The NGO News Sphere: A Case Study of Electronic Iraq

By Melissa Wall
California State University – Northridge

A paper presented to the Global Fusion Conference, St. Louis, October 2004
Part of the panel: Infos sans Frontières: Reframing Alternative Media

1
Abstract: This paper focuses on a new type of international news produced by Nongovernmental
Organizations and distributed for free over the Internet through a case study of the news portal
Electronic Iraq. Electronic Iraq both differs from the standard values and practices of
international reporting and also embodies some of the characteristics commonly associated with
NGOs, suggesting a new type of non-profit journalism. This new form of journalism relies on a
network of information sharing, embodying modernist values of professionalization and a
reliance on facts but also incorporates a postmodern form of personalized storytelling that
together forms a hybrid cultural product: post-profit public goods journalism.

In the post-Sept 11 world, significant changes are taking place in terms of what is

considered to be international news, who collects and distributes it and the values such news now

embodies. Much of the literature on this subset of journalism has focused on the decline of

traditional news outlets’ coverage of international stories, but Hamilton and Jenner (2004)

suggest that it would be productive for researchers to focus on new iterations of non-traditional

international news ranging from do-it yourself websites to internal corporate reports. Although

they establish an excellent starting point, their research leaves out consideration of the role of

Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), which Wall (2002) and Walch (1999) have

previously suggested may be contributing to a new type of journalism. While NGOs are said to

constitute a global associational revolution that may be enlarging civil society (Salamon, 1994;

Fisher, 1998; 2000; Kaldor, 2003), the roles of these diverse organizations in creating and

distributing news and perhaps an alternative epistemology for the world’s social problems has

been almost completely overlooked by mass communication researchers.

 The role of new alternative international news sources is a particularly important area to

focus on in the wake of the terrorism wars in which mainstream Western news media coverage

has been criticized for sanitizing the real effects of the wars while also following the Pentagon’s

lead in depicting war as infotainment or even a reality TV show and failing to adequately

question the administration that launched the war (Andersen, 2004; Thussu & Freeman, 2003;

Tumber & Palmer, 2004). Indeed, millions of news consumers, frustrated with this increasingly

watered down, managed version of the news are turning to other, non-mainstream information

sources, especially via the Internet (Allan, 2004). These new forms of news are challenging the

mainstream media’s once monolithic version of events, in some cases “providing alternative

narratives of world events” (Alexander, 2004, p. 277).

In this paper, I consider the case of Electronic Iraq, an online news portal created by the

joint effort of two grassroots NGOs. Findings suggest that Electronic Iraq is producing a new

kind of international news, one that reflects many of the values associated with NGOs such as

providing a voice for the marginalized and operating in a networked structure that relies on other

non-profit entities. Ultimately, such news offers a form of shared journalism that is neither

public service nor public journalism, though embodying some of the ideals of both, as it offers

instead a post-profit public goods form of news.

Journalism Practices

3
 International reporting by Western media, particularly in the U.S., has long been

criticized. The problems usually identified range from the amount to the quality and

characteristics of what is reported. First, it has been argued that one of the key problems is with

the shrinking amount of foreign news provided to news audiences (Emery, 1989; Riff &

Budianto, 2001; Riffe, Aust, & Sundar, 1994; Thussu, 2004). Likewise, the number of foreign

correspondents and bureaus has fallen dramatically since the 1970s. Foreign reporting is

expensive and there is little desire to spend the money necessary to cover international news

consistently and in-depth. Thus, it is argued that there is simply too little foreign reporting in

most corporate news media outlets, leaving the average news consumer in near or complete

ignorance about happenings around the world, particularly in non-Western countries (Thussu,

2004).
 In terms of quality, international news is seen as being narrowly reported, and often

misleading and stereotypical. One reason is media’s over-reliance on the frames provided by

governments (Cohen, 1963; Bennett, 1990; Herman & Chomsky, 1988). That is, governments

have consistently been allowed to set the news agenda and interpretative schemas for reporting

about issues and places outside the country. In part this happens because reporters have relied on

elite governmental and business sources for their information (Gans, 1979). Thus, news follows

the government’s line and often fails to adequately challenge what is being said. At the same

time, reporters rarely talk to groups from the margins of society who are sometimes harder to

reach or less able to succinctly and professionally articulate their positions. Coverage of non-

Western countries also has been criticized for being negative as well as stereotyping and

demeaning to non-whites while focusing on conflict to the exclusion of other stories (Beaudoin,

& Thorson, 2001; Hall, 1995; Said, 1997). Reporting on war and other conflicts seems to

magnify the failings of international reporting. In part, this is because journalists are under

greater pressure to provide frequent, dramatic updates, especially in terms of television news, but

also because such reporting can often be more dangerous, chaotic and confusing. Reporters are

even more dependent on participants -- often military personnel -- to assist them in gaining

access to events (Hammond & Herman, 2000; Knightley, 1975) . All of these problems are often

the result of journalistic routines and the increasing need in a conglomerate –controlled media to

take shortcuts in order to produce more for less (Thussu & Freedman, 2003). More broadly,

ideological processes that favor elite frameworks further work to keep certain kinds of

information and perspectives out of the news while emphasizing others (Gitlin, 1980).

5
 Online journalism. Another area to consider in the context of this study is the

intersection of the Internet and journalism. Much of the study of online journalism originally

focused on the websites of established news outlets, assessing such characteristics as page design

and levels of interactivity (Li, 1998; Massey & Levy, 1999). More recently, researchers have

attempted to consider the changing role of journalists and journalism via web-only phenomenon

such as Indymedia, blogs and other forms of participatory journalism (Deuze, 2003; Platon &

Deuze, 2003; Singer, 2003; Kayes & Johnson, 2004; Wall, 2004). Questions raised about such

journalism include how best to categorize and assess their practices and whether to employ

traditional categories or develop new concepts and theories (Deuze & Dimoudi, 2002). Among

those introducing new tools for thinking about online journalism, Deuze (2003) identifies online

journalism such as that practiced by Indymedia as open-source, in which information including

even computer codes are shared without copyright. Allan (2002, p. 127) writes of the online

journalism found in the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11 as “personal journalism in which

amateurs and some professionals created a first-person news network”. Bruns (2003) suggests

that these various forms of online media may lessen the influence of elite gatekeepers, perhaps

introducing forms of information selection such as “gatewatching” (p. 32). Yet the introduction

of “multiple axes of information [that] provide new opportunities for citizens to challenge elite

control of political issues” might also ultimately allow more elite manipulation (Williams &

Carpini, 2000, p. 62).

The Role of NGOs

 To understand Electronic Iraq and the organizations connected with the portal, it is

necessary to consider the overall rise of NGOs in the last two decades. The context for this

increase has been the almost worldwide adoption of neo-liberal economic policies, leading

nation states to privatize many previous government functions, selling off state-owned entities

and in some cases relying on free-market economics to provide for the public good. Indeed,

some critics believe that these economic policies have resulted in a further diminishing of the

public commons on a global scale (Bollier, 2002).

Whether this has weakened nation states is a matter of debate, but certainly in doing so,

states have withdrawn from many of their traditional areas of concern regarding social welfare.

In response, NGOs -- private, nonprofit, voluntary and self-governing organizations -- have

stepped in, some providing services that the state no longer does, others serving advocacy roles,

monitoring and lobbying state and corporate entities (Davenport, 2002; Fisher, 1998, 2004;

Salamon, 1994; Salamon, Anheier & Associates, 1998). Some observers argue that in carrying

out these activities, NGOs are increasingly the source of public goods, or resources that are

freely open to all and non-excludable (Kaul, 2001).

The term NGO spans a range of organizations – from better known groups such as

Oxfam or Save the Children to small, grass-roots organizations with a handful of members.

Today, some well known NGOs such as Amnesty International and Greenpeace are seen as more

credible than global corporations such as Ford or Microsoft that have spent millions building

their brand name (De Jonquieres, 2000). Other small, under-funded groups are sometimes seen

as a sub-category of NGOS called GROs (Grass-roots Organizations) or CBO (Community-

Based Organizations), although here the term NGO will be used for all such groups.

7
 Many NGOs share common characteristics in terms of how they operate and what their

motivations are. Described as flexible, fast acting and motivated by social and not commercial

concerns, NGOs are said to be key tenants in the civil sphere of society (Fisher, 1998; Kaldor,

2003; Warkentin, 2001). Some NGOs operate as part of transnational advocacy networks,

seeking to influence global politics through their creation and distribution of information (Keck

& Sikkink, 1998). They have been particularly effective at organizing themselves around large

UN conferences, collaborating across interest areas and borders to bring pressure on

governments (Naidoo, 2000). It should be noted that this includes some smaller entities such as

GROs and CBOs who also are able to make global connections via more informal social

movement linkages as they participate in various campaigns. Working together in such

networks, NGOs have been described as establishing a global public sphere that has the ability to

create an alternative public opinion (Mater, 2001; Warkentin, 2001). In some cases, they assist

the marginalized and oppressed in gaining a voice (Courville & Piper, 2004; Keck & Sikkink,

1998). In this way, NGOs are devising new channels for discussion of public policies as well as

playing major roles in setting public agendas and conferring legitimacy on select issues (Keck &

Sikkink, 1998; Mater, 2001; Naido, 2000; Simmons, 1998).

 NGOs are not without their detractors. Conservative think tanks in the US have targeted

them for being too liberal (Lobe, 2003). Other critics from within the NGO ranks, argue that the

larger, more visible organizations are not directly accountable to the public and often immune

from criticism (de Waal, 2002; Hulme & Edwards, 1997). Such larger outfits can easily become

dependent upon governmental funding, which in turn can shape their actions and their points of

view. Observers argue that many of today’s larger NGOs are actually “tamed” social

movements from the 1980s and 1990s, who have brought professionalized structures and values

to formally grass-roots movements (Kaldor, 2003, p. 86 ; Lovink, 2002). For social movement

proponents, NGOs are a hot button issue because some, especially well-funded Western ones,

have become so articulate and savvy in the hallways of power, they are automatically interpreted

as representing all of civil society and, as a result, other smaller grass-roots groups are shut out

of decision making that directly affects them (de Waal, 2002; Lovink, 2002). In terms of their

roles as information providers, some see NGOs as exploiting disadvantaged populations by

representing them as the Other in order to generate donations (Lidchi, 1999). So that while

NGOs provide expertise and professional scaffolding within the networks in which they become

embedded, they also are seen by some network members as too structured and too bureaucratic,

foisting First World values onto other groups (Lovink, 2002; Minkoff, 1997). Indeed, one of the

most visible campaigns of the last few years, the Global Justice Movement that came to the fore

in Seattle, has faced these very divisions between NGOs and so-called Street-Level Groups

(Kidd, 2003; Wall, 2003; Wong, 2004). However, many of the criticisms of NGOs do not appear

to directly fit the case of Electronic Iraq due to its grass-roots, radical nature (Sarkees, 2003).

9
 Electronic Iraq The news portal Electronic Iraq was started just before the second Gulf

War in February 2003 in a collaboration between a peace-oriented organization called Voices in

the Wilderness and a group that produced an alternative news portal called Electronic Intifada.

Electronic Iraq describes itself as a “supplementary news portal” offering alternative news about

the Anglo-American conflict with Iraq via “a humanitarian perspective” (Introduction, n.d., para.

1, 2).

Founder Voices in the Wilderness (VitW), was created in the mid-1990s, focusing on

conditions in Iraq after the first Gulf War aiming to change U.S. and UN policies toward that

country. VitW is a joint project between activists in the United States and the United Kingdom,

and grew out of pacifist opposition to the first war against Iraq when the Gulf Peace Team sent

groups over to witness at the Iraqi borders at the start of the war (Sarkees, 2003). It is run from

Chicago by long-time peace activist Kathy Kelly, who in 2000 was nominated for the Nobel

Peace Prize (Newbart, 2003). Electronic Intifada has existed since 2001 as a self-described

online “education gateway” focused on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and providing news from a

pro-Palestine point of view (Introduction, n.d., para. 9). It was started by activists with an

interest in news media and the Internet in addition to the conflict. The four co-founders are two

diaspora Palestinians now working as academics -- Ali Abunimah and Arjan El Fassed – and

Laurie King-Irani, former editor of the Middle East Report, and Nigel Parry, who worked as a

webmaster at an Israeli university (King-Irani, 2001).

 Starting in March 2003, these two organizations collaborated to produce the news portal

Electronic Iraq. When the actual conflict began, VitW in collaboration with the Iraqi Peace

Team, had participants on the ground in Baghdad, who reported throughout the war via the

Internet. After the war, some group members stayed in Iraq to continue writing about the

occupation of the country. In January 2004, the site reported that the US military was preventing

its soldiers in Iraq from accessing Electronic Iraq (Wilding, 2004).

Analytic Procedures

In this project I employed a textual analysis approach which involved immersing myself

in the site over a period of 9 months, taking notes during my observations as well as employing a

simple content analysis as described below (Altheide, 1996). During my first visits on March 22,

24 and 25, 2003, I downloaded 23 pages. I continued to visit the site over the next 9 months,

developing a series of questions (per Altheide [1996]) to help me analyze the texts and, in

December 14, 2003, I downloaded the entire site using the software Webwhacker. I selected 12

topic overview pages (6 from March and the same 6 from December) containing 60 stories or

reports for intensive analysis. This included the topic pages: Action & Activism; Aid &

Development; Art, Music & Culture; The Media; Opinion/Editorial; What’s New. My overall

research questions were: What are the characteristics of the journalism this NGO news portal is

practicing? How do these compare with typical mainstream international news practices? In

what ways do these practices reflect NGO values? Specifically, I asked of each page:

Where does the site’s information come from? Here, I employed a content analysis. Each

story on the main section pages was coded for its source into the following categories: Electronic

Iraq (or Voices in the Wilderness/Electronic Intifada); NGO; United Nations; Mainstream Media;

Individuals; Other.

11
 Was the site networked with other organizations? This might be visible in their

appearance as sources noted in the question above, or through other sorts of references such as

linking to these groups.

Who or what tends to be the focus of stories? Governmental and other elites such as

military or business? The marginalized and oppressed? Abstract policies or individual people’s

stories?

Do articles appear to follow a professional set of journalistic practices such as using an

objective voice or telling both sides of the story? Do they employ bylines? Are sources clearly

identified?

What forms do they employ to tell their stories?

Does the site take advantage of interactivity or use other techniques to encourage

audience involvement on the site?

 The news practices of Electronic Iraq

Sources and networks Electronic Iraq appears to generate a quarter of its own original

content. The rest of the content comes from a handful of sources: NGOs, UN agencies,

News Media outlets, and Individuals. In the stories assessed here, the sources break

down as follows:

Table 1: Sources of Stories on Electronic Iraq

13
Story source Percentage of all sources
NGOs 35% (n=21)
Electronic Iraq/VitW 25% (n=15)
United Nations 20% (n=12)
News Media 10% (n=6)
Individuals 8% (n=5)
Other 2% (n=1)

If the category Electronic Iraq/VitW is combined with NGOs, then NGOs are the source

for more than half the items (60%) appearing on Electronic Iraq. Of the NGOs appearing on

these pages, the type varies and seems to depend on which topical page they appear. For

example, on Action and Activism, the sources tended to be Electronic Iraq/VitW and other grass-

roots groups such as the Stop the War Coalition. On the Aid and Development pages, larger

organizations such as Save the Children appeared. The third most frequent source is the United

Nations (20%).

The use of NGO and UN materials, which combined make up a majority of the site’s

content, suggests a sort of network is at work here, linking Electronic Iraq to these other entities.

Indeed, the site would be much less substantial without these articles. But Electronic Iraq does

not link to the original articles produced by these entities which would take readers off-site;

instead they simply posts the articles on their own site. Electronic Iraq often does not even link

to the entities producing these articles with the exceptions being credit lines posted at the end of

some articles posted on the Action and Activism pages. Electronic Iraq does include links

beneath photographs, so that, for example, the photograph of a Dutch rapper at a protest is

credited to the Belgium Indymedia site.

The smallest number of sources came from News Media (10%), Individuals (which

consisted of unaffiliated individuals who provided information) (8%) and Other at 1%.

Interestingly, unlike many blogs and other news-oriented websites, mainstream media are not a

major source of information here.

15
 Story forms Electronic Iraq consists of four main types of story forms: press releases;

news stories; editorials; and personal diaries. The press releases come from NGOs such as

Human Rights Watch and UN agencies monitoring what is happening in Iraq. Most are not

bylined and tend to consist of a report with either quotes from a single source who works for the

organization that released the information, or no quotes and just facts and statistics. For example,

in December 2003, EI ran a story from Human Rights Watch that reports,

“The use of cluster munitions in populated areas caused more civilian casualties than any

other factor in the coalition’s conduct of major military operations in March and April,

Human Rights Watch said. U.S. and British forces used almost 13,000 cluster munitions,

containing nearly 2 million submunitions, that killed or wounded more than 1,000

civilians” (Hundreds of civilian, 2003, para. 2).

Although they are not presenting two sides to the information or trying to achieve “balance” as

defined by mainstream journalism, nevertheless, these releases tend to be detached and

professional, rarely focusing on ordinary Iraqis as individuals but more abstractly on policies and

issues.
A second type of item is news stories. Most are not bylined and come primarily from the

United Nations news agency, which freely makes its information available, particularly

through the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) which

oversees an information provider called Integrated Regional Information Networks

(IRIN). This is in essence a wire service that the UN coordinates that came about in

response to the crisis that developed in central Africa after the Rwanda genocide. IRIN

describes its reporting as focused on providing “timely, strategic and non-partisan

information so as to enhance the capacity of the humanitarian community to understand,

respond to and avert emergencies” and that it tries to counter propaganda and other

misinformation. It does not attempt to reproduce mainstream media reports but receives

reports from non-journalist sources such as aid workers, disaster specialists and members

of the public. IRIN makes it stories available to non-commercial sources without charge,

asking only that their work be credited.

17
These items are often written like a typical news story, with a theme paragraph, use of

quotations, multiple sources, etc. Bylines for these article writers are not included. Many

of these IRIN articles identify a problem in the lead, then focus on an NGO helping solve

the problem. So we read of Ali, 6, and Sa'id, 10, “grubbing through the rubbish piled up

near their temporary home behind the bombed-out Iraqi air force club in the capital” who

are among 200 families of squatters in this neighbor who cannot afford rents in the post-

Saddam regime. The story goes on to note that “To their good fortune. . . [they] are

targets of a programme operated by the German aid agency, Help, under which they and

other homeless people are being supplied with items such as blankets, soap and kerosene

heaters” (“Homeless in Baghdad,” 2003, para. 1, 6). Many of these stories focus on

marginalized individuals in Iraq. Again, these seldom aim for telling both sides.

The third type of item is editorials. Each of these is bylined. Some are written by EI

members, while others come from NGO contributors such as the editorial, “Winning at

war, losing at peace,” written by Kenneth Bacon, President of Refugees International

(Bacon, 2003). Editorials are always bylined and identified as such. The subjects are

issues rather than individual people.

 The fourth type of item is the diary. These are first person accounts of individuals in

Iraq, generally peace activists or aid workers. Each of these is bylined. The site claims

that submissions are sought from persons with an active interest and demonstrable

knowledge about Iraq such as professionals or journalists (Guidelines for content, 2003).

The diaries often consist of interviews with local people, including vivid vignettes of

those peoples’ experiences in Iraq. Just as the corporate media embedded itself with US

soldiers, so these aid workers and volunteers embedded themselves with local families.

They participate in events and make clear their participation while focusing on ordinary

Iraqis – listening to and reporting their voices, humanizing them with stories of birthday

parties and family spats. For example, Kathy Kelly writes on March 24, 2003:

Hosam Khaf, a 13 year old boy from Baghdad Jeddidah, was injured on Friday, March

21st at 9:00 p.m. He sustained a shell injury to his abdomen and now has a cholotomy

bag. He is in great pain today. He lives in a multiple story building. As huge bombs

exploded nearby, his family fled their flat. When he went into the street he was hit by

shelling. His father, Abu Hosam, says that there are a military hospital and a military

training facility 45 km away. "Most of the casualties are children, elderly people and

civilians," said Abu Hosam. What do they have to do with fighting and war?" (Kelly,

2003, para. 12).

The diaries in no way try to present alternative points of view nor do they attempt to maintain

any distance from their subjects. In fact, they embody an emotional tone, one that is immensely

empathetic to the ordinary Iraqis, one that is not afraid to say that the authors are angry,

frightened or appalled.

19
 In addition to these types of elements found on the website, Electronic Iraq runs an RSS

feed from news media on the lower corner of the front page titled “Breaking News” which

provides external links to stories related to the conflict. The stories are followed by the

disclaimer that Electronic Iraq is not responsible for the news being reported there, which is

collected via keywords from commercial media. On March 25, 2003, two of the headlines read:

“ITV gets record ratings, Guardian Unlimited, Tue Mar 25 2003 07:06:00 GMT-0800 (Pacific

Standard Time); and Edging Closer to Baghdad, SignOn San Diego, Tue Mar 25 2003 07:05:00

GMT-0800 (Pacific Standard Time).”

What’s not on the site is a place for people to respond, comment or participate in

discussions. Visitors can e-mail Electronic Iraq, but the site does not allow for comments to

individual posts nor does it host a bulletin board type discussion. Visitors can submit unsolicited

content, but the site warns that it has to be “high quality” and focused on “the humanitarian and

international legal dimensions” of the conflict (Guidelines for content, n.d., para. 1).

A New Kind of International News

Clearly, Electronic Iraq offers an alternative source of information about Gulf War II and

its aftermath, but the portal is more than that. Electronic Iraq represents a new kind of

international news, one that embodies some of the characteristics commonly associated

with NGOs but also suggests a new type of non-profit journalism. Electronic Iraq differs

from much international reporting in that it does not rely on the official opinions of

governments involved in the conflict, nor does it concentrate on presenting the story

through military sources and thus adopting their point of view. Nor does Electronic Iraq

share the jingoistic language and flag-waving that much American media has been

accused of when representing this conflict (Solomon, 2004). Yet unlike many websites

that are against the war, Electronic Iraq is not a collection of links designed to provide

contacts in regards to the opposition; it is not an organizing site. Instead, it concentrates

on providing facts and statistics about the effects of the war on the ground, as well as

posting poignant first hand reports or diaries which clearly aim to evoke emotion rather

than display distance. All of these work together to tell the stories not so much of the

invading forces as of the Iraqi people.

21
 Electronic Iraq works by relying on information provided by other entities – almost none

of whom are professional news outfits. It does this by tapping into a network of NGO and

United Nations sources. In terms of content, this sets the portal apart from certain other

alternative online news source such as blogs which rely heavily on mainstream news providers.

This also differs from earlier studies finding NGO websites were more dependent on news

outlets for information than seen here (Wall, 2002). This may be an indication of increased

production of news by NGOs or a greater sense of solidarity with non-profit news – especially as

mainstream news in this case was often mostly favorable to the U.S. government point of view.

These entities provide Electronic Iraq with information they do not have the resources to collect

themselves; they provide the context and background sometimes missing in mainstream reports.

Surrounding its own work with the reports of these well-known entities enhances Electronic

Iraq’s credibility.

This form of distribution appears to reflect the network form identified as a key

characteristic of NGOs, and might provide a means of establishing what has said to be missing

within the NGO sphere – accountability (Goodin, 2003). These linked-to sites could serve as a

check on each other as neither non-profits nor the UN would want to damage their reputation by

providing false information or simply promoting themselves without taking into account the

good of Iraqis. This type of information sharing may be among the most important aspects of

Electronic Iraq. It suggests another variation on alternative media publishing and brings up two

important issues – the nature of networked or shared news and, secondly, the role of public

participation in such journalism.

 Regarding the first issue of networked news, this is more than a matter of technological

capabilities, but relates further to issues surrounding news as a commodity. Here, the

entities making news available would appear to believe that the value comes from

making information free and available to those who would create portals, blogs and other

online media. This is not to say that the NGOs have no agenda in Iraq, but that their aims

are foremost to provide some sort of assistance, and perhaps monitor or watchdog the

activities of the occupation forces. This would seem traditionally to have been the role of

the corporate media, but as the Abu Ghraib prison scandal indicates, the Western media

appeared to have failed in serving this sort of watchdog role (Solomon, 2004; Hersh,

2004; Knightley, 2004). Yet this is not public service journalism, which is produced with

at least with some government financing and perhaps even control. Nor is it public

journalism even though some of those values appear present. Electronic Iraq is similar

to these both in certain respects, yet ultimately different.

The second phenomenon is the role of audiences in terms of creating or at the least

discussing content. Indymedia, for example, prides itself on its open-publishing model – a news

wire to which anyone can theoretically contribute. Many bloggers also rely on audience

participation and feedback for their content. Such an approach seems to embody the Deweyian

belief in the public’s ability to govern itself, to educate itself through sharing opinions as

opposed to the Lippmanesque view of an ill-informed public that needs to be guided by

professionals. It might be tempting to argue that the Electronic Iraq site is leaning more toward a

Lippmann viewpoint, by relying on these official, professional voices of the UN and NGOs.

That may be partly true, but the site also features the diaries which present a different practice

entirely.

23
 Recent research has suggested that a sort of postmodern news is on the rise (Davis, 1996)

which is fragmented, nonlinear and less rational, employing small stories rather than grand

narratives. That appears to describe these diaries. These tend to be written by activists and other

concerned citizens who ventured to Iraq. The diaries seem to be a variation on the citizen

reporter models found at sites such as South Korea’s ohmynews. The difference is that these are

exceptional citizens – indeed they seem to embody the characteristics outlined by Mermin (1999)

who argued that public opinion was not adequately represented in US reporting of wars and

international conflicts because it was limited to political elites. He recommended improving

coverage of conflict by including citizen activists as “experts” in order to expand the range of

views being presented. These citizen activists – shut out from being given a voice in mainstream

media – form their own news network to deliver that perspective.

Taking into account the criticisms of NGOs in general outlined in the literature review,

what we find on this site is a sort of hybrid of the modern and postmodern – rational

items from NGOs and the UN emphasizing facts and figures and embodying modernist

professionalization, combined with more personal, less professional emotional vignettes

in the diaries. Together, these seem to create a hybrid cultural form that employs

modernist techniques to establish credibility but also encompasses postmodern

storytelling tendencies. The grass-roots group that produces Electronic Iraq may well

serve as the accountability mechanism that observers have asked about in terms of large,

well known NGOs. Perhaps we might call Electronic Iraq and other similar NGO news

portals public goods journalism, a post-profit networked form of news sharing. The

model offered here stands in contrast to the current mainstream online news media model

which now generally asks for registration to access content but may well ask for payment

in the near future. Of course, the notion of news as a public good is not new as critics

such as McChesney (2000) have repeatedly called for a return to this conceptualization

with renewed attention to public funded broadcasting. Others working within the civic or

public journalism movement have outlined a similar form of journalism – listening to

citizens, offering alternative issue frames, stimulating public interest and advancing

knowledge of solutions with sustained attention (Lambeth, 1998) – but their movement

remains embedded in the privately owned media system.

25
The extent to which this shared news network can compete with the slick production of

news by the corporations remains to be seen, as much alternative or citizen-based media

seems destined to remain on the margins of the dominant public sphere of public opinion

and debate. But what this site does indicate is that another model for news production

has been imagined and put into action.

 REFERENCES
Alexander, A. (2004). Disruptive technology: Iraq and the Internet. In D. Miller (ed.) Tell me
lies: propaganda and media distortion in the attack on Iraq (pp. 277-285). London: Pluto Press.

Allan, S. (2004). Conflicting truths: Online news and the war in Iraq. In C. Paterson & A.
Sreberny (eds.) International news in the twenty-first century pp. 285-299. Eastleigh: John
Libbey.

Altheide, D. (1996). Qualitative media analysis. Thousand Oaks: Sage.

Andersen, R. (2004). War stories: Changing modes of persuasion on the Homefront. A paper
presented to the 54th annual conference of the International Communication Association, New
Orleans.

Bacon, K. (2003, Oct. 29). Winning at war, losing at peace. Electronic Iraq.
www.electroniciraq.net. Retrieved Dec. 14, 2003.

Beaudoin, C. E., & Thorson, E. (2001). LA Times offered as model for foreign news Coverage.
Newspaper Research Journal 22(1), 80–93.

Bennett, W.L. (1990). Toward a theory of press–state relations in the United States. Journal of
Communication 40(2), 103–25.

Bollier, D. (2002) Silent Theft; the Private Plunder of Our Common Wealth. New York:
Routledge.

Bruns, A. (2003). Gatewatching, not gatekeeping: Collaborative online news. Media

International Australia, 107, 31-44.

Cohen, B. (1963) The press and foreign policy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Courville, S., & Piper, N. (2004). Harnessing hope through NGO activism. ANNALS American
Association for Political Science, 592, 39-61.

Davenport, D. (2002, December). The new diplomacy. (alliance of NGOS and small and
medium sized nations) Policy Review, pp. 17-31.

Davis, D. K. (1996). Media and modernity: The future of journalism in a post-Cold War and
postmodern world. In P. C. Wasburn (ed.), Research in political sociology (pp. 326-353).
Greenwich, Conn: JAI Press.

De Jonquieres, G. (2000, Dec. 6). NGOs in winning battle to sway opinion. Financial Times.

De Waal, A. (2002). Media wars and the humanitarian (non)-intervention; an interview with
Thomas Keenan. In Gert Lovink (ed). Uncanny networks; dialogues with the virtual
intelligentsia (pp. 214-223). Cambridge: MIT Press.

27
Deuze, M. (2003). The web and its journalisms: considering the consequences of different types
of news media online. New Media & Society, 5(2), 203-230.

Deuze, M., & Dimoudi, C. (2002). Online journalists in the Netherlands; Towards a profile of a
new profession. Journalism: Theory, Practice and Criticism. 3(1), 85–100

Emery, M. (1989). An endangered species: The international news hole. Gannett Center
Journal 3(4), 151-164.

Fisher, J. (1998). Nongovernments: NGOs and the political development of the Third
World. West Hartford, Conn.: Kumarian Press.

Fisher, J. (2000). Social pioneers come of age. UNESCO Courier, p. 17.

Gans, H. (1979). Deciding what’s news. New York: Pantheon Books.

Gitlin, T. (1980). The whole world is watching. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Goodin, R. E. (2003, June). Democratic accountability: The Third Sector. Hauser Center for
Non-profit Organizations Working Paper No. 19. Downloaded from Social Science Research
Sector Network Electronic Paper Collection. http://papers.ssrn.com/. Retrieved Oct. 14, 2004.

Guidelines for content. (n.d.) Electronic Iraq www.electroniciraq.net. Retrieved December 14,
2003.

Hall, S. (1995). The whites of their eyes: Racial ideologies and the media. In G. Dines and J.
Humez (eds.), Gender, race and class in media, (pp. 18–22). Thousand Oaks: Sage.

Hamilton, J. M., & Jenner, E. (2004). Redefining foreign correspondence. Journalism: Theory,
Practice and Criticism, 5(3), 301-321.

Hammond, P., & Herman, E. S. (2000). Degraded capability : the media and the Kosovo crisis.
London: Pluto Press.

Herman, E. S., & Chomsky, N. (1988). Manufacturing consent. New York: Pantheon.

Hersh, S. (2004). Chain of command: The road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib. New York: Harper
Collins.

Homeless in Baghdad. (2003, Dec. 3). Electronic Iraq. www.electroniciraq.net. Retrieved

December 14, 2003.

Hulme, D., & Edwards, M. (1997). NGOs, states and donors: Too close for comfort. New York:
Palgrave Macmillan.
Hundreds of civilian deaths in Iraq were preventable. (2003, December 12). Electronic Iraq.
www.electroniciraq.net. Retrieved Dec. 14, 2003.

Introduction. (n.d.) Electronic Iraq www.electroniciraq.net. Retrieved March 24, 2003.

Kaldor, M. (2003) Global civil society; an answer to war. Cambridge: Polity.

Kaul, I. (2001) Global Public Goods: What Role for Civil Society? Nonprofit and Voluntary
Sector Quarterly, 30(3), 588-602.

Kayes, B. K., & Johnson, T. J. (2004). Weblogs as a source of information about the 2003
Iraq War. In R. Berenger (ed.), Global media go to war: Role of news and entertainment
media during the 2003 Iraq War (pp. 291-303). Spokane: Marquette Books.

Keck, M. & Sikkink, K. (1998). Activists beyond borders. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Kelly, K. (2003, March 24). Angry, very angry. Electroniciraq.net. Retrieved March 24, 2003.

Kidd, D. (2003). Carnival and commons: The global IMC network. A paper presented
at the 3rd Our Media Conference, Barranquilla, Colombia, 17-20 May.
http://www.ourmedianet.org/papers/om2003/Kidd_OM3.pdf. Retrieved July, 23, 2004.

King-Irani, L. (2001, March 8). The Electronic Intifada; cyber-activists deploy Internet
technology to short-circuit Middle East media/military/policy machine.
http://www.commondreams.org Retreived Oct. 15, 2004.

Knightley, P. (1975). The first casualty: From the Crimea to Vietnam: The war correspondent as
hero, propagandist, and myth maker. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York

Knightley, P. (2004). History or bunkum? In D. Miller (ed.) Tell me lies: propaganda and media
distortion in the attack on Iraq (pp. 100-107). London: Pluto Press.

Li, X. (1998). Web page design and graphic use of three US newspapers. Journalism & Mass
Communication Quarterly 75, 353–65.

Lidchi, H. (1999) Finding the right image; British development NGOs and the regulation of
imagery. In T. Skelton and T. Allen (eds.) Culture and global change pp. 87-101. London:
Routledge.

Lobe, J. (2003, August). US conservatives take aim at NGOs. New Internationalist, p. 6.

Retrieved from Expanded Academic Index Jan. 16, 2004.

29
Lovink. (2002). Dark fiber; tracking critical Internet culture. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Massey, B. L. & Levy, M. R. (1999). Interactive online journalism at English language web
newspapers in Asia.; A Dependency Theory analysis. Gazette, 61(6), 523–538.

Mater, M. A. (2001). A structural transformation for a global public sphere? In R. Asen and D.
C. Brouwer (eds.), Counterpublics and the State, (pp. 211-234). Albany: State University of
New York Press

McChesney, R. (2000) Communication as a public good. In A. Anton, M. Fisk and N.

Holmstrom (eds.) Not for Sale: In defense of Public Goods pp. 345-366. Boulder: Westview
Press.

Mermin, J. (1999). Debating war and peace; media coverage of US intervention in the post-
Vietnam era. Princeton: Princeton University Press

Minkoff, D. C. (1997). Producing social capital: National social movements and civil society’,
American Behavioral Scientist 40(5), 606-620.

Naidoo, K. (2000, May 8). NGOs should be made more effective in strengthening democracy:
The New Civic Globalism. The Nation, p. 34.

Newbart D. (2003, April 27). Activist gets close look at horrors of war. Chicago Sun-Times.
Downloaded from Lexis-Nexis database Oct. 15, 2004.
Platon, S. & Deuze, M. (2003). Indymedia journalism: A radical way of making, selecting and
sharing news? Journalism: Theory, Practice and Criticism. 4(3), 336–355

Riffe, D., & Budianto (2001). The shrinking world of network news. International
Communication Bulletin. 36, 12-35.

Riffe, D., Aust, C., & Sundar, S. (1994). The shrinking foreign news hole for the New York
Times. Newspaper Research Journal 15(3), 74-88.

Said, E. (1997) Covering Islam. New York: Vintage Books.

Salamon, L. M. (1994, July-August). The rise of the nonprofit sector. Foreign

Affairs, 109-122.

Salamon, L. M., Anheier, H. K. & Associates. (1998). The emerging sector revisited.
Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Institute for Policy Studies Center for Civil Society
Studies.

Sarkees, M. R. (2003). The peace movement: Voices in the Wilderness. In J. C. Berg (ed.)
Teamsters and Turtles? U.S. progressive political movements in the 21st Century (pp. 229-263).
Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield.

Simmons, P. J. (1998). Learning to live with NGOs. Foreign policy, 112, 82-96.
Singer, J. (2003). Who are these guys? The online challenge to the notion of journalistic
professionalism. Journalism: Theory, Practice and Criticism. 4(2), 139–163

Solomon, N. (2004). “Look, I’m an American.” In D. Miller (ed.) Tell me lies: propaganda and
media distortion in the attack on Iraq (pp. 157-163). London: Pluto Press.

Thussu, D. (2004) Media plenty and the poverty of news. In C. Paterson and A. Sreberny (eds.)
International news in the twenty-first century (pp. 47-61). Eastleigh: John Libbey.

Thussu, D., & Freedman, D. (2003). War and the media: Reporting conflict 24/7. Thousand
Oaks: Sage.

Tumber, H., & Palmer, J. (2004). Media at war: The Iraq crisis. Thousand Oaks: Sage.

Walch, J. (1999). In the net; an internet guide for activists. London: Zed Books.

Wall, M. A. (2002). The Battle in Seattle: How Nongovernmental Organizations used websites
in their challenge to the WTO. In E. Gilboa (ed.), Media and conflict; framing issues, making
policy, shaping opinions, pp. 25-44. Ardsley, NY: Transnational Publishers.

Wall, M. A. (2003). Puppets or press conferences: NGOs' vs. Street Groups' communication in
the Battle of Seattle. Javnost/The Public 10(1), 1-16.

Wall, M. A. (2004). Blogs as black market journalism: A new paradigm for news. Berglund
Center For Internet Studies. http://bcis.pacificu.edu/journal/2004/02/wall.php.

Warkentin, C. (2001). Reshaping world politics: NGOs, the Internet, and global civil society.
Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

Wilding, J. (2004, Jan. 1). US military personnel blocked from accessing Electronic Iraq.
www.electroniciraq.net. Retrieved Dec. 14, 2003.

Williams, B. A., & Carpini, M. X. D. (2000). Unchained reaction; the collapse of media
gatekeeping and the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal. Journalism: Theory, Criticism and Practice,
1(1), 61-85.

Wong, K. (2004) Shutting us out. In E. Yuen, D. B. Rose, & G. Katsiaficas (eds.), Confronting
capitalism: Dispatches from a global movement, pp. 204-214. New York: Soft Skull Press.

31