Antony Loewenstein

The following review of my book The Blogging Revolution appears in the latest edition of Harvard University’s Nieman Reports:

An Australian blogger interviews dissident bloggers worldwide, and in his book he explains why what they do matters and who is trying to stop them.

By Danny Schechter

I am a blogger, a media critic, and a human rights-oriented journalist. I am also a fan of Australian blogger, freelance writer, and author Antony Loewenstein, because even as he profiles brave online journalists and writers in his “The Blogging Revolution,” he doesn’t leave his voice in the background. Nor does he avoid the deeper media crisis that creates all of the reasons anyone needs for appreciating the value and importance of the proliferating blogosphere.

When I started my News Dissector blog 10 years ago, blogging was an emerging media form. No longer, and here are U.S. stats that offer a glimpse at the profound changes that have taken place (with more added every day):

* Now more than 12 million American adults maintain a blog.

*More than 147 million American adults use the Internet; 57 million read blogs. More than one-third of today’s blog readers started reading them in 2005 or 2006.

*More than 120,000 blogs are created each day: Nine percent of Internet users claim to have created one, and included among these people are six percent of the U.S. adult population.

*Among bloggers, 1.7 million Americans list making money as one of the reasons they blog. Of companies surveyed, 89 percent indicate that blogs will be more important to their business during the next five years. A bit more than half of blog readers shop online.

*Technorati tracks more than 70 million blogs.

*Nearly one quarter of the Web’s 100 most popular sites are blogs. There are more than 1.4 million new blog posts made each day.

*Blog readers average 23 hours online each week.

Whew. With the emergence of so many people expressing themselves so vigorously as part of the Web’s daily media stream, the relationship between their engagement and the established media’s decline becomes abundantly apparent.

The revolution brought about by blogging—which Loewenstein dedicates his book to exploring—focuses on how blogs are being used by “the imprisoned dissidents everywhere.” He is clearly driven in writing this book by the mission of calling our attention to the struggle many dissidents face in countries where it is difficult—and dangerous—to try to get heard in these repressive environments. Governments would not crack down on the Internet and suppress its voices, if bloggers are not articulating messages and information that they find offensive or feel threatened by.

At the same time, Loewenstein is not unmindful of the challenges facing scribblers like himself who live in places where speech is not harassed. As he writes about our changing media, he speaks to issues of corporate consolidation and the economic decline that have led to deep cutbacks of reporters and the dumbing down of news outlets. Given these connections Loewenstein is making about the role blogging now plays throughout the world, it is significant that many news organizations that initially criticized bloggers as not being “real journalists” have now opened their pages to their staff blogs in a mode of “if you can’t fight them, join them.”

At the same time, what real journalism is remains unresolved—as if it ever could be fully defined. In the opening paragraph of his book, Loewenstein offers a quote from the now offline and in-exile Iraqi blogger Riverbend, with whom I’ve corresponded. (Disclosure: This blogger wrote a blurb on one of my books and is quoted in “When News Lies.”) She is quoted as saying:

Bloggers are not exactly journalists, which is a mistake many people make. They expect us to be dispassionate and unemotional about topics such as occupation and war. That objective lack of emotion is impossible because a blog in itself stems from passion.

There isn’t one way to commit journalism. We know that in countries other than ours, reporters are expected to bring their personal perspectives to coverage. Nor is the AP Stylebook a universal guide.

The writers, diarists, commentators, artists and activists Lowenstein invites us to visit in his good read of a “blog around the world” book are a diverse lot, though each of them is challenging government and pushing back against orthodox ideas. He wasn’t content to work from secondary sources. As he traveled to meet bloggers in Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Cuba, he found an engaged, talented, sometimes tenacious decentralized tribe of committed and caring people, who speak in many tongues as they confront common enemies in the form of authorities who want them to disappear.

The remarkable diversity among these bloggers is what makes reading about them so interesting. It isn’t possible to boil down their words into sound bites. Each confronts a specific situation, and Loewenstein spends enough time with each to profile them within their circumstance’s context—and thereby offers readers memorable moments and close observations about the culture and their experiences as well as their aspirations. It also helps that Loewenstein writes so well and knows how to tell a good story.

Restricting Online Content

Closer to home, Loewenstein explains how big U.S.-based technology companies have been complicit in helping governments monitor and restrict online content, especially in China, where its Great Wall is now the government’s firewall. His discussion about how American-made software—he names Google, Yahoo!, Cisco Systems, and Microsoft in this vein—has assisted with police prosecution of bloggers highlights the controversial intersection of business interests vs. the bedrock American principle of protecting freedom of speech.

All too often, such corporate practices are not the focus of human rights advocates, such as the Committee to Protect Journalists and Reporters Without Borders, who tend to be more concerned about government actions. In these cases, however, these organizations published detailed accounts from this cyber battleground and sent out action alerts to urge people to channel their outrage into action on behalf of bloggers facing persecution and jail. This is sadly a familiar story, even if an ongoing one.

On occasion, courageous bloggers are given awards for their work. Yet when this does happen, few U.S. news organizations send reporters to interview them or link to their blogs on their own Web sites. Rather than collaborate with them as colleagues, they and their words are marginalized even as crippling cuts in foreign reporting are happening at newspapers and television stations. At the same time, newsroom managers are not acting to make their international coverage more inclusive and decentralized, given the amazing resources that now exist online. There is one news outlet, GlobalVoicesonline.org, where international bloggers’ words are being published and, when necessary, translated into English.

“The Blogging Revolution” is not a guide on how to blog nor does it explain why so many people read blogs and write comments on them. Had Loewenstein done so, there would have been plenty of challenges and dilemmas for him to explore—difficulties that go with maintaining a blog and marketing it to find an audience in what’s become a very, very crowded arena. Instead, Loewenstein took on an original topic and did so as a global journalist with a focus squarely on some of the big issues of our time. In short, he has written a book that tells us why blogs matter.

News Dissector Danny Schechter, a 1978 Nieman Fellow, blogs on Mediachannel.org. His book “Plunder: Investigating Our Economic Calamity and the Subprime Scandal” was published by Cosimo Books in 2008 and reviewed in the Spring 2009 issue of Nieman Reports. He can be reached at dissector@mediachannel.org.

As Iran teeters and the Supreme Leader warns protestors, Zionists, foreigners and the media to back off – he would be comical if this wasn’t so serious – many in the West should be cautious about heralding the Twitter Revolution. As I write in my book The Blogging Revolution, new technology doesn’t on its own bring down a government or impose Western-style democracy. They are important tools but merely that.

Now we have British Prime Minister Gordon Brown arguing that the internet has changed foreign policy forever. Then this gem:

You cannot have Rwanda again because information would come out far more quickly about what is actually going on and the public opinion would grow to the point where action would need to be taken. Foreign policy can no longer be the province of just a few elites.

This is utter nonsense. Brown wants to give the impression that the web has truly democratised so-called elite pursuits, but I see little evidence that foreign policy is being drafted by a wider circle of people. It’s the same elites with the same considerations; the maintenance of state power.

And events like Rwanda tragically can and will continue to happen – witness the devastation in Sri Lanka, Gaza etc – because Western governments see no real reason to intervene. Human rights are rarely a consideration.

The Electronic Intifada reports on the petty lengths to which Israel will go to harass Palestinians in and around Jerusalem:

Israel is currently using provisions in the lengthy documents of the Oslo accords as the legal basis for intensifying efforts to suppress activities in Jerusalem that the state says are linked to the Palestinian Authority (PA). The Oslo accords were interim agreements that were signed by the Israeli government and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and from which the PA was created.

The latest examples of this crackdown were closure orders delivered last month by armed Israeli police and border police at the opening and closing sessions of this year’s annual Palestine Festival of Literature, which were scheduled to be held in East Jerusalem’s Al-Hakawati Palestinian National Theater.

Was it policy or pressure that led Lamar Outdoor Advertising to tear down billboards featuring a pro-Palestinian political message?

The latest photos from Iran’s ongoing Green Revolution.

Western journalists should remain cautious, however. This isn’t just another lovely expression of resentment by those under a dictatorship. It’s far more complex than that.

This is concerning news sent by Israeli human rights group New Profile:

Dear Friends,

This morning I by purely chance learned Haaretz had fired Meron Benvenisti.  I phoned him and he confirmed this, relating that Haaretz had fired him at the end of May.  His dismissal will be formally activated at the end of June, but the paper since informing him has no longer been publishing his work.

When I asked Benvenisti if he would mind our protesting his dismissal, he replied “not at all.”  Meron Benvenisti, similarly to Amira Hass, Gideon Levy, and Akiva Eldar is an excellent analyst and an outspoken critic of Israeli government policies.  His voice will be sorely missed.

Those of you who are unfamiliar with his work can find a brief bio here. Many of his op eds and other work are available on the internet via Google and other search engines.

The link here is to addresses of the Haaretz publisher and staff.  I believe that our letters protesting Benvenisti’s dismissal can be most useful addressed to the publisher, Amos Schoken, and to the Editor (who fired Benvinisti), Dov Alfon.  But I presume that it will also not hurt to write to more of the editorial staff.

I hope that each and every one of you will take a minute or two to write, so that there is a massive outpouring of anger and indignation and, perhaps most important, expressions of feeling the loss of a voice as important as Benvenisti’s.

A CAVEAT: do not threaten to unsubscribe from the paper (assuming that some of you do subscribe).  As I recall, last year both Amira Hass and Gideon Levy felt that this would have the contrary effect. Haaretz, due to a financial crisis,  has since last year changed its focus from a newspaper that presents left-of-center views as well as consensus views to a paper centering its appeal to an upper-class audience, focusing more on The Marker than on investigative reporting and op eds and investigative reporting of the sort that Benvenisiti writes.

Thanks for taking part in this protest.

Let’s wish us luck.  But even should we not succeed in restoring him his place in the paper, the danger of keeping quiet is that others of Benvinisti’s ilk will suffer his fate.

Dorothy

Who says the Iraq war hasn’t been a wonderful success (for imperialism and oil companies)?

Furious protests threaten to undermine the Iraqi Government’s plan to give international oil companies a stake in its giant oilfields in a desperate effort to reverse a steady decline in oil production and revenue.

In less than two weeks, on June 29 and 30, Oil Minister Hussain Shahristani will award service contracts to the world’s largest oil companies to develop six of Iraq’s largest oil-producing fields over 20 to 25 years.

Next step we hear anything about Tony Blair – such as his latest bleating regarding the chances of achieving Middle East peace “within the year” – remember this:

Tony Blair was aware of the ­existence of a secret interrogation policy which ­effectively led to British citizens, and others, being ­tortured during ­counter-terrorism investigations, the Guardian can reveal.

The policy, devised in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, offered ­guidance to MI5 and MI6 officers ­questioning detainees in Afghanistan whom they knew were being mistreated by the US military.

Following my essay in yesterday’s Haaretz, Jewish blogger Jewlicious reponds with fury:

Oh, Mr. Loewenstein wants my outrage. I, as an American Jew should be outraged. Otherwise, I am a pro-Likud kinda bastard with inhumane and un-Jewish views leading Israel down a horrific alley.

Robert Fisk, reporting from inside Iran, gave a remarkable interview to ABC Radio on Wednesday:

No-one’s told me not to drive around so I go and see wounded people and go and watch these confrontations and no-one seems to bother me.

I rather think an awful lot of journalists take it too seriously. If you get in a car and go out and see things, no-one’s going to stop you, frankly.

I went to the earlier demonstration in the centre of the city, which was solely by Ahmadinejad’s people, immensely boring, although I did notice one or two points where they were shouting ‘death to the traitor’. They meant Mousavi.

You’ve got to realise that what’s happening at the moment is that the actual authorities are losing control of what’s happening on the streets and that’s very dangerous and damaging to them…

[The protest] is absolutely not against the Islamic republic or the Islamic revolution.

It’s clearly an Islamic protest against specifically the personality, the manner, the language of Ahmadinejad. They absolutely despise him but they do not hate or dislike the Islamic republic that they live in.

So who is really in charge here?

The United States has stepped up pressure on Israel regarding the Gaza Strip: Three weeks ago it sent Jerusalem a diplomatic note officially protesting Gaza policy and demanding a more liberal opening of the border crossings to facilitate reconstruction.

The Gaza borders could be opened today if the US was deadly serious. Until Israel truly feels financial pain, things are unlikely to change very much.

And they should. Reading this recent Haaretz feature about Israeli leaders deciding what goods and foods are allowed into Gaza, it’s no wonder Israel is increasingly loathed the world over. What kind of nation does this and is proud?

Every week, about 10 officers from the Israel Defense Force’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) unit convene in the white Templer building in the Kirya, the Defense Ministry compound in Tel Aviv, to decide which food products will appear on the tables of the 1.5 million inhabitants of the Gaza Strip. Among those taking part in the discussion are Colonel Moshe Levi, head of the Gaza District Coordination Office (DCO), Colonel Alex Rosenzweig, head of the civil division of COGAT and Colonel Doron Segal, head of the economics division. These officers decided, for example, that persimmons, bananas and apples were vital items for basic sustenance and thus permitted into the Gaza Strip, while apricots, plums, grapes and avocados were impermissible luxuries. Over the past year, these officers were responsible for prohibiting the entry into the Gaza Strip of tinned meat, tomato paste, clothing, shoes and notebooks. All these items are sitting in the giant storerooms rented by Israeli suppliers near the Kerem Shalom crossing, awaiting a change in policy.

Can gay friendliness boost Israel’s image?

No.