the fawning coverage he was getting from the major news media.
--In 2004, a poorly funded Air America took flight with the goal of putting at least a few liberal voices on AM talk radio.
--Progressives got an unexpected boost with Comedy Central’s surprise hit, “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” and a spin-off, “The Colbert Report” with Stephen Colbert.
--MSNBC, after trying for years to out-fox Fox News with flag-waving jingoism, took a different tack when it elevated former sportscaster Keith Olbermann to a prime-time broadcast called “Countdown,” which made a point of mocking Bill O’Reilly and other right-wing blowhards on Fox.
--When profit-obsessed MSNBC executives realized that Olbermann was boosting their ratings, they hired Air America host Rachel Maddow to put on a show that follows “Countdown,” creating a four-hour block of relatively progressive news content.
The Obama movement
Though still operating at a fraction of the budgets available to right-wing media, this combination – grassroots Internet sites, a struggling radio network and a few toeholds inside corporate media – helped create a climate that permitted the growth of Barack Obama’s political movement and his election on Nov. 4.
But this new media ecology is very fragile.
There is also the reality that a generation of mainstream journalists has learned the lesson that tilting stories rightward protects your precious career. They have seen what happens even to media icons, like anchor Dan Rather, when the Right’s ire is stirred.
So what must be done now?
If America’s media imbalance is to be corrected, progressives – both individuals and liberal foundations – must invest heavily in a media infrastructure that is national but focused on the news centers of Washington and New York.
This investment should have both micro and macro components.
Financial support is needed for the gutsy Web sites that stood up to Bush – like our own Consortiumnews.com – but money also should go to larger media institutions, which can then help publicize stories that are generated by the smaller outlets.
For instance, a properly capitalized and well managed Air America could not only improve the radio network’s programming but could place ads at Web sites with links back to Air America so listeners can click on Webcasts and get information about local Air America affiliates.
That way Air America could grow; its affiliates would be strengthened; and ad money could help keep Internet news sites afloat. They, in turn, could provide the radio network with original content for shows, rather than having Air America hosts rely on warmed-over conventional wisdom from mainstream outlets like Newsweek.
There are plenty of other examples of how cooperation could work within this loose confederation of independent journalism. At Consortiumnews.com, for instance, we produce our own original articles, but we also serve as a portal to the independent video news site, TheRealNews.com.
Another example is how media critic Norman Solomon’s Institute for Public Accuracy, through the work of the indefatigable Sam Husseini, supplies broadcast outlets with the names of off-the-beaten-path experts, including independent journalists, to provide fuller context for news than what often is heard in the mainstream press.
Needed: A leader
This strategy for building independent media would be most effective if someone with access to plentiful resources took the lead, much like former Treasury Secretary Bill Simon did for the Right in the late 1970s. Simon used his perch at the Olin Foundation to coordinate with other right-wing foundations on media funding.
Bill Moyers, who has run the Schumann Foundation and knows his way around New York/Washington media circles, would be an ideal candidate for such a role now.
Other possible leaders would be major directors/producers from Hollywood, given their expertise in producing media content.
If Hollywood did take the lead, my nominee for coordinating this infrastructure work would be Stuart Sender, an Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker based in Los Angeles who understands the rigors of investigative journalism and the value of multi-media formats (or someone like him).
But the bottom line is, as they say, the bottom line. Without an investment of serious money in a timely fashion, even a well-conceived plan and the involvement of well-qualified people won’t go anywhere.
As Martin Luther King Jr. once said in the context of opposing the Vietnam War (and Barack Obama frequently reiterated during his campaign), there is at crucial moments “the fierce urgency of now. … There is such a thing as being too late.”
-- Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush , can be ordered at neckdeepbook.com. His two previous books, Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq and Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth' are also available there. Or go to Amazon.com.-- Middle East Online
© aljazeera.com

Tension rises after Syrian TV show

Interviews with terrorists arose Lebanese anger

By NOUR MALAS

BEIRUT -- A primetime broadcast on Syrian state television two weeks ago worked the region's media into a storm -- and neighbors Syria and Lebanon into renewed political tension.

On Nov. 6 Syria TV aired a series of edited interviews with a group of people claiming responsibility for a September car bomb in Damascus that killed 17 people.

Ten men and one woman confessed on air to being members of Fatah al-Islam, a militant group that battled the Lebanese army for more than three months in neighboring North Lebanon in summer 2007. Sole woman in the group was identified as the daughter of Fatah al-Islam fugitive leader Shaker al-Absi.

The montage of interviews against a black background also showed captured militant weapons, including TNT, rocket-propelled grenade launchers and rifles.

The state broadcaster made no mention of the programming on its website, and the government has yet to release details of when and where the alleged terrorists were detained.

The international media has described the broadcast as an attempt by Syrian authorities to portray themselves as partners in the global war on terror. The U.S. has long accused Syria of failing to cooperate with anti-insurgency efforts along the Syria-Iraq border.

But in Lebanon, reactions have focused on the allegation that explosives for the Damascus car bomb were brought in from North Lebanon, where -- the interviewees said -- Fatah al-Islam is financed by Sunni leader Saad al-Hariri and his anti-Syrian Future party.

In response, the Hariri-owned Al-Mustaqbal newspaper published statements by Fatah al-Islam militants captured in Lebanon who claim the group was instead armed and trained by Syrian intelligence officers.

All this has taken place just as Syria and Lebanon finalize the establishment of diplomatic relations for the first time in their history.

Katine

I found out about this project on the homepage of The Guardian UK website. It's pretty interesting and seems very relevant to our class, since it is a media organization helping people in another part of the world in more ways than just reporting on the conditions there. I would really encourage you all to actually go the article on the Guardian because it contains several links that give more information about the project and other organizations involved. heres the link for the article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/katine/2008/sep/23/background.news

 - Greg

In partnership with

Katine: What's it all about?

• Liz Ford
• guardian.co.uk, Tuesday September 23 2008 15.26 BST
• Article history

Welcome to Katine.

In October 2007, the Guardian and Observer embarked on a three-year project to support development work carried out by the African Medical and Research Foundation (Amref) and Farm-Africa in Katine, a rural sub-county of north-east Uganda.

The project was launched by the editor of the Guardian newspaper,Alan Rusbridger.

The £2.5m project is being funded by donations from Guardian and Observer readers and Barclays, which initially gave £500,000 to the project and will match-fund donations over the course of the project up to £1m. You can read more about our partners here.

But the Katine project is more than just a fundraising push. On our dedicated Katine website you will get the chance to find out how the money is spent, how development works (the successes and the failures) and how the lives of the sub-county's 25,000 inhabitants have changed.

The project is focusing on five key areas, and improvements in each will be recorded in dedicated sections on the site. So, you can find out about the project goals and catch up on progress in education, health,water, governance and livelihoods at the click of a button.

An important part of the Katine project is listening to its residents – finding out about their lives and giving them a forum to express their views, not only on the work of Amref and Farm-Africa in their communities, but also on the decisions made by Ugandan politicians in Kampala that could impact their lives. The NGO Panos, which works to strengthen media, debate and information in developing countries, will hopefully help empower locals to tell their stories, which you can read in our village voices section.

Throughout the project we will be attempting to put the work going on in Katine into context by reporting on Uganda's history and politics, including the war being waged in the north of the country by the Lord's Resistance Army, a war that has directly affected Katine.

We will also explore the wider issues of international development in ouraid and development section.

Over the course of the project, Guardian and Observer journalists will visit Uganda to report on progress. We have also employed an award-winning senior staff writer from the Weekly Observer newspaper in Kampala, Richard M Kavuma, to spend two weeks each month in Katine to write regular news reports.

An independent moderator, Rick Davies, has been contracted by the Guardian to visit Katine to see if the work being carried out by Amref and Farm-Africa on the ground corresponds to the project plans. Regular reports will be published online. The first can be read here.

Obviously, fundraising for the project is important, and there is a page on the site that explains the different ways you can make a donation.

We are also encouraging schools to get involved in the project through our school resource section, which contains ideas for raising money, videos and lesson plans that can be downloaded.

All of the work going on in Katine is being captured through the written word, pictures, audio, and video, with a number of films produced byGuardianFilms. There is also a helpful interactive map of Katine, which allows you to take a virtual tour around the region. You can read more about the project on our Frequently Asked Questions page.

We believe the Katine project can offer a unique insight into the world of international development, so tell us what you think. Join the debate on our Katine Chronicles blog, or email me, the Katine website editor, at katine.editor@guardian.co.uk, with any comments or suggestions you have for the site, or on the project.

UK identities being sold

Hey guys

I came across this article and I thought you might find this interesting. Internet fraudsters are selling complete financial identities for just £80, according to an online safety group. The Safe Online group, who is backed by police, government and banks, says ID theft is a serious problem because of an international trade in stolen identities and data. The information that is being sold online are names, addresses, passport numbers and confidential financial data such as credit card numbers. The experts says that with six out of 10 people now managing finances online, the public needs to do more to prevent e-crime. The article stated that online marketplaces, often sited in countries with lax controls against e-crime, sell bundles of data harvested in concerted attacks against poorly defended computers in wealthier nations. The link to the article is listed below. I find this very disturbing that people's personal information is beling tampered with. I wonder how will this effect the UK? Do you guys think that it is possible to effect the US? With all these identity theft cases in the UK and the US how damaging could this be to the economy in the US and UK? What do you guys think?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7732569.stm

La Mara