[David Strom's Web Informant] 3 June 2010: The revolution will be televised

[David Strom]

Web Informant 3 June 2010: The revolution will be televised

Those of us growing up in the 1960s might remember the song by Gil
Scott-Heron, The Revolution Will Not be Televised. If you read over
his lyrics, you will see lots of cultural references to the era.
Remember, Vietnam was our first televised war. Before we had the
Internet, we all watched the evening network news and could see the
daily battles, body counts, and see for ourselves what was happening
half a world away. It was a transformative media moment.
http://www.gilscottheron.com/lyrevol.html

While it wasn't live, it was very powerful TV. We had the full
filtering and editing prowess of the network TV news organizations,
with reporters on the ground and editors back in New York to package
it neatly into 22-minute programs. We had Uncle Walter and Chet and
David to tell us what was the significance of what we were seeing, and
we had a simple us-versus-them war (which we lost big time, by the
way). How simple those days seem now.

This week we witnessed another transformative moment, using the
Internet and live streaming technology as another weapon. This time we
are seeing events from the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, as a group
of boats were stopped by Israeli military on their way to try to break
the Gaza blockade. The flotilla came well prepared, not with
traditional weaponry but with TV cameras and Web uplinks to broadcast
what was going on to the world at
http://www.livestream.com/insaniyardim.

The Livestream.com site is a tool that anyone with a Webcam and a
broadband Internet connection can quickly become their own
broadcaster, and the site carries thousands of live video feeds all
day long.

Max Haot, Livestream’s co-founder said in the New York Times that he
thought about whether to censor the live flotilla video but decided
not to do so. He thought the Gaza flotilla was “a controversial but
genuine humanitarian mission.” Still, he found himself thinking that
his company needed policies in place to handle live videos of
conflicts in the future. “After the events unfolded, I spent most of
my Monday wondering if we had helped terrorists or a great
humanitarian cause.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/02/world/middleeast/02media.html

Part of the issue was that we could watch the scene unfiltered, yet we
still don't really know what happened. Were the flotilla organizers
humanitarian aid workers or terrorists with a very clever propaganda
agenda? Who attacked whom? Was the concrete and steel being carried by
the flotilla going to be used in Gaza to protect civilians or store
munitions? What we do know is that at least nine people were killed
during the raid. What we don't know is how many Gazans and Israelis
die every day because of the sad circumstances there. What we forget
is that Gaza is run by a group that doesn't even want to acknowledge
Israel's existence. The deeper that I and anyone else dug into this,
the more unanswered questions I came away with.

Perhaps as the other journalists who were on the boats can tell their
stories we can assemble a more complete picture. (The Israelis
confiscated their equipment shortly after they boarded the boats.) But
one thing is clear: Wars will be fought in real-time in the future,
with world-wide audiences. In the words of Scott-Heron,  "You will not
be able to stay home, brother. You will not be able to plug in, turn
on and cop out."

"[Israel] may be a start up nation, but we are bricks and mortar
communicators. Our adversaries have control-alt-deleted us," writes
Amir Mizroch, the executive editor of The Jerusalem Post, in Wired:
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/06/how-free-explains-israels-flotilla-fiasco/

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