Syria Opinion: How to Meet the Challenge of Covering Conflict

Dramatic and complex events like those in Syria, with the prospect of further escalations both in and beyond that country's borders, demand careful, dedicated and in-depth coverage and analysis. Yet, on Wednesday, The Guardian announced that after 28 months, it is ending its Live Coverage not just of Syria, but of the entire Middle East. Its reason --- news is slowing to "gradual incremental developments" and it can no longer justify expenditure of resources on the project.

Of course, the decision was probably reached because of "business", not journalism. However, if news is to be effective, media have to find a way out from the financial dead end. An initiative has to put a relatively small investments into high-quality, dedicated work that might stand a chance of building an audience and encourage readers to pay attention to a story on a continuing basis.

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Syria Feature: How "Independent Analysts" Are Breaking the Stories of the Conflict

Britain's Channel 4 profiles EA Worldview's James Miller and other independent analysts on Syria

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On Saturday, news emerged of a new kind of weapon --- a 12-tube rocket launcher with a range of 8.5 to 13 kilometrees (5.5 to 8 miles) --- that has made it to the front lines of the Syrian conflict.

The news, significant in itself, is the latest development in the wider, important story of how Syrian insurgents are using foreign-supplied Croatian arms to make crucial gains against President Assad's troops.

These advances since January could even prove to be the tipping point in the two-year insurgency.

There may be another tipping point: by developing methods to gather information and analyze open-source intelligence, an emerging group of "independent analysts" are breaking news stories far ahead of any mainstream outlet.

And in doing so, they are changing the international conversation about Syria.

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EA Video Analysis: The Lie About an Iran "Explosion" That Became Headline News

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Eight minutes explaining last week's lie --- about an explosion at the Fordoo uranium enrichment plant, tracking hundreds of people including Revolutionary Guards and North Korean advisors underground --- became news in outlets like Germany's Spiegel, the Jerusalem Post, and The Time of London.

Four lessons:

1. "When you have a guy who claims to be a CIA spy dressed up in sunglasses and a bandana covering his face, you probably want to consider whether he's a trustworthy source of information."

2. "There are really important stories in Iran. Not all of them have to be preceded by the word 'nuclear'."

3. "It is no longer the case that you have a division between reliable print journalism and unreliable Internet journalism by people sitting in their bedrooms."

4. At the end of the day, knowledge is power. Lies are an abuse of that power."

US & Middle East Opinion: Sense and Sensibility About Al Jazeera America

Al Jazeera's news comes with a vantage point and a set of interests, as is the case with all media outlets. The discerning viewer certainly has much to gain by watching it, but liberals should be careful to avoid the assumption that the enemy of Pam Geller is necessarily a friend.

There is little doubt that Al Jazeera’s astounding $500 million bid for Current TV was motivated in part because the latter’s liberal viewers were the most likely American constituency to give the Arab giant a chance. And a chance --- rather than an unquestioning devotion --- is exactly what it deserves.

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Syria Analysis: Huge Stories, Small Headlines, and the Future of Insurgency

Insurgents use a BMP armoured vehicle to attack regime tanks in Jabal Zawiyah in Idlib Province

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This is a stalemate, but it is a corrosive one, one that constantly eats at the strength of the Assad regime, while the humanitarian crisis and threat to infrastructure grows with every exploding barrel bomb and tank shell. The "massacres" and the escalating death toll bear out the claims made by the opposition that the regime does not believe that it is winning this fight.

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Syria Feature: How to Get Reliable News from the Confusion of Conflict (Miller/Sienkenwicz)

Security forces raid Aleppo University --- posted on EA on 5 June 2012

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Coverage of the post-election protests in Iran in 2009, a key precursor to the current crisis in Syria, powerfully illustrates the difficulty inherent in working with non-traditional sources at such great distances. While much of the citizen journalism covering the Green Revolution of 2009 was accurate and insightful, significant portions of it were impossible to verify. Some elements, even more problematically, we produced for the very purpose of sowing confusion. For example, in the face of severe government restrictions on traditional journalism, opponents of the Iranian regime, such as the People’s Mujahedin of Iran, resorted to faking videos and republishing old videos with new dates in an effort to supply evidence of the regime’s imminent demise. The Iranian government and its supporters were equally dishonest, faking their own videos and paying bloggers to leave positive comments on Facebook pages and Western news stories. This cacophony of misinformation drowned out and thus neutralized the impact of much of the difficult, dangerous work being done by honest Iranian citizen journalists.

Three years later, Syrian citizens, working in concert with a global network of web journalists, have crafted a system that helps ameliorate these concerns. A complex process now goes into producing, collecting, organizing—and verifying—the countless digital puzzle pieces that tell the story of the Syrian Civil War.

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The Latest from Iran (16 July): We Are Here for Your Security

Maya Neyestani illustrates the warning of Iran's Police Chief against films and television showing people eating chicken, as it encourages the poor "to stab the rich"

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1720 GMT: Persian Gulf Watch. A US military supply ship fired today at a small boat in the Persian Gulf after it came too close, apparently killing one person on board, American officials said.

The USNS Rappahannock, a fuel resupply ship, fired on what the officials called a "small, white pleasure craft" 10 miles from the Dubai port of Jebel Ali.

The Navy said in a statement, "In accordance with Navy force protection procedures, the sailors on the USNS Rappahannock...used a series of non-lethal, preplanned responses to warn the vessel before resorting to lethal force. The U.S. crew repeatedly attempted to warn the vessel's operators to turn away from their deliberate approach. When those efforts failed to deter the approaching vessel, the security team on the Rappahannock fired rounds from a .50-caliber machine gun."

Fars briefly had the item at the top of its homepage, but the entry has now disappeared.

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Palestine Film Special: "Live: From Bethlehem"

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Live: From Bethlehem, a documentary about an independent Palestinian news agency, starts with a feeling every journalist knows well, as a small staff rushes to get breaking news on the air. Reporters, trying to get into the field, contend with bad traffic and police checkpoints. Ma'an News Agency, the only official independent news agency in Palestine, is clearly feeling the stress.

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WikiLeaks Opinion: Why This Court Case Goes Far Beyond Julian Assange

Julian Assange at the Oslo Freedom Forum in 2010

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The past three years has seen a dramatic shift in the way news and information about events around the world are generated, processed ,and consumed. At the time that governments started chasing Assange, the movement was in its infancy. Perhaps they thought putting him behind bars would end it. Now, thanks in part to the Arab uprisings, that wave has swept past Assange and his fate.

The genie that is citizen journalism cannot be put back in the lamp. Because for Assange's supporters, and indeed for some of his detractors, this is not about the founder of one significant outlet. It is about all the others and their right to exist as part of a free, meaningful, and competent press.

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North Korea Video Feature: The Wonderful World of the Regime's YouTube Channel (McFadden)

Disney, Take Note --- the North Korean regime's cartoon animals portray conflict and re-unification

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One of the more striking cartoons features a young boy, who falls asleep while doing his math homework and dreams of blowing up American warships and landing craft with missiles. While the other boys in his dream are successful at hutting their targets, the main character does not know how to zero in on the proper coordinates because he did not learn from his homework. When he wakes from the nightmare, he immediately returns to his studies.

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