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Live from Baghdad (The Blog)

Independent journalist Chris Allbritton becomes the first weblogger to report the war live, on the ground, from Iraq.

by Steve Bryant | 04.11.2003 ReadMe 4.1 | Print it.

Basra. Um Kasr. Baghdad. Pick any city in Iraq, and chances are it's crawling with correspondents from major print and broadcast media. But you're not likely to see warbloggers.



Chris Allbritton is blogging the war from Iraq.Photo: Chris Allbritton, © Chris Allbritton 2002.

Those self-appointed Internet pundits, some of whom castigate the mass media for their shoddy coverage of the conflict in Iraq and their dependency on the American military, typically post their comments from inside the relatively safe confines of Fortress America. As freelance journalist and former Suck.com editor Tim Cavanaugh wrote last year, "You can cut on Salon all you like, Mr. Blogger, but they have a man in Afghanistan. Do you?"

The frontlines have shifted to Iraq, but freelance journalist Chris Allbritton is about to answer Cavanaugh's challenge with a resounding "yes." Allbritton, the former national cyberspace writer for the Associated Press and erstwhile technology reporter for The New York Daily News, recently snuck across the mountainous Turkish-Iraqi border and began filing stories to his blog from northern Iraq. His plan: to cover the aftermath of the American invasion.In a dispatch dated April 13, 2003("Road to Tikrit"), he wrote:

I'm standing about 50 km from Tikrit and nervous enough to feel like I've just swallowed molten lead. The road is as straight as an sniper shot. Behind me, about 10 km, stands the last PUK checkpoint after Kirkuk. The land is flat, and perhaps it's my imagination, but it appears stunted and less fertile than the hills and mountains to the north east. There is a light wind that smells faintly of burning oil. Every now and then a car passes our small encampment on the side of the road and its passengers peer at us intently. The ones coming from the direction of Tikrit don't smile. Before us lies the stronghold of Saddam Hussein, and I have to make a decision to press on or not. [...] Fara'doon Abdul-Kadir, the newly appointed interim governor of Kirkuk, warns me that there are no peshmergas past the checkpoint -- we'll be on our own. [...] Freydoon, our loyal driver and now bodyguard, is packing a 9mm Browning Hi-Power that J. picked up at the weapons bazaar when I wasn't looking. It won't do much good, however, against the Kalishnikovs of the Fedayeen Saddam.

Allbritton is financing his trip through donations to his blog, back-to-iraq.com; the contributors who've ponied up a combined $10,318.21 to support his experiment in indie journalism receive breaking news via e-mail before it appears on B2I, as he calls it. "I'll start in Kurdistan and work my way south," Allbritton said, a few days before he departed for Turkey.

Freed from what he believes is the subtle censorship controversy-shy advertisers exert on corporate newsmedia, Allbritton is convinced his brand of reader-sponsored journalism has the potential to provide a more accurate window on the war.



	Kurdish peshmerga casualties in Tikrit, Saddam's home town. Photo: Chris Allbritton, © Chris Allbritton 2003.

Using a satellite phone and laptop to dial into the Internet, Allbritton is publishing his stories by e-mailing them to his brother, who in turn posts them on B2I. "Just me and the readers," he said, during an interview conducted in a coffee shop in Manhattan's East Village. "I think that's every journalist's dream."

Allbritton made a previous trip to northern Iraq in summer 2002. Instead of clambering over rocks and sneaking past guarded bridges as he did this time around, he entered Iraqi Kurdistan with a Syrian visa and spent a week there. This time, he plans to spend at least a month in the area.

Several well-known bloggers, such as Declan McCullaugh and Doc Searls, are also established, legitimate journalists whose bylines have appeared in mainstream media outlets such as News.com, PC Magazine and Wired. But by covering the war for his blog, Allbritton has earned the distinction of becoming blogdom's first bona fide war correspondent, doing enterprise reporting on the ground, in Iraq.

Unlike reporters for corporate media outlets, many of whom are participating in the Pentagon system of "embedding," in which journalists are attached to military units, Allbritton is free (at least, in theory) to report the news as he sees it. Embedded reporters, by contrast, are subject to military censorship and, some have argued, the biases of their corporate employers. (Others contend that "embedded" reporting has produced accurate, bias-free coverage of a fast-moving war. A recent report by the Washington-based Project for Excellence in Journalism concluded that, "[o]n balance, Americans seem far better served by having the embedding system than they were from more limited press pools during the Gulf War of 1991 or only halting access to events in Afghanistan.")

Even so, there's no denying that Allbritton is more independent than embedded reporters.



Iraqis gather around an overturned SA-2 surface-to-air missile (the most widely used air defense missile in the world) in northern Iraq. Photo: Chris Allbritton, © Chris Allbritton 2003.

That independence is important in a time of war, argues Kevin McKiernan, correspondent for ABC News and director of the award-winning documentary Good Kurds, Bad Kurds. "The more independence there is, the more avenues available to the public, the better journalism becomes," said McKiernan, speaking from Iraq via his satellite phone. "If he comes in here on his own and gets good stories for his blog, that's fabulous."

Allbritton's plan to blog the war comes at a time when blogs are enjoying increasing popularity. Some networks and newspapers, such as the BBC and USA Today, maintain blogs as part of their coverage of the war in Iraq. CNN cameraman Kevin Sites was maintaining a personal blog of his experiences covering the war in Iraq, but CNN asked him to stop publishing.

"Big media are putting out their reporters to make their own blogs, which are not really blogs," said Allbritton. "Those blogs get edited. They're not independent. Part of the attraction [of blogging] is that it's a first draft, it's scrappy, [and] it's got a definite voice."

Critics would be hard pressed to deny that Allbritton's blog entries have those characteristics. "Finally met J., my would-be traveling companion on this adventure," he wrote in his first post from Turkey. "He's a former marine from the first Gulf War, a photographer and a paramedic. All of which could come in quite handy. Plus, he has cool toys: night vision goggles."

Despite the recent popularity of blogs (or perhaps because of it), there is some debate about whether self-published, self-edited journalists like Allbritton can provide objective and factual coverage.



	Peshmergas torch a mural of Saddam inside the Tikrit city limits. Photo: Chris Allbritton, © Chris Allbritton 2003.

"What bothers me is [that] there is no editing process," said Howard Finberg, presidential scholar at The Poynter Institute. "This is where weblogging gets into trouble. The editorial process is extremely valuable if for nothing else than questioning the veracity of the material."

Allbritton, although reticent to characterize i>B2I as an explicit critique of mainstream journalism, is quick to defend his reporting methods. "Reporting is all about trust, and I've built a trusting relationship with my readers," he said, before leaving for Turkey. "I hope they would rather read me, a biased source who will be on the ground in Iraq, than an unbiased account from some armchair reporter in a cubicle half a world away."

Allbritton started blogging in response to the terrorist attacks of September 2001, but it wasn?t until early 2003 that he launched B2I with the express purpose of returning to Kurdistan and covering the conflict. However, his low-key solicitations garnered little response until February, when he asked his readers to take stock of their priorities:

Jesus H. Christ. I can't seem to break $150 for a worthy cause --- going to Iraq and bringing you people news at great risk to life and limb --- and this girl [at giveboobs.com] has raised $3,348.94 for a boob job. Not to make mountains out of molehills here, but after you've gone over and checked out Michelle's boobs (I know you're going to,) please come back and drop something in the kitty over at back-to-iraq.com. I'm working my ass off here and I don't want to go bust.



Under the Boot: A boy in Kirkuk, Iraq whacks the face of a statue of Saddam with his shoe, a grave insult in Iraq. Photo: Chris Allbritton, © Chris Allbritton 2003.

After this short rant, Allbritton's kitty rose from a few bucks to $1,500 in just under two weeks. The rest of his stash arrived following an article on him on Wired's website March 14. (Daily visits to his site jumped from 900 per day to 14,000.) Allbritton originally estimated he would need $8,000-$10,000 dollars to bribe, barter and sneak his way through Turkey, Kurdistan and Iraq. He planned to foot half that bill himself.

"On some levels, I'm flying blind," he said, with a shrug. "It may not work out right." He paused, letting the weight of the whole, potentially life-threatening undertaking sink in. "I like the idea of [being an] independent war correspondent," he said, finally. "I just don't want that title awarded posthumously."

Related Links:

Blogger's Delight - MSNBC's Steven Levy wonders if the war will be the breakthrough webloggers have been waiting for.

Where Everybody is a War Reporter - Globe Technology takes a look at blogging in war time.

Salam Pax - Wired investigates the rumors about an Iraqi blogger in Baghdad.

Web Logs Uncensored - The International Herald-Tribune examines blogs' visceral qualities.

Warblogs - Respected clearinghouse for warblogs.

Stephen Bryant is a graduate student of journalism at NYU and co-managing editor of ReadMe. As a freelance writer, he covers the Web, new media and technoculture for publications such as Spin, Young Money, and Virginia Living.

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