Political Articles

[Rasputin]

خانم عبادی اينکه فارسی زبان رسمی است ما قبول داريم حال آنگه ما زبان کردی درحد ابتدايی و راهنمايی میخواهيم نه اينکه زبان کردی بخشی از حکومت شود. ما از کمترين حقوق خودمان در اين مملکت محروميم و ما از شما میخواهيم که اين تبعيضات را به عنوان يک حقوقدان حقوق بشر مطرح کنيد در هرحال الآن حدود ۱۰ ميليون کُرد در ايران زندگی میکنند بعد بخشی از کردها مشکل مذهبی دارند. ما در اين مملکت ۱۵ ميليون سنی داريم و يک مسجد اهل تسنن در تهران نداريم و ضمناً از کانديد شدن برای رياست جمهوری محروميم. چرا من ايرانی بايد بروم سفارتخانهی عربستان نماز بخوانم. ما میخواهيم نگاه شما به عنوان يک چهرهی بينالمللی را نسبت به اين تبعيضات بدانيم؟
- از شما عذر میخواهم که زحمتتان میدهم ولی میخواهم که مقالات و سخنرانیهای مرا در اين باره بخوانيد، ببنيد من چقدر در اين زمينه، مقاله دارم و نوشتهام اما اگر برای مصاحبه میخواهيد من صراحتاً میگويم با اينگونه تبعيضات مخالفم حتی درصحبتهای قبلی هم، پيشنهاد من بود که آموزش زبان را بايد از دبستان شروع کنيم و با اينگونه تبعيضات صد درصد مخالفم زيرا تبعيض براساس قوميت در حيطه حقوق بشرممنوع است. از بابت گفتن اين مطالب است که بايد بخواهم سخنرانیها و مقالههای من را ببيند که چقدر من دراين باب صحبت کردهام منتها به نکتهای میخواهم توجه کنيد و آنهم اينکه من هم مثل شما زبانی برای گفتمن دارم و دستی در حکومت هم ندارم، فقط میتوانم بگوييم و بگوييم و بگوييم و حق هم نداريم که از گفتن خسته شويم اميدوارم که روزی به جايی رسد که گوش شنوايی برای اينگونه مطالب پيدا بشود. به اينجا برسيم که چه کسی گفت زبان فارسی زبان مشترک ما باشد نه من گفتم نه شما نه رژيم جمهوری اسلامی گفت و نه رژيم شاهنشاهی اين يک چيز طبيعی است از زمان حافظ و سعدی و ناصرخسرو و دهلوی و... به زبان فارسی صحبت میکردند. بنده و شما هم مقصر نيستيم که آنها به زبان فارسی شعر گفتند اگر مولانا به زبان فارسی شعر گفته خوب دليلش اين بوده که ساکنان آن منطقهای که مولانا درآن بوده فارسی صحبت میکنند. پس بنابراين ما نخواهيم روی حقايق تاريخی پا بگذاريم معذرت میخواهم اين يک لجاجت است ما لجاجت هر کسی میتواند هر حرفی دلش خواست بزند آزادی است. خوب يکی هم میگويد من تعيين نکردم اما حرف بايد طوری باشد که خريدار داشته باشد من ديگر به مولانا نمیتوانم بگويم که چرا به فارسی شعر گفتی يا به فردوسی بگويم چه کسی به تو گفته بود تو شاهنامه را به فارسی بگويی، خوب زبان ساکنان آن منطقه آنطور بوده است. اما اينکه از دير باز زبان اين مرز و بوم فارسی بوده دليل نمیشود که حقوق فرهنگی بقيه را ناديده بگيريم بله شاهنامه فارسی بوده و خيلی هم خوب بوده اما چی، چی را میخواهيم ثابت کنيم؟ اينکه هيچکس در ايران حق ندارد عربی درايران حرف بزند، هيچکس حق ندارد کردی حرف بزند، هيچکس حق ندارد ترکی حرف بزند، هيچکس حق ندارد لری و بلوچی حرف بزند؛ اينها دو مقولهی کاملاً جدا است اما شما اين سؤال من از اين جهت، پاسخ دهيداگر قرار باشد ما قوانينی که داريم نوشتهجات اداری که داريم، احکام دادگاههايی که داريم، مکاتبات اداری همه و همه قرارباشد به همهی زبانهای مختلف باشد و به همهی زبانهايی که در ايران وجود دارد باشد آيا عملی هست؟ شما چرا يک جنبه را در نظر میگيريد چرا میگوييد زبان کردی، من میگويم در زبان کردی چندين تيره وجود دارد اينها را هم بايد حفظ کرد. شما وقتی میگوييد زبان کردی، زبان سنندجی را بدانم چرا زبان کرمانشاهی را ياد نمیگيريد آن وقت آيا امکان دارد قانونی که مینوسيم. اصلاً به ۲۰زبان بنوسيم و به ۲۰ زبان مکاتبه کنيم اين امکان پذيرنيست و آن چيزی است که عملی نيست بنابراين، بهترين کمک اين است که تا به الان به زبان فارسی حرف میزديم چون زبان مولانا وحافظ و فرودسی فارسی بوده وبه ما رسيده فارسی صحبت میکرديم بياييم فارسی حرف زدنمان را به عنوان وجه مشترکمان قبول کنيم و در کنارش حقوق فرهنگی ديگران را هم رعايت کنيم. من اگرخود ترک زبان هستم بايد حقوق فرهنگی کردها و يا فارسها را هم رعايت کنم.

* اکثر فعاليتهای حقوق بشردر پايتخت متمرکز شده در حالی که اغلب موارد نقض حقوق بشر در شهرستانها اتفاق میافتد. به عنوان رييس يک نهاد حقوق بشری آيا به اين فکر افتادهايد که در شهرستانها هم شعبه داشته باشيد و معالغرض بهطورغيررسمی موارد حقوق بشر را در گسترهی ايران بررسی کنيد و مختص به پايتخت نباشد.
- علت اينکه چرا در تهران بحث نقض حقوق بشر میشود، اولاً اينکه ايران۷۰ ميليون جمعيت دارد که ۱۴ ميليون آن در تهران زندگی میکنند يعنی تهران در برگيرندهی عدهی زيادی از جمعيت است شايد قريت به ۴/۱ جمعيت کشورمتاسفانه در پايتخت است برای اينکه بقيه شهرها در حال خالی شدن است خوب بنابراين پايتخت نگوييد، بگوييد ۴/۱ از جمعيت ايران بعد مساله حقوق بشر تا حدودی بستگی به آگاهی اجتماعی افراد دارد آگاهی اجتماعی در تهران به علت مراکز فرهنگی به علت تعدد کتابخانهها، به علت دانشگاهها بيشتر است نسبت به شهرستانها و دهات و طبيعتاًّ صحبت از حقوق بشر موقعی امکانپذير میشود که مردم آگاه باشند، که چطور میشود زندگی و در حقيقت به آنچه که دارند قانع نباشند.

* آيا وظيفهی جامعهی حقوق بشر نيست که اين آزادی را ...
- اما شما توجه کنيد يک مويز است و چهل قلندر من عرض کردم در ايران حقوق بشر نوپاست بعداز جامعهی حقوق بشر که در سال ۵۸ عملاَ غيرفعال شد چندين مؤسسهی حقوق بشری ايجاد شد اما اينها در عمل نشان دادند که مستقل نيستند واگر هم مستقل هستند اين مساله را جدی نگرفتهاند به همين دليل هم هست شما حتی نامی از آنها نمیبينيد و تنها جايی که نامی شنيده شد، کانون مدافعان حقوق بشر بود. کانون مدافعان حقوق بشر سه سالونيم قبل، به چهارسال پيش پیريزی شد.همان روزاول بلافاصله ما رفتيم وزارت کشور در خواست ثبت کرديم هرچند که نياز به ثبت هم نداريم زيرا طبق قانون اساسی اجتماعات آزاد است مردم میتوانند که در انجمنها گرد هم بيايند اما چون با تفسيری که به نظرما منطبق با قانون اساسی نبود میگفتند که انجمنها حتماً بايد بيايند اجازه بگيرند ما برای اينکه حساسيتی پيش نيايد و نگويند که قصد ما براندازی است و نگوييم که ما زيرزمينی هستيم رفتيم درخواست ثبت از وزارت کشورکرديم. ازکمسيون مادهی۱۰ احزاب، با وجودی که در مرحلهی اول هم تصويب شد که به ما مجوز بدهند اما برخلاف قوانينی که وضع شده بود تا کنون وزارت کشور به ما پروانه فعاليت نداده است و اجازه ندادند ما را ثبت کنند و شخصيت حقوقی پيدا کنيم عدم ثبت شخصيت حقوقی دست و بال ما را درعضوگيری و گسترش فعاليت میبند من به عنوان يک حقوقدان پذيرای اين مساله هستم که پاسخگو باشم اگر روزی مرا دادگاه خواست بگويم که چه کاری میکنم و چرا کاری را میکنم اما آيا میتوانم چنين ريسکی را برای يک پسر ۲۰ سالهی مثلاً تربت جامی هم ايجاد کنم و اورا در معرض خطر بيندازم؟ و بروم در تربت جام شعبه بزنم طبيعتاً نه. بنابراين ما تا زمانی که قانوناً به ثبت نرسيم شعبه نمیزنيم ولی اين دليل نمیشودکه در شهرستانها فعاليت نکنيم چنانکه تعداد زيادی از کردها که مشکل پيدا کردند بوسيلهی کانون مدافعان حقوق بشر دارند دفاع میشوند. تعدادزيادی از کسانی که در قضايای خوزستان دستگير شدند توسط کانون مدافعان حقوق بشر دفاع می شوند. فعاليت کردن برای حقوق بشر الزاماً به معنای شعبه زدن نيست اين است که به اين صورت فعاليت میکنيم.

* شما وقتی يک هفته بعد از اينکه جايزهی صلح نوبل را دريافت کرديد در يکی از موضعگيریها خود آورديد که بخشی از اين جايزه را صرف مينروبی بخشی از مناطق کردنشين بخصوص سقز وسردشت و مريوان میکنيد ودراين مورد چه فعاليتی انجام داديد؟
- من هيچ وقت نگفتم که صرف هزينهای مينروبی میکنم مينروبی نه کار من است نه کار هيچ کسی غير از حکومت، قرارنيست که دستگاهی دستمان بگيريم و بيفتيم روی زمين ها و قرار نيست که سه تا دستگاه بخيريم و بدهيم دست مردم. اين اصلاً يک برنامهی کلان مملکتی است. منتها داستان اينطوری است که هيچکس در اين مملکت خبر نداشت که روزی به طور متوسط سه نفرروی مين میميرند و يا زخمی میشوند هيچکس صحبتی نمیکردند در غوغای سياست و سياست بازی. حتی خودم هم خبر نداشتم تا اينکه روزی نامهای از بوکان به انجمن حمايت از حقوق کودکان رسيد که آن موقع رييس انجمن بودم وآمده بود که شما فقط از کودکان تهرانی دفاع میکنيد کودکان شهرستانی که روی مين میميرند آدم نيستند من آن وقت باورم نشد که اين حرفها میتواند درست باشد يعنی آنقدر برای من شوکآور بود که نتوانستم باورکنم. مگر ما چقدر مين داريم که اين نامه را نوشتند چند تا عکس هم ضميمه کردهاند وقتی خودم تحقيق کردم ديدم که ابعاد فاجعه خيلی گستردهتر از اين حرفهاست ما الان که حدود ۱۵ سال از جنگ گذشته ۳ ميليون هکتار اراضی آلوده به مين داريم. ( ۵/۴ ميليون هکتار بود که ۵/۱ هکتارش را پاک کردهاند) که عمدهی در پنج استان است آذربايجان غربی، کردستان، ايلام، کرمانشاه و خوزستان و هرچه جلوتر میرفتم میديدم قضيه دردناکتر است و بدبختی در اينجا بود که هيچکس هم صحبت نمیکرد غيراز چند روزنامهی محلی که آنها هم درمنطقهای پخش میشوند که اهالی، بچهاش رفته روی مين پايش قطع شده که میداند مين هست. بقيه مردم ايران چی؟ چرا هيچ کس هيچ چيز نمیداند چرا هيچ کس صحبت نمیکند بعد متوجه شدم که درغوغايی سياست وسياست بازی اين مساله مغفول مانده است. اولين کاری که کرديم تأسيس يک انجمن بود به نام کانون مشارکت برای پاکسازی مين و ما تمام تمرکزمان راگذاشتيم روی تبليغات که به همهی مردم ايران و مردم جهان بگوييم که ما چقدر مين داريم ومن خيلی خوشحالم که الان ۳ تا شرکت مينروبی ايرانی تأسيس شده که يکسری از زمينها توسط اين شرکتهای مينروبی پاکسازی شده. خوشحالم که توانستهام از نروژ و يک دو کشور ديگر برای دولت ايران برای پاکسازی مين کمک بگيريم من قرار نيست که مين را پاک کنم، دولت بايد پاک کند ولی ما بايد به دولت فشار بياوريم که مين را پاک کنيد. چگونه فشار بياوريم ؟ با آگاه کردن مردم از اينکه چنين مشکلی است وظيفهی ما تشکيل جلسه وسمينار و... است. يکسری از اين کارها را کرديم و يک سری کارديگری که به مرحله ی اجرا دارد در میآيد.
طرحی هم است با يونسيف، که آموزش میدهد رفتار با مين که به کودکانی که در مناطق آلوده به مين زندگی میکنند. يعنی خيلی از بچهها وقتی مين را ديدند فکر کردند توپ است وقتی رفتند آن را بردارند مين منفجر شده است. اينها نمیدانند و يکی بايد به او ياد دهد ومن متاسفم در افغانستان چنين آموزشهايی ومؤسساتی که اين آموزشها را میدهند سالهاست که دارند فعاليت میکنند و در ايران هيچ چيز نداشتهايم. اين آموزش را خوشبختانه در اثر داد و قالها و سمينارها و مقالات ما، يک دورهای سازمان هلال احمر گذاشت. خود ما هم با يونسيف داريم صحبت میکنيم که يک دورهای برای افراد مختلف و عموماً برای کودکان برای آموزش رفتار با مين بگذارد خوبی اين گونه کارها، کارهای ستادی است کارهای ستادی هم بودجهای میخواهد، دفتری میخواهد، بودجهای میخواهد برای سمينارها، پولی اندک برای روابط عمومی و تماس با خارج برای دادن و گرفتن اطلاعات همهی اينها را از بودجه جايزه تأسيس کردهايم و کمکهای که در حد توان به کودکانی که در اثر مين آسيب ديده بودند، مثلاً برای چند تا بچه کامپيوتر خريده شد و ...

[Rasputin]

اين نوشته را نه از آن رو می نويسم که در تلاقی دو طرز تفکر سياسی در به عهده گرفتن مسووليت انجمن صنفی روزنامه نگاران قضاوتی کرده باشم، که اگر چنين بود هم هيچ اشکالی نداشت، حق من است به عنوان يک عضو چهل ساله خانواده مطبوعات. مقصودم حتی نشان دادن انواع جرهائی که جناح راست می زند وقت برخورد با رای مردم، هم نيست. که اين کار چنان برايشان عادی است که نيازی به پرده برداری ندارد.

همه می دانند که اين جناح فکری هر بازی را که در آن مطمئن به برد خود نباشد، به هم می زند. در عين حال می دانم که دردسرها و مسائل صنفی ما روزنامه نگاران برای خوانندگان يک رسانه عمومی چندان جذاب نيست، به خصوص آن که نيم شان هم خارج از خاک ايران می زيند. پس اگر پرسيده شود که چرا می خواهم درباره انتخابات انجمن صنفی بنويسم، پاسخ اين است که تصور می کنم پرده برداری از اين ماجرا يکی از پاسخ های ماست به سئوال چرا ايرانيان بعد از صد سال هنوز با جامعه مدنی اين همه فاصله ها دارد.

اول اين بگويم که برخورد يک جامعه آزاد با دشمنان آزادی از جمله بحث های قديمی است که عمری به اندازه عمر مردم سالاری يا دموکراسی دارد. آزاد انديشان قرن هاست که از خود پرسيده اند با دشمنان آزادی چه باد کرد. پاسخ های نظری با تجربه عملی همخوانی ندارد. در مقام تئوری ديده و خوانده ايم که بيش تر آزادگان گفته اند نبايد به بهانه اين که فلان کس دشمن آزادی است راه بر او بست. بلکه همه آزادند حتی دشمنان آزادی. از ديد آنان نگرانی ها را بايد با بالابردن فرهنگ مردم چاره کرد و پاسخ گفت، نه با بستن راه افراد و ايجاد محدوديت ها.

اما در عمل چه بايد کرد وقتی جناب آدلف هيتلر از راه پله دموکراسی به اوج قدرت می رسد و دموکراسی را تعطيل می کند. هنوز چنين نشده است اما اگر روزی شيعيان عراقی با فرصتی که سرکوب صدام در اختيارشان گذاشت و اکثريت مجلس و دولت رابه دست آوردند، راه ديکتاتوری در پيش گرفتند و نفس اقليت را بگيرند و نامش را آزادی بگذارند چه بايد کرد. وقتی گروهی از راه انتخابات به مجلس راه می يابند و در آن مقام قانونی می گذارند که معنايش محدود کردن رقبا برای هميشه است [نظارت استصوابی] چه بايد گفت.

مخالفان آزادی به قول خودشان "پيچيده" عمل می کنند، مثلا کاری می کنند که رقيبان از دادن رای منصرف شوند و آن گاه در بازی بدون رقيب دست خود را به عنوان برنده بالا می گيرند. اما ما باز می گوئيم رای دهندگان می خواستند فريب نخورند و تحريم نکنند، همين است و بايد نتيجه را پذيرفت. مخالفان آزادی می روند طرح يک به ۲۵ می دهند و با بسيج بسيج ميليونی رای جمع می کنند. ما می گوئيم اين هم در دنيا نمونه دارد. کار به جاهای باريک تر می رسد، می گوئيم "بداخلاقی" است . پولی را که بايد صرف آبادانی شهر شود به دادن وام در مقابل رای اختصاص می دهند، بعضی معتقدند حرام هم هست، اما می گوئيم در دموکراسی ها سابق دارد مانند داستان زلزله ايتاليا و کمک های آمريکا به قصد جلوگيری از پيروزی کمونيست ها. همه اين می کنيم تا مجال داده باشيم برای آموختن که کس نيست در اين وادی که نيازی به آن نداشته باشد. اما

اين مثال ساده که در انتخابات انجمن صنفی روزنامه نگاران پيش آمد، نمونه کوچکی است از تاکتيک هائی که جناح راست در چند سال گذشته در کشور به کار برده است. خيلی ساده . چندان ساده که ديگر نمی توان پيچيده اش خواند.

وقتی انجمن صنفی به کمک دولت اصلاح طلب که معتقد به رشد نهادهای مدنی و ان جی او ها بود تشکيل شد، جناح راست در منتهای ضعف بود، رای نداشت. از همين رو داخل بازی نشد. و خبرنگاران و روزنامه نگاران جوانی که در روزنامه های آن جناح کار می کردند، از شرکت در بازی منع شدند. در مقابل شروع کردند به انتشار اخبار دروغ و شايعات و همصدائی در مورد معضلات حرفه ای روزنامه نگاری و آن را حواله به انجمن جوان کردن، و سنگ اندازی ها. تا سرانجام دکانی مشابه ساختند و نامش را گذاشتند انجمن روزنامه نگاران مسلمان [انگار اکثريت چند هزاری روزنامه نگاران عضو انجمن مسلمان نيستند] و با ايجاد فهرست های قلابی از مردان محترم آبدارچی و راننده موسساتشان، عده اعضا را بالا بردند و بعد امکانات مساوی خواست. و در اين حال استخوان لای زخم ماند و گاهی کسانی از روزنامه نگاران واقعی را هم اغوا کردند مانند داستان لب تاپ و يا سفرهای خارجی که آن قدر باد زدند که بالاخره دو سه نفری به انتقاد افتادند، آن وقت انتقاد آنان را به عنوان شکست در صفوف دشمن به اطلاع رساندند [ الگو را که بزرگ کنی درست مانند اوضاع مملکت است و ايجاد نهادهای موازی برای هر نهاد دولتی وقتی که خاتمی رييس جمهور بود و در عين حال ايجاد بحران های مقطعی هر روزه ]

چنين بود که دوره فعلی هيات مديره انجمن صنفی به پايان نزديک شد. در اين زمان ناگهان رجوع روزنامه نگاران مسلمان [کذا] به انجمن افزون شد. به طور طبيعی کسی نبايد از اين امر نگران می شد. چه بهتر که اجماعی پيدا شده باشد. با اين آرايش به انتخابات هيات رييسه نزديک شديم. مانند همه اين سال ها، در اولين دعوت به تشکيل مجمع عمومی حد نصاب به دست نيامد. در دومی هم حادث نشد و کار به سومی رسيد که مطابق عرف و قانون انتخابات به هر تعداد شرکت کننده انتخابات به رسميت می رسد. همچنان که در دوره های قبل.

در اين موقع دو راه پيش پای تازه رسيده ها بود. اول بسيج کامل و رساندن اين پيام به گوش توده جوان روزنامه نگار که اگر امکانات و وام مسکن و تلفن همراه می خواهيد از طريق ما به دست می آيد که دوستانمان در دولت هستند. وگرنه اين اصلاح طلبان که کار خود را چاره نمی توانند کرد، همه شان به همت ما از قوه قضاييه حکم محکوميت دارند و به اشاره ای به زندان می روند، اصلا نشريه ای ندارند و بيکارند چه گلی به سر شما خواهند زد.

اين سخن راستی ها الحق بايد گفت سخن غلطی هم نبود. تعجب هم نداشت اگر دم گرمشان در جوانان روزنامه نگار که زندگی شان سخت و امنيت حرفه ای شان بر هواست، اثر کند و به اميد تامين و معيشت به آن ها رای دهند. اما چه باک بالاخره همين است دموکراسی .

اين راه انتخاب نشد. کاش می شد. نظرسنجی ها خبر داد که احتمال پيروزی برای آنان وجود ندارد. کاشف به عمل آمد که به طفيل عملکرد يک ساله دولت مهرورزان، آگاهی زودتر از آن که تصور می رفت به خانه ها سرک کشيده و راه را بر تکرار انتخابات سوم تير، در انجمن صنفی روزنامه نگاران بسته است. خب حالا چه می بايست کردند.

در اين زمان بود که ناگهان خبر رسيد وزارت کار، در آخرين لحظات خواب نما شده است که در اساسنامه انجمن تاکيدی بر اين نيست که در سومين مجمع عمومی چه خواهد شد. اساسنامه ساکت است. اولش روزنامه نگاران عضو انجمن باور نکردند که جناح مربوطه گرهی در کار انداخته است. خوشدل ها می گفتند اين ها خودشان نامزد معرفی کرده اند و احتمالا برنده شدنشان هست، چرا چنين کنند. حرفی که بطلان آن معلوم است، پس به دادن جوابی به وزارت کار اکتفا کردند. اعضای هيات مديره گذشته که آخر دوره شان بود در مقابل اين ايرادگيری پاسخی داشتند. اول آن که اگر در سومين دعوت مجمع عمومی هم حد نصاب به دست نيايد و نشود انتخابات را برگزار کرد، پس تکليف چه می شود. دوم در همه سال های گذشته همين بوده و هر بار هم انتخابات به بار سوم رسيده و وزارت کار هم تائيد کرده است. سوم اين که در نامه های متبادله بين دبير دومين دوره هيات رييسه با وزارت کار، کتبا همين امر تاکيد شده است. و سئوال مهم تر اين که وزارت کار اصولا نگران چيست و چرا وارد ماجرا شده است. اين سئوال وجود داشت که ناگهان معلوم شد عده ای از جناح راست و اعضای روزنامه های رسالت و کيهان که نامزد هيات رييسه هم شده بودند و به درست دريافته بودند که احتمال انتخابشان نيست، از انتخابات انصراف داده اند و استدلالشان هم اين است که وزارت کار مخالفت کرده و اين کاری است غيرقانونی.

درست مانند داستان انتخابات خانه احزاب . داستانش را بخوانيد.

برگزار کنندگان انتخابات حالا ديگر دريافتند که اين ها نيست علت اصلی، بلکه ان جناح که تصرف انجمن را از راه رای گيری و انتخابات غير ممکن می بينند قصد دارد بازی را به هم بزند. روزنامه نگاران می دانستند اگر اين مجمع عمومی هم بی انتخابات بگذرد، مخالفان آزادی اعلام خواهند داشت که هيات مديره ديگر قانونی نيست. و با اين کرشمه عملا انجمن را تعطيل می کنند، تا زمانی که بتوانند جسدش را به انجمن روزنامه نگاران مسلمان منتقل کنند و فاتحه مع الصلوات، مانند همان کار که به شيوه ديگر با مرکز گفتگوی تمدن ها کردند. اين تحليل چون بر ذهن و زبان اکثريت روزنامه نگاران گشت، همتی به کار آمد و دعوت سوم به مجمع عمومی با نزديک چهارصد نفر رای دهنده، عددی بی سابقه، شکل گرفت و انتخابات برگزار.

حالا می توان گمان زد که در روزهای آينده اين کشمکش را چنان مديريت خواهند کرد که هيات رييسه منتخب نتوانند چنان که بايد کاری برای همکاران کنند. از طرف ديگر راه همکاری وزارت ارشاد هم با اين هيات رييسه بسته است، پس می ماند اين که دوستان همفکر در روزنامه های رسالت و کيهان دست در دست دولت آماده مهرورزی دهند برای برکندن يک نهاد مدنی دموکرات باقی مانده از جنبش اصلاحات. مگر آن که در اين ميان کسانی در گوش دولت که گاهی نشان می دهد که استقلال می جويد و از زير قيمومت جناج راست خارج می شود، بخوانند که صلاحش نيست به نفرين روزنامه نگاران گرفتار آيد و اکثريت اعضای اين حرفه را در مقابل خود بگذارد. آن وقت دولت و وزارت کار از شراکت در طرح بی پا کردن يک نهاد مدنی خودداری می کند. بايد منتظر ماند و ديد.

در آستانه ورود انجمن صنفی به دوران جديد، با صورت مساله ای که گفته آمد. چند نکته را به عنوان نظر شخصی خود بگويم و بگذرم.

اول بايد گلايه از خودمان کنيم. حالا که معلوم شده اين جناح ابر و باد و مه و خورشيد و فلک را در کنار دارد، چرا ما همت نداريم که کمی به خود زحمت دهيم . اگر در همان دعوت های اول و دوم به مجمع عمومی حاضر شده بوديم، راه جر زدن بسته می شد. دريافت اين که در بافت امروزی حکومت در ايران، اهل اصلاح و مدارا بايد نمره بالاتر از چهارده بياورند که ورقه شان مهر قبولی بخورد، واقعيتی است. ما با نمره های ده و يازده و دوازده در خطر رفوزه شدنيم. اگر پذيرفته ايم که بايد داد خود بستانيم بايد کمی به خود زحمت بدهيم.

دوم آن که کاش در فهرست کسانی که در طرح هماهنگ با وزارت کار، از شرکت در انتخابات انصراف دادند و عملا به توده روزنامه نگار نشان دادند که اهل بازی دموکراتيک نيستند، نام هائی مانند آقای محبيان و مقدم و مهاجری نبود.

[Rasputin]

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Ashraf Ismail has pointed out how the current war in Lebanon and the associated criticism by Israel of Iran has in fact served to 'greatly enhance Iran's prestige in the region … While the Arab states look like traitors, Iran looks like a champion of the most celebrated of all Muslim causes.' This mirrors the encroachments on the civil liberties in the West and is devastating for human progress. Progressives in Iran must be supported in their efforts to unmask the hideousness that lies beneath this veil of the new Muslim champion.

Holding first and foremost that each person is a citizen of the world the Third Camp offers a vision of globality rather than nationality. Despots and tyrants should not be allowed to shelter under the self-serving cover of nations or the equally pseudo philosophy of cultural relativism where they can practice barbarism unhindered.

In signing any manifesto there is always an element of compromise. Democracy makes the world diverse. Democratic sentiments coming together create a synergy that holds because of their differences rather than in spite of them. Many shades of opinion make up the Third Camp Manifesto. To expect that it goes as far as we would all wish is neither realistic nor democratic. Iran for example should be expelled from the International community. But it is not alone. Israel too should face a similar fate. But the Manifesto while not arguing for Israeli expulsion does not prohibit those who sign it from campaigning for such an outcome or equally stringent measures. This much is evident from the Third Camp call made by Asqar Karimi for the government of Israel to be indicted for war crimes.

Furthermore, there are practical as well as ethical reasons for seeking the expulsion of Iran. The country because of the belligerence of its clerical ruling class has upped the stakes in a nuclear environment. If it persists in pursuing the nuclear option, there is a likelihood that it will be militarily attacked by the US or Israel. Were the country populated only by Mullahs and Muftis, such attacks would generate little opposition. As Salman Rushdie says when tyrants fall only hypocrites grieve. But there is strong opposition in Iran to the totalitarian theocracy. There are innocent men, women and children who must be protected from any war their leaders and the US/Israeli axis contrive to create. Having Iran banned from the international community is one way of bringing pressure to its theocratic leadership to desist from its pursuit of the nuclear option; an alternative to its population being subjected to a military attack by the US and Israel. The world has witnessed already what such a cruel alliance can inflict on the innocent. Its war on children must never be allowed to become extended to Iran.

Nuclear disarmament is a noble goal for humanity to strive for. It is a difficult task. In a world where nuclear power has for many come to equate with sovereignty all nations are tempted to steal a march on others. It is grossly unfair that the US should be in possession of a nuclear armoury and Iraq not. But it would be more unjust to the people of the world if that disequilibrium was to be addressed through allowing Iran such weapons also. More weapons of mass destruction rather than fewer are not the way ahead. No nation should acquire them. Those who have them should be pushed back. When was any problem ever solved by increasing its size?

That there is a need for a Third Camp Manifesto is self evident. Marx said we face either socialism or barbarism. Those traditionally looked upon as being the dykes through which the tides of barbarism shall not flow, the Left, have been reduced in both quantity and quality. Radical ideas have been placed in the hands of the incompetent authoritarians of the Irrelevant Left whose hatred of democracy and devotion to centralism have long been repellent. Its radical soullessness, in part occasioned by its abandonment of core universal values in deference to cultural relativism, has led it to a racist embracing of reactionary theocrats.

Solid radical ideas have acquired the appearance of the ridiculous by sheer dint of their association with the Irrelevant Left. Its fantasy fighters from its make believe revolution prance along a stage like characters from The Life of Brian or Citizen Smith, reinforcing a view in the public mind this is the sum total of Left politics. If the Irrelevant Left did not exist the security agencies of both US militarism and political Islam would have created it. British intelligence agencies long ago dismissed it as a pond of quacking ducks. They perform an indispensable service, albeit largely unintentional, for such agencies in dissuading people from embracing left ideas. They have failed to inspire sufficient confidence as a way out of the dead end politics where the sects alone thrive but never move out of. Like flies around a dead carcass, the sects are busy but that is the height of it. They need the carcass of the Left experiment to feed upon, not a living Left project which might actually achieve something.

The effort to prise radical ideas from the corrosive grip of the Irrelevant Left has exhausted many activists. How many young people have we seen end up on the political scrap heap after even the briefest of flirtations with the cretinous commissars? The incessant position taking and sect like fissions have forced other activists to look elsewhere. In their haste they have leaped into lending their name to ventures such as the Euston Manifesto. Can Oliver Kamm's case for a Left neo-conservatism really leave democratic socialists with anything but a bad taste in their mouths?

The Third Camp Manifesto is far from perfect. We should be thankful for that small mercy. Those who insist on perfection and impose their perfectionist narrative on the world in order to achieve it are invariably the harbingers of disaster. The Manifesto is an experiment in democratic expansionism. And what else can democracy do but expand?

[Rasputin]

I know that there are a lot of manifesto buffs who read Comment is free, and the Manifesto of the Third Camp against US Militarism and Islamic Terrorism looks like it deserves a bit more publicity. It seems to me that it is rather a better document than the Euston manifesto for a number of reasons:

1. It is being promoted by people who have some personal stake in the matter: it is specifically aimed at establishing a position against military or economic warfare against Iran, and it is being sponsored by a number of Iranian opposition groups who have a decent claim to speak for Iranian democratic opposition. The UK contact is Maryam Namazie of the Worker-Communist Party of Iran, who won the "Secularist of the Year" award last year for her courageous opposition to Iranian totalitarianism specifically and authoritarian Islam generally.

2. It does not try to draw sophistic distinctions between state and non-state violence, and its view of the current foreign policy of the USA is shaped by realism about the present rather than airy generalities about history. The Third Camp appear to have a much better appreciation than the Euston manifesto crowd of what "intervention" means, and they don't want it to happen to them or their families.

3. It takes the question of "US imperialism" almost exactly as seriously as it deserves to be taken; it is not the greatest danger of our times to which all other political struggles must be sublimated, but nor is it something that can be dismissed out of hand as evidence of triviality. It addresses head on the question of whether powers that maintain nuclear weapons themselves have any real status in telling other countries to get rid of them.

4. It recognises that the system of government in Iran is fundamentally a matter for the Iranians, and doesn't try to pretend that there are nice quick ways round the fact that a popular revolution is a difficult thing to get off the ground. It seems to be addressing the facts as they are, rather than a set of dubious rationalisations and optimistic predictions.

In short, the Third Camp Manifesto appears to be addressing a lot of the important issues that the Euston manifesto swept under the carpet. I don't think I'm too far off base in surmising that it is able to do this because the people behind it are less concerned with playing nice with American neoconservatives. (By the way, am I the only one to detect the most exquisite irony in Martin Bright's simultaneously writing about the danger of the FCO allying itself to the most dangerous, violent and extreme wing of Islam, and then telling us all about his new friends on the most dangerous, violent and extreme wing of American foreign policy?)

I don't think I will be signing it myself; I think that it has a more militantly secular position than I would want to support, I don't think that the proposal to de-recognise Iran diplomatically is a good idea and I am somewhat concerned with the number of hardline Irish nationalists among the charter signatories (thanks to Marc Mulholland for giving me the tip on this one). And most importantly, I think that manifestoes are for saps. But it certainly deserves a fair go in the competitive modern global manifesto market.

[Rasputin]

On the Internet, everybody is a millenarian. Internet journalism, according to those who produce manifestos on its behalf, represents a world-historical development—not so much because of the expressive power of the new medium as because of its accessibility to producers and consumers. That permits it to break the long-standing choke hold on public information and discussion that the traditional media—usually known, when this argument is made, as “gatekeepers” or “the priesthood”—have supposedly been able to maintain up to now. “Millions of Americans who were once in awe of the punditocracy now realize that anyone can do this stuff—and that many unknowns can do it better than the lords of the profession,” Glenn Reynolds, a University of Tennessee law professor who operates one of the leading blogs, Instapundit, writes, typically, in his new book, “An Army of Davids: How Markets and Technology Empower Ordinary People to Beat Big Media, Big Government and Other Goliaths.”

The rhetoric about Internet journalism produced by Reynolds and many others is plausible only because it conflates several distinct categories of material that are widely available online and didn’t use to be. One is pure opinion, especially political opinion, which the Internet has made infinitely easy to purvey. Another is information originally published in other media—everything from Chilean newspaper stories and entries in German encyclopedias to papers presented at Micronesian conferences on accounting methods—which one can find instantly on search and aggregation sites. Lately, grand journalistic claims have been made on behalf of material produced specifically for Web sites by people who don’t have jobs with news organizations. According to a study published last month by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, there are twelve million bloggers in the United States, and thirty-four per cent of them consider blogging to be a form of journalism. That would add up to more than four million newly minted journalists just among the ranks of American bloggers. If you add everyone abroad, and everyone who practices other forms of Web journalism, the profession must have increased in size a thousandfold over the last decade.

As the Pew study makes clear, most bloggers see themselves as engaging only in personal expression; they don’t inspire the biggest claims currently being made for Internet journalism. The category that inspires the most soaring rhetoric about supplanting traditional news organizations is “citizen journalism,” meaning sites that publish contributions of people who don’t have jobs with news organizations but are performing a similar function.

Citizen journalists are supposedly inspired amateurs who find out what’s going on in the places where they live and work, and who bring us a fuller, richer picture of the world than we get from familiar news organizations, while sparing us the pomposity and preening that journalists often display. Hong Eun-taek, the editor-in-chief of perhaps the biggest citizen-journalism site, Oh My News, which is based in Seoul and has a staff of editors managing about forty thousand volunteer contributors, has posted a brief manifesto, which says, “Traditional means of news gathering and dissemination are quickly falling behind the new paradigm. . . . We believe news is something that is made not only by a George W. Bush or a Bill Gates but, more importantly, by people who are all allowed to think together. The news is a form of collective thinking. It is the ideas and minds of the people that are changing the world, when they are heard.”

That’s the catechism, but what has citizen journalism actually brought us? It’s a difficult question, in part because many of the truest believers are very good at making life unpleasant for doubters, through relentless sneering. Thus far, no “traditional journalist” has been silly enough to own up to and defend the idea of belonging to an élite from which ordinary citizens are barred. But sometimes one will unwittingly toss a chunk of red meat to the new-media visionaries by appearing not to accord the Internet revolution the full measure of respect it deserves—as John Markoff, a technology reporter for the Times, did in 2003 in an interview with Online Journalism Review. Jeff Jarvis, a veteran editor, publisher, and columnist, and, starting in September, a professor at the City University of New York’s new journalism school, posted the interview on his blog, BuzzMachine, with his own post-facto reactions added, so that it reads, in part, this way:

[Rasputin]

MARKOFF: I certainly can see that scenario, where all these new technologies may only be good enough to destroy all the old standards but not create something better to replace them with. I think that’s certainly one scenario.
JARVIS: Pardon me for interrupting, but that made no frigging sense whatsoever. Can you parse that for me, Mr. Markoff? Or do you need an editor to speak sense? How do new standards “destroy” old standards? Something won’t become a “standard” unless it is accepted by someone in power—the publishers or the audiences. This isn’t a game of PacMan.
MARKOFF: The other possibility right now—it sometimes seems we have a world full of bloggers and that blogging is the future of journalism, or at least that’s what the bloggers argue, and to my mind, it’s not clear yet whether blogging is anything more than CB radio.
JARVIS: The reference is as old-farty and out-of-date as the sentiment. It’s clear that Markoff isn’t reading weblogs and doesn’t know what’s there.
Hey, fool, that’s your audience talking there. You should want to listen to what they have to say. You are, after all, spending your living writing for them. If you were a reporter worth a damn, you’d care to know what the marketplace cares about. But, no, you’re the mighty NYT guy. You don’t need no stinking audience. You don’t need ears. You only need a mouth.




To live up to its billing, Internet journalism has to meet high standards both conceptually and practically: the medium has to be revolutionary, and the journalism has to be good. The quality of Internet journalism is bound to improve over time, especially if more of the virtues of traditional journalism migrate to the Internet. But, although the medium has great capabilities, especially the way it opens out and speeds up the discourse, it is not quite as different from what has gone before as its advocates are saying.

Societies create structures of authority for producing and distributing knowledge, information, and opinion. These structures are always waxing and waning, depending not only on the invention of new means of communication but also on political, cultural, and economic developments. An interesting new book about this came out last year in Britain under the daunting title “Representation and Misrepresentation in Later Stuart Britain: Partisanship and Political Culture.” It is set in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, and although its author, Mark Knights, who teaches at the University of East Anglia, does not make explicit comparisons to the present, it seems obvious that such comparisons are on his mind.

The “new media” of later Stuart Britain were pamphlets and periodicals, made possible not only by the advent of the printing press but by the relaxation of government censorship and licensing regimes, by political unrest, and by urbanization (which created audiences for public debate). Today, the best known of the periodicals is Addison and Steele’s Spectator, but it was one of dozens that proliferated almost explosively in the early seventeen-hundreds, including The Tatler, The Post Boy, The Medley, and The British Apollo. The most famous of the pamphleteers was Daniel Defoe, but there were hundreds of others, including Thomas Sprat, the author of “A True Account and Declaration of the Horrid Conspiracy Against the Late King” (1685), and Charles Leslie, the author of “The Wolf Stript of His Shepherd’s Cloathing” (1704). These voices entered a public conversation that had been narrowly restricted, mainly to holders of official positions in church and state. They were the bloggers and citizen journalists of their day, and their influence was far greater (though their audiences were far smaller) than what anybody on the Internet has yet achieved.

As media, Knights points out, both pamphlets and periodicals were radically transformative in their capabilities. Pamphlets were a mass medium with a short lead time—cheap, transportable, and easily accessible to people of all classes and political inclinations. They were, as Knights puts it, “capable of assuming different forms (letters, dialogues, essays, refutations, vindications, and so on)” and, he adds, were “ideally suited to making a public statement at a particular moment.” Periodicals were, by the standards of the day, “a sort of interactive entertainment,” because of the invention of letters to the editor and because publications were constantly responding to their readers and to one another.

Then as now, the new media in their fresh youth produced a distinctive, hot-tempered rhetorical style. Knights writes, “Polemical print . . . challenged conventional notions of how rhetoric worked and was a medium that facilitated slander, polemic, and satire. It delighted in mocking or even abusive criticism, in part because of the conventions of anonymity.” But one of Knights’s most useful observations is that this was a self-limiting phenomenon. Each side in what Knights understands, properly, as the media front in a merciless political struggle between Whigs and Tories soon began accusing the other of trafficking in lies, distortions, conspiracy theories, and special pleading, and presenting itself as the avatar of the public interest, civil discourse, and epistemologically derived truth. Knights sees this genteeler style of expression as just another political tactic, but it nonetheless drove print publication toward a more reasoned, less inflamed rhetorical stance, which went along with a partial settling down of British politics from hot war between the parties to cold. (Full-dress British newspapers, like the Times and the Guardian, did not emerge until the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, well into this calmer period and long after Knights ends his story.) At least in part, Internet journalism will surely repeat the cycle, and will begin to differentiate itself tonally, by trying to sound responsible and trustworthy in the hope of building a larger, possibly paying audience.

[Rasputin]

American journalism began, roughly speaking, on the later Stuart Britain model; during Colonial times it was dominated by fiery political speechmakers, like Thomas Paine. All those uplifting statements by the Founders about freedom of the press were almost certainly produced with pamphleteers in mind. When, in the early nineteenth century, political parties and fast cylinder printing presses developed, American journalism became mainly a branch of the party system, with very little pretense to neutral authority or ownership of the facts.

A related development was the sensational penny press, which served the big cities, whose populations were swollen with immigrants from rural America and abroad. It produced powerful local newspapers, but it’s hard to think of them as fitting the priesthood model. William Randolph Hearst’s New York papers, the leading examples, were flamboyant, populist, opinionated, and thoroughly disreputable. They influenced politics, but that is different from saying, as Glenn Reynolds says of the Hearst papers, that they “set the agenda for public discussion.” Most of the formal means of generating information that are familiar in America today—objective journalism is only one; others are modern academic research, professional licensing, and think tanks—were created, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, explicitly to counter the populist inclinations of various institutions, one of which was the big media.

In fact, what the prophets of Internet journalism believe themselves to be fighting against—journalism in the hands of an enthroned few, who speak in a voice of phony, unearned authority to the passive masses—is, as a historical phenomenon, mainly a straw man. Even after the Second World War, some American cities still had several furiously battling papers, on the model of “The Front Page.” There were always small political magazines of all persuasions, and books written in the spirit of the old pamphlets, and, later in the twentieth century, alternative weeklies and dissenting journalists like I. F. Stone. When journalism was at its most blandly authoritative—probably in the period when the three television broadcast networks were in their heyday and local newspaper monopoly was beginning to become the rule—so were American politics and culture, and you have to be very media-centric to believe that the press established the tone of national life rather than vice versa.



Every new medium generates its own set of personalities and forms. Internet journalism is a huge tent that encompasses sites from traditional news organizations; Web-only magazines like Slate and Salon; sites like Daily *** and NewsMax, which use some notional connection to the news to function as influential political actors; and aggregation sites (for instance, Arts & Letters Daily and Indy Media) that bring together an astonishingly wide range of disparate material in a particular category. The more ambitious blogs, taken together, function as a form of fast-moving, densely cross-referential pamphleteering—an open forum for every conceivable opinion that can’t make its way into the big media, or, in the case of the millions of purely personal blogs, simply an individual’s take on life. The Internet is also a venue for press criticism (“We can fact-check your ***!” is one of the familiar rallying cries of the blogosphere) and a major research library of bloopers, outtakes, pranks, jokes, and embarrassing performances by big shots. But none of that yet rises to the level of a journalistic culture rich enough to compete in a serious way with the old media—to function as a replacement rather than an addendum.

The most fervent believers in the transforming potential of Internet journalism are operating not only on faith in its achievements, even if they lie mainly in the future, but on a certainty that the old media, in selecting what to publish and broadcast, make horrible and, even worse, ignobly motivated mistakes. They are politically biased, or they are ignoring or suppressing important stories, or they are out of touch with ordinary people’s concerns, or they are merely passive transmitters of official utterances. The more that traditional journalism appears to be an old-fashioned captive press, the more providential the Internet looks.

Jay Rosen, a professor of journalism at New York University who was the leading champion of “civic journalism” even before there was an Internet, wrote in the Washington Post in June that he started his blog, PressThink, because “I was tired of passing my ideas through editors who forced me to observe the silences they kept as professional journalists. The day after President Bush was re-elected in 2004, I suggested on my blog that at least some news organizations should consider themselves the opposition to the White House. Only by going into opposition, I argued, could the press really tell the story of the Bush administration’s vast expansion of executive power. That notion simply hadn’t been discussed in mainstream newsrooms, which had always been able to limit debate about what is and isn’t the job of the journalist. But now that amateurs had joined pros in the press zone, newsrooms couldn’t afford not to debate their practices.”

In PressThink, Rosen now has the forum that he didn’t before; and last week he announced the launch of a new venture, called NewAssignment.Net, in which a “smart mob” of donors would pay journalists to pursue “stories the regular news media doesn’t do, can’t do, wouldn’t do, or already screwed up.” The key to the idea, in Rosen’s mind, is to give “people formerly known as the audience” the assigning power previously reserved for editors. “NewAssignment.Net would be a case of journalism without the media,” he wrote on PressThink. “That’s the beauty part.”

[Rasputin]

Even before the advent of NewAssignment.Net, and even for people who don’t blog, there is a lot more opportunity to talk back to news organizations than there used to be. In their Internet versions, most traditional news organizations make their reporters available to answer readers’ questions and, often, permit readers to post their own material. Being able to see this as the advent of true democracy in what had been a media oligarchy makes it much easier to argue that Internet journalism has already achieved great things.

Still: Is the Internet a mere safety valve, a salon des refusés, or does it actually produce original information beyond the realm of opinion and comment? It ought to raise suspicion that we so often hear the same menu of examples in support of its achievements: bloggers took down the 2004 “60 Minutes” report on President Bush’s National Guard service and, with it, Dan Rather’s career; bloggers put Trent Lott’s remarks in apparent praise of the Jim Crow era front and center, and thereby deposed him as Senate majority leader.

The best original Internet journalism happens more often by accident, when smart and curious people with access to means of communication are at the scene of a sudden disaster. Any time that big news happens unexpectedly, or in remote and dangerous places, there is more raw information available right away on the Internet than through established news organizations. The most memorable photographs of the London terrorist bombing last summer were taken by subway riders using cell phones, not by news photographers, who didn’t have time to get there. There were more ordinary people than paid reporters posting information when the tsunami first hit South Asia, in 2004, when Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, in 2005, and when Israeli bombs hit Beirut this summer. I am in an especially good position to appreciate the benefits of citizen journalism at such moments, because it helped save my father and stepmother’s lives when they were stranded in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina: the citizen portions of the Web sites of local news organizations were, for a crucial day or two, one of the best places to get information about how to drive out of the city. But, over time, the best information about why the hurricane destroyed so much of the city came from reporters, not citizens.

Eyewitness accounts and information-sharing during sudden disasters are welcome, even if they don’t provide a complete report of what is going on in a particular situation. And that is what citizen journalism is supposed to do: keep up with public affairs, especially locally, year in and year out, even when there’s no disaster. Citizen journalists bear a heavy theoretical load. They ought to be fanning out like a great army, covering not just what professional journalists cover, as well or better, but also much that they ignore. Great citizen journalism is like the imagined Northwest Passage—it has to exist in order to prove that citizens can learn about public life without the mediation of professionals. But when one reads it, after having been exposed to the buildup, it is nearly impossible not to think, This is what all the fuss is about?



Oh My News seems to attract far more readers than any other citizen-journalism site—about six hundred thousand daily by its own count. One day in June, readers of the English-language edition found this lead story: “Printable Robots: Advances in Inkjet Technology Forecast Robotic Origami,” by Gregory Daigle. It begins:

From the diminutive ASIMO from Honda to the colossus in the animated film Iron Giant, kids around the world know that robots are cool yet complex machines. Advances in robotics, fuel plans from NASA that read like science fiction movie scripts.
Back on Earth, what can we expect over the next few years in robot technology for the consumer?
Reprogram your Roomba? Boring.
Hack your Aibo robot dog? Been there.
Print your own robot? Whoa!


On the same day, Barista of Bloomfield Avenue, the nom de Web of Debbie Galant, who lives in a suburban town in New Jersey and is one of the most esteemed “hyperlocal bloggers” in the country, led with a picture from her recent vacation in the Berkshires. The next item was “Hazing Goes Loony Tunes,” and here it is in its entirety:

Word on the sidewalk is that Glen Ridge officialdom pretty much defeated the class of 2007 in the annual senior-on-freshman hazing ritual yesterday by making the rising seniors stay after school for several minutes in order to give freshmen a head start to run home. We have reports that seniors in cars, once released from school, searched for slow-moving freshman prey, while Glen Ridge police officers in cars closely tracked any cars decorated with class of 2007 regalia. Of course, if any freshman got pummelled with mayonnaise, we want to know about it.

[Rasputin]

What is generally considered to be the most complete local citizen-journalism site in the United States, the Northwest Voice, in Bakersfield, California (which also has a print version and is owned by the big daily paper in town), led with a story called “A Boost for Business Women,” which began:

So long, Corporate World.
Hello, business ownership—family time, and happiness.
At least, that’s how Northwest resident Jennifer Meadors feels after the former commercial banking professional started her own business for Arbonne International, a skin care company, about eight months ago. So far, it’s been successful, professionally and personally.


Another much praised citizen-journalism site is Backfence.com, headquartered in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. Last month, it sponsored a contest to pick the two best citizen-journalism stories; the prize was a free trip to a conference held by Oh My News, in Seoul. One winner was Liz Milner, of Reston, Virginia, for a story that began this way:

Among the many definitions of “hero” given in The American Heritage Dictionary is “A person noted for special achievement in a particular field.” Reston is a community of creative people, so it seems only right that our heroes should be paragons of creativity. Therefore, I’m nominating Reston musician and freelance writer, Ralph Lee Smith for the post of “Local Hero, Creative Category.”
Through his performances, recordings, writings teaching and museum exhibitions, this 78-year-old Reston resident has helped bring new life to an art form that had been on the verge of extinction—the art of playing the mountain dulcimer. He has helped to popularize the repertoire for this instrument so that now mountain music is everywhere—even in slick Hollywood films.


In other words, the content of most citizen journalism will be familiar to anybody who has ever read a church or community newsletter—it’s heartwarming and it probably adds to the store of good things in the world, but it does not mount the collective challenge to power which the traditional media are supposedly too timid to take up. Often the most journalistically impressive material on one of the “hyperlocal” citizen-journalism sites has links to professional journalism, as in the Northwest Voice, or Chi-Town Daily News, where much of the material is written by students at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, who are in training to take up full-time jobs in news organizations. At the highest level of journalistic achievement, the reporting that revealed the civil-liberties encroachments of the war on terror, which has upset the Bush Administration, has come from old-fashioned big-city newspapers and television networks, not Internet journalists; day by day, most independent accounts of world events have come from the same traditional sources. Even at its best and most ambitious, citizen journalism reads like a decent Op-Ed page, and not one that offers daring, brilliant, forbidden opinions that would otherwise be unavailable. Most citizen journalism reaches very small and specialized audiences and is proudly minor in its concerns. David Weinberger, another advocate of new-media journalism, has summarized the situation with a witty play on Andy Warhol’s maxim: “On the Web, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.”



Reporting—meaning the tradition by which a member of a distinct occupational category gets to cross the usual bounds of geography and class, to go where important things are happening, to ask powerful people blunt and impertinent questions, and to report back, reliably and in plain language, to a general audience—is a distinctive, fairly recent invention. It probably started in the United States, in the mid-nineteenth century, long after the Founders wrote the First Amendment. It has spread—and it continues to spread—around the world. It is a powerful social tool, because it provides citizens with an independent source of information about the state and other holders of power. It sounds obvious, but reporting requires reporters. They don’t have to be priests or gatekeepers or even paid professionals; they just have to go out and do the work.

The Internet is not unfriendly to reporting; potentially, it is the best reporting medium ever invented. A few places, like the site on Yahoo! operated by Kevin Sites, consistently offer good journalism that has a distinctly Internet, rather than repurposed, feeling. To keep pushing in that direction, though, requires that we hold up original reporting as a virtue and use the Internet to find new ways of presenting fresh material—which, inescapably, will wind up being produced by people who do that full time, not “citizens” with day jobs.

Journalism is not in a period of maximal self-confidence right now, and the Internet’s cheerleaders are practically laboratory specimens of maximal self-confidence. They have got the rhetorical upper hand; traditional journalists answering their challenges often sound either clueless or cowed and apologetic. As of now, though, there is not much relation between claims for the possibilities inherent in journalist-free journalism and what the people engaged in that pursuit are actually producing. As journalism moves to the Internet, the main project ought to be moving reporters there, not stripping them away.

[Rasputin]