Blogging Under Martial Law

BusinessWeek reported yesterday on the Internet's role in informing the public of the state of Pakistan after General Musharraf enforced Martial Law on November 5th and in mobilizing citizens in opposition:

A complete blackout of cable television—the most pervasive medium in Pakistan—radio, and the Urdu press had blocked images from public view, but word spread. The students decided to participate in the protests.

That's when the blogging began. On Nov. 5, the Emergency Times (and an attendant wiki, http://pakistan.wikia.com/wiki/Emergency_2007) appeared. It declared itself "an independent Pakistani student initiative against injustice and oppression," which gave readers a regular update and comments on the emergency, and student activities against it across Pakistan. It announced that there would be a protest by LUMS students on Nov. 7 at 2 p.m., as also at FAST-NU, a technical university in Lahore.

Other protests were organized using Facebook, not just in Pakistan but around the globe, which you can track on Teeth Maestro, a blog that shifted to “crisis mode” after Martial Law was instated. The website also publishes updates on in-country demonstrations and tips for protesters, submitted by readers via Blackberry and email.

With thousands of lawyers and human rights activists in jail and media outlets being pressured to abide by a new "code of ethics," the current situation is a perfect example of how the lines between citizen and professional journalism are becoming blurred. The New York Times recently appealed to Pakistani citizens to submit eyewitness accounts of blocked protests via text, video, or photographs.

Last week Dr. Awab Alvi, who formerly ran Teeth Maestro, warned fellow bloggers of the dangers they may face in light of this power:

I THINK ITS TIME THAT ALL PAKISTAN BASED BLOGGERS SHOULD STOP BLOGGING AND BE CAREFUL SINCE ITS BEING CONFIRMED THAT MARITAL LAW IS IN EFFECT WE ALL HAVE TO PLAY IT SAFE - HAND OVER REIGNS TO INTERNATIONAL REPORTERS AND BLOGGERS TO HELP REPORT - WE CANNOT RISK IT HERE

Other bloggers have decided to remain anonymous, fearing their opposition movement may be hampered by leakages of information in the press.

With any media coverage of conflict or civil unrest come ethical questions: Should reporters risk their lives to get accurate information to the public? Under what circumstances can unnamed sources be used and trusted?

The situation in Pakistan suggests that bloggers too now have to ask these same questions of themselves.

I Built My Blog of Glass

The article about how the New York Times is striving to maintain an editorial policy of "civil discourse" in the comments on its blogs raises some interesting issues (Matthew Hennessey touched on a few here). It led me to think that in some ways blogs blur the lines between public and private space. For example, if you have an open house party and a guest leaves footprints on your walls you're well within your rights to give him the boot. But discouraging similar unruliness by deleting or editing comments on a blog can quickly lead to accusations of censorship.

This issue is compounded by the fact that blogs are hosted and owned in a number of different ways, from free public services like Blogger to proprietary and commercial institutions of journalism like the NYT. That's why bloggers and hosts develop content policies and terms of service to set the rules of use, indemnify themselves, reserve rights, etc. Otherwise all the huffing and puffing might blow their blog down.

It seems natural then, given the public/private nature of blogs, that many would adopt a "house rules" approach to filtering content, and transparency comes from making that policy explicit. Do the blogs of journalists, press, and media carry unique or additional responsibilities for disclosure or tolerance? Many letters to the editor never see the light of day, but there's no public outcry over that.

Photo of Philip Johnson's Glass House by Mel K (CC).

Public Editor Seeks Civility (and finds it lacking at nytimes.com)

Clark Hoyt is the Public Editor of the New York Times (a position created in the wake of the Jayson Blair scandal). His column this weekend, "Civil Discourse, Meet the Internet," began with the following disclaimer:

WARNING: This column contains rude and objectionable language not normally found in the pages of this newspaper but seen surprisingly often on its Web site.

As the title and warning suggest, Hoyt's column details the messy side of web interactivity. Most of the time, this is confined to boorishness. But the convention of anonymous posting in the blogosphere is particularly conducive to both unsupported claims and personal attacks. The traditional approach to journalism is being challenged, and informed by, so-called citizen journalism.

From Arthur Sulzberger Jr., the publisher, on down, executives and editors of The Times use similar language to describe their goal: they want the newspaper's Web site to nurture a healthy, "civil discourse" on the topics of the day.

As Hoyt notes, however, "the real Internet world often falls far short." He cites the challenges that vex Kate Phillips, editor of The Caucus, nytimes.com's political blog:

...Phillips said she struggles sometimes with the "intolerance" and "vitriol" she sees in some comments—so much so that on rare occasions "I almost wish we could go back to the days when we never heard their voices."

The most challenging ethical problems often require forbearance in the face of unruly, unexpected or undignified behavior. Yet, ethics is a normative pursuit, one whose ultimate purpose is to distinguish between the acceptable and unacceptable. Some have argued for an internet conversation ungoverned by standards. While you can't yell "Fire!" in a theater, you're still pretty free to write whatever you like online.

Is this what we want from the internet? Is this all we want from it?

Anonymity as Credibility

As I mentioned previously, anonymous blogging makes more sense in a regime whose government is not representative. A very good article in the Asahi Shimbun today "Sizing up China: Internet posing a sensational and credible challenge."

Here is the kicker:

Chinese prize the Internet because it is a relatively free forum to express their opinions. According to a 2005 survey by the Chinese Academy for Social Sciences, 60.8 percent of Chinese respondents said that people have more opportunities to criticize the government on the Internet. The number was much greater than 24.2 percent in Japan, 20 percent in the United States and 10.1 percent in Sweden.

"People's enthusiasm for the Internet is the flip side of the government's tight control of the conventional media," said a reporter of one of China's state-run news agencies, who declined to be named.

She said that she often writes news and opinions on her three anonymous Web blogs that she cannot write in the company's wire reports.

"The irony here is that the Internet is viewed as a credible media, because of its anonymity," the reporter said. (IHT/Asahi: November 5, 2007)

Headless Monsters?

As I recently wrote in Fairer Globalization blog, there is a lot of anxiety around the world about whether traditions can be maintained in a globalized world. In Japan this week, I picked up a copy of the Daily Yomiuri, which featured an essay titled "'Headless monster' changing society."

Its author describes how leaderless movements or "headless monsters" can emerge more easily from blogging and wired communities. As we have seen numerous times in South Korea, in China, a blogger was empowered to make change. A blogger forced the closure of a Starbucks in Beijing's Forbidden City.

But the author wonders if such movements could lead to more sinister results:

...what makes me uneasy is the frequent and recent occurrence of copycat crimes. Every time details about an offense--types of lethal weapons, methods and relationships between culprits and victims--are reported, imitations of those crimes emerge. Fortunately, as reports of this kind also tend to become quickly obsolete, the chain of copycat crimes breaks in most cases in Japan after a spate of a few imitative offenses.

Meanwhile, I dread the assumption that Islamic extremists are in a situation similar to the above-mentioned ones. There is a strong possibility that they, too, have collectively become a headless monster, with Osama bin Laden sighted in the far background after rootless developments due to immigration and urbanization, involving them first in anticommunist campaigns and then in anti-U.S. ones and sectarian strife.

Further Evidence of Blog Power

In the Persian Press Watch box at the bottom of this page I spied the following quote:

Communications has entered a new era with the emergence of Internet and new technologies. At present, another phase has begun and that is the phenomenon of blogging. Weblogs have a significant status among Internet users, particularly journalists who can freely express their opinion away from any redline or censorship. Weblogs have now turned into an important technology. As we witnessed in the recent Myanmar crackdown, the role of weblogs is undeniable. Weblogs were the only instrument for people in Myanmar to communicate with the outside world.

Repression of Iranian blogging is something that Policy Innovations covered a little while ago, so it's interesting to see the state media now citing Burmese blogs as a communications lifeline for those struggling under an authoritarian regime.

Bloggers Getting (Too?) Cozy With Candidates in NH

Amy Schatz's article on the front page of today's Wall Street Journal (subscription only) details the successes and failures of a trio of Democrat bloggers in New Hampshire. Their blog, Blue Hampshire, only gets about 800 hits a day, but it has managed to weave itself into the fabric of the primary race.

The piece speaks to many of the questions that we are struggling with here, namely, what are the ethical obligations, if any, of disclosure, sourcing and independence associated with political blogging. For instance, the Blue Hampshire bloggers recently endorsed Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd. As Schatz reports, however, the decision to do so came after a series of snubs at the hands of the John Edwards campaign. Dodd's people, on the other hand, made a concerted effort to woo the Blue Hampshire bloggers.

"Mr. Dodd and his staff have actively courted the Blue Hampshire bloggers. Mr. Browner-Hamlin, the blog-outreach staffer for Mr. Dodd, regularly posted items on Blue Hampshire. In one, he wrote enthusiastically on Mr. Dodd's website about meeting the 'renowned bloggers' at a New Hampshire Democratic party event. Phone calls and daily emails to the bloggers with tidbits about Mr. Dodd's activities led to a steady stream of items on the Blue Hamphsire site."

Were we talking about a newspaper, this type of relationship would certainly be cause for suspicion and no editor in their right mind would allow it to continue. All journalists have sources, and all journalists are occasionally cheesed off at being snubbed or ignored. But journalists don't typically make endorsements. Is this a breach of journalistic ethics? Should bloggers be held to that standard?

[Added: Link to Amy Schatz's article.]

[Correction: "...the Blue Hampshire bloggers recently endorsed Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd" is inaccurate. Only Managing Editor Dean Barker endorsed Dodd.]