Mohamed Nanabhay's Blog

I am liveblogging from the 2nd Al Jazeera Forum where the panel is on New Media and Blogging. Dan Gillmor is kicking off the "New Media" session at the Al Jazeera Forum talking about one of the most important stake holders - "the former audience".

Bertrand Picquerie from the World Editors Forum is talking about the "citizen journalism" bubble - he says the movement is going to crash just like the Internet bubble of the late nineties. He says the American bloggers are punting this theory of "citizen journalism" - he argues that "citizen journalism" will just be a part of journalism and a small part at that. Bloggers say they are a virtual community with collective intelligence - we correct ourserlves. Bertrand argues that  a newsroom is already a form of collective intelligence. Sub-editors, copy editors and editors fact check and make sure news is accurate. He argues that it is very simple to manipulate the blogosphere - especially huge PR companies that can manipulate the blogosphere.

Another point he brought up was Eason Jordan statement at Davos where he said the US was targetting journalists.. The debate in the blogosphere was not if journalists were targetted but if Eason Jordan said that or not!

Oh Yeon Ho from Ohmynews.com has argued that Ohmynews.com is not a bubble - they have an amazing news system with many contributers. He says that they pioneered "user comments" on news stories and that in many ways they are pioneering

Difference between Ohmynews.com citizen journalists and bloggers - he says that Ohmynews.com is edited so it is more credible than bloggers.

Haitham Sabbah is talking about Global Voices and how local editors put together digests of local stories and issues. He argues that over time bloggers prove their credibility and that the community filters out the people who are not credible. He also argues that they are neutral and show both sides of the story.

Veronica takes on Nathan Stoll of Google News over Google's search censorship in China. Nathan pointed out taht  he is first a computer scienticist and not a journalist - so he is talking more about the technology rather that editorial issues. He says that Google is trying to bring about technologies that make publishing easier through tools and their Ad programs. He also brought up Googles translation technology and how that can break down barriers. He says that "new media" is not all that new - we just now have the tools that make it really easier. He is totally dodging the China question.

Veronica commented that she will leave Nathan alone and come back to him regarding China!

Walied Nouweid talks about how traditional media may lag behind "new media" but it is less chaotic and is less susceptable to disruption. He admits that their is a new world out there and a new type of  journalism which is competing with traditional journalism.

Rashid Khachana from Tunisia commented from the floor that every agrees about the impact of new media but he says it is different in the West but in the Arab world it is different due to censorship and people being arressted. Haitham Sabbah answered him saying that many bloggers are imprisoned across the Arab world but their has been awakening on the Arab street and Arab bloggers are conveying what the people on the street want. He says it is an explosion of blogs since 2004 and it far outnumbers what was around in 2003...he says there are now thousands of Arab bloggers and they are bypassing the barriers in front of them.

Danny Schecter from Mediachannel.org says that while the Middle East there is goverment control in the US there is corporate strangulation. He says we need a counter-narrative and bloggers can create opportunity for more diversity of opinion.

Stephen Marshall of GNN.tv commented that they have a network of about 10 000 youth bloggers. He asked Bertran Picquerie what traditional newsrooms are doing to respond to traditional journalism.

Dan Gillmor disagrees with people who say only big media can do big investigations. He says that there is not enough staff in the world to cover all the stories...

Haitham says that bloggers in the Arab world can into existence since the mainstream media has failed to a certain extent to talk to the West/outside world. He says that Arabs who write in English serve as a bridge to people outside the Arab world and they can correct bias and set the record straight.

Ethan Zuckerman also from Global Voices asks Nathan from Google how we can filter news and show headlines we want. Ethan says that these systems (like Google News) are not transparent and that should we as readers be concerned that we may not be getting certain stories (or an abundance of other stories). Nathan answers that filtering has different forms and people often use different sources - people will go to the tools that they find most useful. Google News reflects what the majority of editors online are talking about - so in essence Google News is reliant on other editors.

Dan Gillmor said that notion of how things make front page will change and over time we will see a combination of machines assisting people (or people assisting machines) that will tell us what is important - like Google News. Betrand Picquerie says that the real question is, is the news being fabricated? He says that many Iraqi bloggers were paid by the USA government (via Spirit of America) so how can we trust this.

An Arab commentor says how can we as Arabs write what we want and do what we want with all the censorship and restrictions that the Arab governments put on people. Veronica posed the question to Nathan from Google - "How do people get around censors" to which the audience had a good laugh. Nathan pointed out that Al Jazeera was exciting...

Veronica pressed Nathan on the China issue...Nathan said that the Chinese government had essentially been blocking Google.com which slowed it down so people thought Google was giving poor service. To counter this Google launched Google.cn to make information more accessible which is better than the current service. He says that Google.com in Chinese is still uncensored while Google.cn will tell you when information is being blocked.

Sandy Tolan at the Graduate School of Journalism at UC-Berkly asks if there is no way to confirm who bloggers are to confirm identity - this would give more credibility. He also wonders if such a question would affect the spirit of blogging...Haitham answers that there are over 23 million bloggers and the credibility is proven by comments. Also, if someone is just commenting on a news story, why not? It creates plurality..

Dan Gilmor says trust is being eroded but it is not due to bloggers...it is due mostly in part to governments.

Betrand Picquerie : "In USA they blog but don't vote but in Europe we vote but don't blog". Ouch...

Nathan Stoll on trust - one of the observations is that the more people who use it, the more news they want to read - people almost become addicted to news. Brand does matter - trust and brand are closely intertwined. Many bloggers have built up brands and now don't want to take risk...he says the same thing can be said of most corporations. Brand gets you traffic on the online world...

Andy Carling from Blairwatch critisied Betrand Picquerie and said that the mainstream media can be manipulated just as much as bloggers if not more - just look at Blairs press secretary Alistair Cambell. He says that bloggers can fact check just as well as mainstream media.

Andy addressed Nathan Stoll and said that Google crossed an ethical line when they went from "their results being censored by the Chinese to doing the censoring themselves..."

Nathan responded by saying that the critisism is noted and that it was a touch decision for Google. He understands the ethical criticisms but with the local domains they have to follow local law. It was a tough decision for Google but one that they believed would give better access to information to the Chinese people.

Dahr Jamal also took on Bertrand and says that he should take all his criticism of blogging and ask the questions to the US mainstream media. He says we should also hold the mainstream journalists to a higher standards...especially those that led the US into an illegal war in Iraq.

Walaid Noweid says that the traditional press needs to review itself so it does not become a thing of a past...

Concluding remarks:

• Dan Gillmor - these are early days of how journalism is being transformed. He says he spent 25 years as a traditional journalist and loved it but now traditional journalists now need to bring in the people who they treated as only audience previously. He says that this can help people be better citizens.

• Bertrand Picquerie - we are at the beginning of something and that we have currently only seen the worst. Political manipulation, PR companies, etc. have nothing to do with democracy. He says most bloggers / citizen journalists are honest and truthful - we just need to find the right place.

• Oh Yeon Ho - there is possibility of co-existence like in South Korea. Ohmynews.com influenced the traditional media and they adopted it's model. Now South Korean newspaper websites are very different from the New York Times - they are more interactive and highly used. We are "new media" but our quality is crucial.

• Haitham Sabbah - a message to Arab media: you should have more interest in Arab bloggers. Al Jazeera is taking good steps and it will have a positive affect in the Arab world. To the US administration, who wanted to bomb "the opinion and the other opinion" you job will be much more difficult since now you have thousands of us (bloggers) watching you

• Nathan Stoll - technology will not retire traditional editors but can enhance the way we get news.

• Walid Noweid - There should be a collective Arab decision to promote freedom for people to write and express themselves.