June 28, 2004, 10.38pm • 21 comments » • 8,597 Views

Back from Beyond

Stuart Hughes boldly claims a “blogging exclusive” on the early handover of power in Iraq. People like it.

Stuart blogged the comments from Iraq’s Foreign Minister, Hoshar Zebari, at Nato’s summit in Istanbul, his breaking report filed at 0724 GMT. The earliest report I can find on this story was filed by CNN.com at 0712 GMT - and, this time for CNN, it wasn’t AP copy.

Stuart is a BBC Radio Five journalist and producer who was already blogging from northern Iraq when, during an attack, he lost his lower leg as well as his cameraman. His regular online diaries with us were pseudo-blogs which documented his rehabilitation as well as continued commentary on Iraq.

Properly back in business, it looks like Beyond Northern Iraq is now a reporting outlet all of its own. Today, Stuart beat all but CNN to the story; radio-trained, he filed an audio dispatch on his weblog, and he kept a running commentary of unfolding events in Istanbul.

It’s an interesting relationship he maintains with his BBC work. Presumably, Stuart is allowed to file copy from around the edges of main radio pieces. He even scooped BBC World’s broadcast of an interview, to air the following week, in which he talks about his blogging adventures.

This is an interesting listen by itself, in fact. I’ll transcribe some. Stuart says of the day job: “I cover a certain range of subjects as required. I’m not saying I’m censored or restricted in any way but, obviously, the news is presented in a certain sort of way.

“What the blog allows me to do is to provide a more unfiltered experience where I can be opinionated, where I can also lay out some of the stories I’m told that don’t make it into the final edit; it’s like the cutting room floor in a way. For example, when I was in Iraq, I went to Hallabja and got some fascinating, interesting and very moving stories - now, because of the confines of the broadcast medium, only some of those stories make it into the final edit.”

Stuart was challenged to justify the accuracy and integrity of invisible, individual journalists like himself. “I hope people don’t take what I tell them as truth, because it’s my filtered experience; it’s no more valid than anybody else’s. The reader is expected to take much more of an active part in the editorial process, in filtering the information that’s presented to them.

“That was always done by the broadcasters so that, when you switch on the news at a certain time, you’re given a version of the truth. There are so many blogs out there, so many voices, that I hope the reader can read what I’ve got to say, what another blogger has to say and …, between all those voices, come to a conclusion of their own. It’s much more of a dialogue that’s going on.

“It isn’t like a traditional news service where you log on, read the news and log off again - you log on read the news, comment on it, add to it; it’s an ongoing conversation.

“When anybody can become a publisher, the cacophony of voices can become overwhelming. The blogging community … is very meritocratic; the people’s whose opinions who are regarded as important and insightful, people will come back to.”

The issue of journalists who blog as a sideline and their relationship with the editor is, of course, interesting and often written about. Given Stuart’s unique personal take on this story, there is certainly mileage in him continuing to blog. For that, you only have to read his final post today, written after a hectic day reporting at the epicentre of world news:-

And as I sat there, headphones clamped to my ears and listening to the news conference, the temptation to speak out was overwhelming. What would happen, I wondered, if I removed my artificial leg, waved it in front of Bush and Blair, and proclaimed “See this. This is the outcome of your war. Iraq may have been liberated, but I — and hundreds of others like me — will be burdened with this artificial limb every day for the rest of my life because of the conflict you created.”