A Message to Readers from James Miller

James Miller writes to EA readers:

It has been my honor to write for EA Worldview for the last 2 1/2 years. Now, however, I am leaving EA to pursue new projects.

This is a bittersweet moment for me. I am excited about the new directions in which my life is headed, and I anticipate wonderful things for EA; at the same time I will miss a place that has been my "home".

One of the opportunities I am pursuing is The Public Eye Journalism Project in conjunction with Professor Matt Sienkiewicz of Boston College. Still in beta, PEJ is dedicated to using open-sources to investigate international events of legal, political and historical importance.

Our first case is the examination of the double bombing on January 15th that left 80 students dead at Aleppo University in Syria.

I wish Scott Lucas, the writers and staff at EA, and all of the readers --- many of whom I have come to know well --- all the best.

Israel Opinion: "I Stand For People, Not Policies" (Sienkiewicz)

Logo of "I Stand for Israel"If standing with Israel means demanding that the Israeli government do everything it can to secure the long-term peace and security of its people, then I will be first in line. If it means playing at public relations for one of the world’s most powerful defense forces, I’ll keep sitting out.

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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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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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