A citizen journalist in Iraq
Dahr Jamail didn’t like the news,
So he went out and reported it himself
By Barry Bergman,\
Public Affairs 21 April 2005
Only 24 months ago Dahr Jamail, a mild-mannered Houston native, was living the good life in Alaska, indulging his love of mountain climbing and supporting himself as a Denali guide and sometime freelance writer. In November 2003, fed up with mainstream coverage of a series of major news events — beginning with the 9/11 attacks and continuing on through the U.S. military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq — Jamail made a somewhat unorthodox career move.
He became a war correspondent.
“I definitely was scared, and I definitely knew it was a big risk and kind of a crazy thing to do,” he admits, recalling his decision to experience firsthand the chaotic violence of post-Saddam Iraq. He remembers watching the Bush administration’s “selling of the Iraq war” through America’s news media, whose portrayal seemed dramatically at odds with what he was seeing and hearing from independent and foreign sources.
“I figured, well, media control is how they’re doing it,” he explains, “so I’ll just go over there and try to report on it myself.
Jamail has now made four trips to Iraq, spending a total of eight months as that rarest of creatures, an independent American reporter in a country so dangerous that most unembedded journalists seldom leave their hotels. Traveling only with a translator, filing dispatches online and through alternative media outlets like The Nation and Pacifica radio, Jamail has emerged as a leading, albeit little-known, chronicler of war’s impacts on Iraqi civilians.
Speaking to a packed classroom in Etcheverry Hall last week, Jamail left little doubt those impacts have been devastating.
http://www.berkeley.edu/news/berkeleyan/2005/04/21_jamail.shtml
Dahr Jamail didn’t like the news,
So he went out and reported it himself
By Barry Bergman,\
Public Affairs 21 April 2005
Only 24 months ago Dahr Jamail, a mild-mannered Houston native, was living the good life in Alaska, indulging his love of mountain climbing and supporting himself as a Denali guide and sometime freelance writer. In November 2003, fed up with mainstream coverage of a series of major news events — beginning with the 9/11 attacks and continuing on through the U.S. military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq — Jamail made a somewhat unorthodox career move.
He became a war correspondent.
“I definitely was scared, and I definitely knew it was a big risk and kind of a crazy thing to do,” he admits, recalling his decision to experience firsthand the chaotic violence of post-Saddam Iraq. He remembers watching the Bush administration’s “selling of the Iraq war” through America’s news media, whose portrayal seemed dramatically at odds with what he was seeing and hearing from independent and foreign sources.
“I figured, well, media control is how they’re doing it,” he explains, “so I’ll just go over there and try to report on it myself.
Jamail has now made four trips to Iraq, spending a total of eight months as that rarest of creatures, an independent American reporter in a country so dangerous that most unembedded journalists seldom leave their hotels. Traveling only with a translator, filing dispatches online and through alternative media outlets like The Nation and Pacifica radio, Jamail has emerged as a leading, albeit little-known, chronicler of war’s impacts on Iraqi civilians.
Speaking to a packed classroom in Etcheverry Hall last week, Jamail left little doubt those impacts have been devastating.
http://www.berkeley.edu/news/berkeleyan/2005/04/21_jamail.shtml
posted by Kangaroo Brisbane Australia at 9:11 PM
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