The 40-second video from Tehran is gripping and brutal. It shows a young woman apparently dying in the street, blood suddenly pouring from her mouth and nose as those around her struggle frantically to save her.
Uploaded to YouTube Saturday, the video (and
a second one showing only the struggle to save her) spread quickly from blogs to Twitter to the publishing platforms of established news organizations. By early Monday, the heart-rending, flickering frames of the woman known as "Neda" were emerging as the iconic representation of a popular uprising brutally suppressed. (
The full, graphic 40-second video can be viewed here.)
In the world of journalism, the video and its global journey underscore a new reality of news gathering that mixes the roles of journalists and the people they serve more dramatically than ever before.
The many unanswered questions about this video, including what exactly happened and who recorded it, highlight
how difficult the traditional journalistic imperative of verification can be in conflict zones.
But as news resources decline and the capacity of non-journalists to document such moments grows, a new challenge is emerging: the wherewithal to collaborate with and enhance the storytelling of the people on the scene when journalists are nowhere to be found.
This is different than simply interviewing witnesses about what they saw. Just as bystanders struggle to provide basic emergency care when no medical professionals are available, onlookers are no longer waiting for journalists before getting the story out on their own.
Journalists' diminished capacity to witness, driven in part by dwindling financial resources, is aggravated when authorities try to control the flow of information by shutting down news bureaus, refusing visa extensions for some journalists and taking others into custody.
The folly of such efforts at control in a digital era have been nowhere more vividly on display than this past weekend in Tehran. Many of the videos include in the foreground snippets of people capturing the scene with cell phone cameras, suggesting a far larger team of potential correspondents than ever imagined by the most ambitious news organizations or repressive governments.
"It's democratic impulses,"
Thomas Warhover, an associate professor at the Missouri School of Journalism, told the AP. "People are going to find a way to be heard in new and exciting ways. That civil function is pretty incredible."
Information will get out. But when? And how? What do we do with it once it's "out there"?
And what tools and techniques can journalists use to make sense of what emerges?
Many journalists spent the weekend coming up with answers, including:
- A dashboard of Iranian developments created by Robin Sloan of Current TV (and previously with Poynter), a tool he posted Saturday night and describes as "super-filtered #IranElection info for the easily overwhelmed." The site aggregates and organizes Tweets, articles, photos and more from a variety of sources and takes a first step toward making sense of the torrent.
- Aggregation and curation by Andrew Sullivan on his Daily Dish blog. Sullivan sorts the developments as they unfold, and provides readers with a sense of what's confirmed, what's not and what, at least in his view, really matters.
- In-depth analysis by Robin Wright at Time.com. A veteran correspondent and author with particular expertise about Iran, Wright used the Neda video as a peg to explain the significance of martydom among Shiite Muslims in such circumstances, especially at intervals of three, seven and 40 days.
- Continued exploration of the role of journalists from Jeff Jarvis on his Buzz Machine blog. In a Saturday post titled "Adding value in the new news ecosystem," Jarvis argues that news organizations can take steps now to do a better job as curators of news. And he provides examples.
- Requests for help on the story from NBC's Ann Curry. Sunday afternoon, Curry posted this on her Twitter feed: "If you knew Neda personally tell us more. Is her family willing to speak about her and what she cared about?#iranelection.
Curry also posted the first link I saw to
a Wikipedia page created to document as much as possible about the young woman in the video. A note at the top of the page alerts readers: "This article documents a current event. Information may change rapidly as the event progresses."
Verification of particular elements of the Wikipedia article remains unclear, but the document serves as a remarkably useful starting point for journalists -- and others -- intent on confirming as much as possible.
In some ways, the Neda video is reminiscent of the coverage, 20 years ago this month, of
the young man who stared down a tank in Tiananmen Square. One day, perhaps, Neda's final moments will be recalled in discussions of Eddie Adams' Pulitzer Prize-winning
photograph of the execution of a Vietcong soldier in Saigon in 1968.
A critical difference is that there were apparently no journalists anywhere near Karegar Avenue in Tehran on Saturday.
A message posted to the
Facebook page of opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi pinpointed one other difference.
"Today you are the media,"
said the message. "It is your duty to report and keep the hope alive."
The video posted with the article is not the full...
