Alive In Baghdad

[Rob Thornton]

Hey Steve,

I don't think so - I just checked out a couple - its not just clips - its journalism. The webcams and such on You Tube seem devoid of context most of the time - they are mostly just raw content. It could just be me - but I think this is pretty well done. Sitting down and looking at some of these if you've not done tactical operations there that get you into people's houses and talking to them puts a different face on people. This could be used in conjunction with cultural primers - I think its also devoid of the usual types of bias we see in MSM - having said that all journalism has some bias associated with it - its natural - I'll have to watch a few more, but since they are not so established - they may not be so controlling - i.e. get me a story that we can spin like this. Also - I think there is something to the quality of access available - when our commercial ISP in Mosul was about to run out we were checking on how much it would cost to re-establish - it was cost prohibitive for us - so if you think of an inter-net cafe - where multiple folks are running their machines - your connectivity is probably limited to uploading cell phone vids.

Best, Rob