Time out Tuesday (extra!extra! edition): Looking back on Iraq

Having lived through half a decade of living with the war in Iraq on the public conscience (for some of us that's all of high school or college) and upon the cusp of a sixth year... two questions come to mind: 1. What happened to the Afghanistan war? 2. What happened and what can we learn?

Here's a few of the stories I've been looking at while trying to find an answer...

MediaStorm's teamed up with Reuters for their latest collaboration, and produced a piece that looks at what experiencing war has meant for those reporters charged with the task of documenting history. "This is their testimony - bearing witness to ensure the story of Iraq is not lost." Very powerful, not to be missed.

MSNBC created an interactive timeline that looks at the key military and political moments from Colin Powell's UN speech in which he presented the US's reasons for seeking approval for military actions to Saddam's down fall and trial to Blackwater employees gunning down Iraqi civilians to a surge of US troops that is reported to be working. With videos for many of the key events instantly available in a pop-up slider, it's the best time line I've found yet. If only history books came this way.

Over at Magnum, they've decided to approach the topic with "WARS" a four part essay series that takes the work of Philip Jones Griffiths (RIP) in Vietnam, Christopher Anderson in the Middle East, Thomas Dworzak in Chechnya and Iraq and Paolo Pellegrin in Lebanon. With pictures, commentary and a slick design, WARS is one to watch and there are plans for future installments to the series, so stay tuned. (P.S. Hey Magnum, 2003 called they want you to add an RSS feed!)

I have a soft spot for cartoonist, in particular political cartoonist, which I'm sure is because for a time I gave it a go to create my own comic strips and spent a semester creating a few political cartoons for the college paper. Plus as a kid they were my first exposure to newspapers as I used to read after my dad was done with the paper, and you never forget your first. Cartoonist have always been the unsung contributors to newspapers, summing up the days hot topics in one panel and sometimes ending up on Nixon's enemies list or invoking the wrath of the Pentagon among other things (ever see Zodiac, they sometimes even become investigative journalist). Take a look at over a 1000 political cartoons on the Iraq war.

"Through the smoke: A soldier's story of recovery" was created last year for the fourth anniversary and comes from the family of a soldier where he speaks in his own voice on what his recovery was like. Where the pictures may lack in variety and impact (and I'm speaking in PJ terms here so don't get your panties in a bunch Stella) his voice makes up for it.

In another MSNBC piece, a wife, a father, a family looks at the life, military service and death in battle of Spc. Anthony A. Kaiser. "As America contemplates the almost 4,000 U.S. soldiers killed in the conflict in Iraq, one family reflects on the life, service and legacy of their lost loved one."


*Time out Tuesdays is back on SLR for a while, until MultimediaShooter.com gets all the kinks worked out and I can start posting over there again.

5years: A number game

5 years

127 journalists killed (84 by murder and 43 KIA, of which 14 killed by US forces)

400,00 - 600,000 (est.) Iraqi civilians killed.

55,000 Iraqi insurgents killed

548 Contract workers killed

305 Non-Iraqis kidnapped (54 killed, 147 released, 4 escaped, 6 rescued and 94 status unknown.)

164,481 coalition troops deployed (155,000 from the US, 4,500 from the UK, 2,000 from Georgia, 900 from Poland, 650 from South Korea and 1,431 from all other nations.)

3,989 US soldiers killed

29,395 US soldiers wounded (5,879 of which, afflicted with serious brain or spinal injuries.)

$800 billion and counting at a current rate of $12 billion a month.

$4.6 billion: Halliburton Overcharges Classified by the Pentagon as Unreasonable and Unsupported

1 Government that attempts to limit press freedoms

1 Civil war that no one is acknowledging.

0 Exit strategies

Worth it?

Organizing photos goes all Philip K. Dick

I don't write about technology often, I know, this coming from the guy that posts about video-hosting websites, new cameras, RAW processing and Microsoft's table computer thing, but honest I don't do it often, check!

Anywho I was looking at the Natchway speech from the TED awards again, and I saw this other video on the site for a software application called Photosynth, which presents us with a new way of organizing, manipulating and viewing digital images.



(They were recently acquired by Microsoft as well... It looks like Microsoft is positioning itself as a major player in digital imaging?)

Pretty amazing right?

I think it's cool to think about organizing and being able to move stuff around and arrange your files in a GUI that's both slick and fast, not to mention the amazingly innovative and revolutionary idea of, as its creator Blaise Aguera y Arcas calls it "creating hyperlinks between images" based on the content of those pictures. Which is like the Google Maps new local pictures tab (which got into some trouble) but ten times cooler!

Still not getting it?

Imagine all the pictures on Flickr of the Golden Gate bridge being combined to create a mosic of images rendered into a 3-D space that you as the user are free to move around, zoom in and out off, click on any point to see a real picture of that point, from that point and from virtually every angle allowing for you to generally direct your own unique navigational experience though the collection.

This is revolutionary and can change the way we store and call up information.

It creates a "collective memory" of the real world space and archives it for anyone looking to see it.

Think of it as a visual wiki (btw, if that term catches on, I coined it!)

I've seen some baby steps made into this area in journalism with data based multimedia, most notably Andrew DeVigal is steering some really intertesting experiments in this area at the New York Times, but after seeing Photosynth in action, it only hints at the potential and challenges us to go much further.

What I find really interesting

Now this is all new and as you can see, quite fascinating (for me) and "from the world of tomorrow!", but what I find to be really the most interesting thing is what's found at 1:42 of the video.

The video goes on to show how this technology is so developed for image processing and delivery, that it can not only store entire novels, but also newspapers; that can be zoomed in and out of and navigated from pages within a section or other sections all together within seconds. (Look just watch the video, I'm never going to do it justice by trying to describe it.)

My pal Ryan's been talking about e-Paper for a while and how it's going to replace printed newspapers, well, as much as I'll miss the smell of ink (maybe they can sell it in a mist?) and tearing out interesting articles, pictures, comics and ads that I'll want to place in my sketchbook or research more about (maybe e-Paper can come with del.icio.us.) I can't deny it.

E-paper is coming, assuming RSS and online delivery doesn't replace it as wi-fi comes to cell phones and everything from a PSP to TiVo to refrigerators with built-in screens (I've still got one on reserve Hanna ;) are starting to connect to the web and offer information everywhere anytime whenever.

I can see e-paper and something like photosynth combining and giving us the next newspaper, or newspaper 2.0 or whatever the techie marketers will call it.

What I find really-really interesting

Ok, that's what I find to be really fascinating, but what I find to be really-really fascinating is the new forms of multimedia we can produce with this technology on newspapers.

Yes folks, this is the most important part and the ideas that I think are relevent to our industry and to me as a photographer and new-media thinker.

Say we're sent out to cover another protest story (yes, another one) and we're looking for a new angle (just to challenge ourselves if nothing else) and of course if you're anything like me, you're thinking multimedia. So why not cover the protest and get all the killer pictures you always do (you're so good) and of course we'll get the ambient sounds and interviews (of course) but what about the presentation?

Many of us just throw it in soundslides or edit a video in Final Cut, Premier Pro or iMovie, but we never really think about presentation or what sort of interface the viewer will use to engage with our work.

Some of this can be caulked up to time constraints and impeding deadlines (I know every time I've done multimedia it's always been on my own time) but a larger reason is that everyone already at a paper is so busy trying to learn the new programs and tools used to make these new things that no one is thinking about how to show them off... because Flash is hard and many papers don't have multimedia editors (yet) to budget for these things.

So I'm looking at Photosynth and I'm thinking of that protest story and I'm getting excited thinking about all the possibilities.

Like rendering the photos into a 3-D environment and interviews could be mapped to the subjects with a picture of them where they were in the 3-D space when you spoke to them and then map the ambient sounds to their sources within the environment. Birds chirping in the tree, the plane flying over at the end of the street, the ding-dong of the cross walk sign, the wheels of the skateboard from that kid on the sidewalk...

This could allow letting people navigate their own way through the story and find interviews and story blocks and pictures in completely unique and innovative ways.

Copy from a story could show up in newspaper boxes, posters on walls could link to related stories, zooming out to a birds eye view could turn the scene into info graphics or other data-based multimedia).

And we can then take it one step further by inviting the public to submit their pictures from the event to further develop the archive of the collective memory.

How cool is that?

I know some folks on photo staffs will hear things like this and fear it, but I say embrace it. Embrace it before the kid fresh out of college (me) embraces it and comes into your newsroom.

Want more? Here's NASA's take on it.

There isn't any reason why we shouldn't be doing this.

What is truth?

As journalist, our stories go into the paper and inform the public today, but in time it becomes history and if that history is built on lies, then we become a nation of lies.

But how do we define truth and when does something become truth? We once believed that using leeches as a medical remedy was a truth. Weapons of mass destruction were sold as a truth. Up to a few weeks ago scientist had to reexamine the truth of dark matter.

I don't have a simple answer to this, this is just the type of fascinating stuff that I like to think about (other topics include: How is memory stored in the brain, will nano technology lead to cameras we can wear over our eyes and fire by blinking and how do they get those widgets into cans of Guinness?)

I think it's important to think about these things, especially as journalist we have a gatekeeper's responsibility to ask the sometimes rude questions and pursue every angle so that truth will emerge.

We have no other choice but to get it right and get it right the first time, and if you think otherwise, perhaps you should look into another line of work. For one, fiction pays more.

War and Truth is a recent documentary that looks into the history of war, from WWII to today and examines the way we cover it, what our government controls and how truth and history is shaped by these actions.

And unlike Fahrenheit 9/11 or OutFoxed or Fahrenhype 9/11 it tries to do so in a balanced approach where truth is paramount and no judgment is made on the part of the film. (Also see Why we Fight, Fog of War and Capturing the Friedmans if you're into good journalistic documentaries done right.)

And it doesn't pull any punches: "If people are going to vote for war and we are gonna put this nation at war, we ought to know something about it," says Roger Peterson, former ABC coorespondant who was seriously injured in Vietnam, in the film. (Bonus: Ted Koppel name drops him in this excellent speech to the Overseas Press Club.)

The focus of the film is journalist and how war is covered. They speak with journalist from every era and from all sides, from the mainstream free press to the internal military press. It also asks why this is important, for journalist to take such large risks to do the job. According to Committee to Protect Journalists 112 journalist have been killed in Iraq as of today (10 more since the May 07 statistics the film uses).

There has to be a reason why we do this.

One more thing, Helen Thomas is a firecracker. I've never felt compelled to reference the 40s and call anyone a "fire cracker" before, but there you are. She's a firecracker.

Other's have also examined the essence of truth.

Steven Colbert (yeah like his ego needs a link) has made a career out of coining words like truthiness.

The Washington Post's Baghdad bureau chief Rajiv Chandrasekaran wrote all about his struggle to report on Iraq in the book "Imperial Life in the Emerald City."

Sig Christenson of the San Antonio Express-News recently wrote a commentary on his struggles and frustrations with both sides, but in particular he takes journalist to task for not asking those tough questions and questioning the given truths.

Last week I was listening to NPR and tuned into to an engaging hour with Paul Watson, and his story of the 1994 Pulitizer Prize winning photograph (warning, the image is very graphic, otherwise I would not be linking to it instead of posting it) of a dead American soldier being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu,Somalia that still haunts him.

I can't mention everything, but one thing in his story what struck a cord was his reality of what images the Pentagon, wire services and newspapers would allow and reject and thus in turn how this would shape the history of events. In once instance he moved some images of American soldiers whose body parts were being flung about, they didn't run but the word was out and questions were being asked. According to Watson, the Pentagon denied it as truth and claimed it never happened, in turn this became the new truth of the events.

I can't recommend it enough, you should give it a listen, it's very good.

Even Dr. Seuss was shaping the message as a political cartoonist for New York City's tabloid magazine "PM" during WWII.
Dr. Seuss may be a surprise, but it shouldn't be. Political cartoonist are often at the forefront of challenging norms and asking the tough questions.

Its a topic Professor Dennis Dunleavy has been examining in relation to the current war. In his research (which I guess he hasn't published yet) he's found that in the case of Iraq and in particular Guantanamo Bay, it was the daily newspaper cartoonist who were challenging our excepted truths.

The nature of truth is a very delicate balance. As journalist we are taught to inform and present our findings without any sign or hint of an opinion. There's a very obvious reason for this, one that I hope should be very clear and evident by now.