#Neda, Still Outside the Mainstream

It may appear that #Neda–the young woman whose death on the streets of Tehran was captured on a staggering amateur video–has “gone mainstream.”

Which is to say, that Big Media has recognized the role the image may be playing in driving political opinion, and is exploring it as a way to interpret the continuing protests and political activities. [I blogged on this topic yesterday.]

But no.

Where credit is due: Last night CNN repeatedly ran a version of the 37-second video, with proper warnings about its graphic content. The hosts and guests talked about the video’s potential–and apparent–role in galvanizing the protest movement both inside and outside Iran.

The fact that it has done so is beyond dispute.

But CNN stands nearly alone among U.S. mainstream media in its acknowledgment of the role the Neda video is playing in Tehran.

To check this out, I did on-site searches of three major print-heritage MSM news sites. Here’s what I found, as of 3:30 Monday, June 22 [links below are to stored searches]:

WashingtonPost.com

Stories from AP, Reuters and a single homegrown reference: An online discussion by a non-staffer

NYTimes.com

Three references in The Lede news blog, and reference deep in one print article, which says that the authenticity of the video cannot be verified [of which more in a moment]

USAToday.com

Two blog entries, plus wire stories

Let’s open up the search. Here’s what Google News tosses up on a search for “Neda”: 332 results!

But wait, there’s less.

Dig into those results and you’ll see:

• The New York Daily News appears to be alone among U.S. newspapers in offering original Neda reporting in print by its staff. The Kansas City Star and the L.A. Times have blogged on it.
• Among non-daily MSM, Time’s Robin Wright features a print article that uses Neda as a jumping off point to put the current events in historical context
• Otherwise the content comes mostly from ABC news, CNN and FoxNews, which for the most part used the Neda video as a compelling “actuality” to show over the latest news updates.
• Around the world, big media is paying more attention: the BBC and other UK outlets, some local TV stations’ websites, and wire stories from AP, Reuters and AFP.

The journalists most actively discussing the Neda phenomenon? Indie bloggers.

So why the mainstream media prudery?

It could be that, yes, the video is a fraud. I think this a very remote possibility, almost paranoid in its nature. One look at the video makes this quite clear. [One commenter on my blog entry yesterday makes this case--he suspects a "blood packet" has been applied to Neda's face--and many others are doing so around the web.]

The world is a strange and terrible place, and [as a former Washington Post newsroom employee] I am enough of a trained skeptic to see that it’s foolish to rule out the possibility entirely.

It can also be argued that the MSM should exercise its often-valuable caution and care in its reports–especially as new details about Neda’s life and images of her beautiful face emerge from obscure,  unfamiliar sources and are being used to serve the protesters’ political ends. In this view, the MSM is the prudent counterweight to the flighty speculations of the social web, refusing to fall into the hands of the revolutionaries’ spinning.

But as I argued yesterday, I suspect it’s less about that than it is about the MSM’s unwillingness to acknowledge [accept? understand?] its increasingly marginalized role in a fast-moving news environment where real-time global information sharing without MSM approval is the rule, not the exception.

I believe that a lot of the media’s “Well, we’re really not sure” chin-pulling is an affected, self-infatuated dodge–a way to avoid of the larger, paralyzing question:

What, exactly, should the mainstream media should do when a story develops so far beyond its control–or understanding?

n.b. Over at the journalism site Poynter.org, Bill Mitchell explains some of the challenges the Neda video creates for traditionally trained journalists.

#Neda and the Power of the Viral Image

The 37-second amateur video that shows, in vivid and horrifying detail, a young woman named Neda dying of a gunshot wound on the streets of Tehran, has the capacity to change the political dynamic in Iran. It may already have done so.

I will not link to the video here. The decision to watch it should be made carefully, knowing it is sickening and likely to remain with you for the rest of your life. You can easily find it if you want.

I found it nearly overwhelming. I had to step away from the computer and gather myself. Afterward when describing it to my wife my voice was shaking and I couldn’t quite formulate my thoughts.

The morning after viewing it I can say this: I believe that 37 second clip can transform global opinion.

I liken it to the 1972 photograph of the young Vietnamese girl running naked through the streets, her skin seared by the chemical burn of napalm. Or the 1963 picture of police dogs attacking civil rights protesters in Birmingham, Alabama. Both, it is argued, played a key role in galvanizing public opinion on the political issues they represented.

For me, and I suspect many who view it, the Neda video says with absolute clarity: The violent crackdown on street protesters in Tehran must not stand. The perpetrators must be stopped or removed.

It removes any ambivalence or subtlety one might have about the situation there.

Last night I was actually wondering how a government responsible for Neda’s death–in an environment where cheap, instant, global, many-to-many communications has brought the phrase “the whole world is watching” closer to literal fact than it was in the 1960s–can possibly remain in power.

In the cool light of morning I realize that was dramatic hyperbole, heavily colored by emotion.

But still: That 37-second video has already become a singular, powerful fact driving  global opinion. Its impact will only accelerate and expand. It will have consequences.

Let me also predict that the mainstream media is going to miss the import of that video. Partly because they dare not show it, and thus it will not become part of their newsrooms’ collective consciousness–or conscience.

But also because they still tend to view amateur, viral “reporting” as marginal “bonus” material, incapable of driving public thought in the way their own professional reporting and opinionating can.

There is a #Neda hashtag on Twitter. It captures conversations about and inspired by the video.

Yet it is now being added as a hashtag to general Twitterizing on the election protests, as an  expression of commitment at least as powerful as the green avatars that hover like nauseated witnesses over the 140-character global thoughtstream.

Much is made about Twitter and its limited ability to drive change.

This isn’t about that.

It’s about the power of a single, brief incident captured on video–in an  environment where people share what moves them instantly with a global audience, without the assistance or approval of governments, media or any institution—to change others’ minds.

Change the world?

In the cool light of morning, I realize that’s foolish too.

But if you are feeling strong and brave and willing to have a horrifying image seared into your brain, view the video.

It will change you.

DataViz[zes] of the Week: Google Election Map Gallery

I’ve long argued that journalists use too many words. Or, more precisely, they try to use them for everything.

When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. When all you have is a Microsoft Word and a deadline, everything looks like a 25-inch story.

Google’s just launched Elections ‘08 Map Gallery illustrates the limitations of this approach.

Want to know how John McCain got to where he is today? You can read this four-screen, tiny-type piece at biography.com. It’s well-researched and full of important information and fair-minded observations. Or you can click around John McCain’s Journey, one of several maps in the gallery.

You will find a biography organized by geography (a geo-bio!), starting in the Panama Canal Zone (where he was born) to. . .1600 Pennsylvania Ave. (?). You won’t get much intellectually satisfying detail from the map–no Keating Five, no material about his days at the Naval Academy, nothing about his role as a “maverick.” If real journalism were poured into the framework, you’d have a great product that could reach a lot more people than the highly literate biography.com version.

Google, of course, knows from search. And so one of the more successful Election 08 maps is a geography of search queries by candidate name. [Earth to Mountain View: Hillary Clinton is out. You may remove her from the election maps now.]

Others have reported this search query data in print–it’s a fun [if dangerous] parlor game to use search volume as a marker of public sentiment. But once again, a visual, geography-based presentation that offers real-time search data offers a completely different view of election dynamics.

And finally, a video-based map, which essentially does away with both words and numbers. Obama Videos is a map showing where Obama delivered key speeches, with each location linked to a video of that speech.

This is great stuff. With Google’s mashup tools being wide open for use, the gallery is likely to grow and get weirder [A Map of Lies! The Flip Flop Highway!].

I, for one, think it’s going to be a much more entertaining election season thanks to these visualizations. Will it produce a better informed, more engaged public? We’ll see. There’s promise that some of these maps will capture different kinds of citizen participation–the “wisdom” of the crowds writ large. The Election Search map is an example.

One map shows real-time election-based Twitter items geographically. It’s about as exciting as watching gum being chewed. But it’s a start.

Eyeballing the Best “Contextual” Video Ad Ever

While playing around with the video platform MetaCafe today, I came across a particularly shrewd use of contextual video advertising.

Are you a Lasik candidate? Check out this educational video illustrating the procedure, with a flap of cornea being sliced off and laser pulses reshaping the eye–all while the patient is wide awake.

What’s that? Think you might want contacts instead? Click here, my friend!

Web Video Statistics: I Smell a Rat

The web metrics firm comScore has published a tally of of how many online videos were viewed during the month of December. That number is 10 billion. That’s “b,” as in “freakin’ billion.”

Like Mike Huckabee, I didn’t major in math. But as a journalist I do have an Associate’s Degree in Rat Sniffing. And I smell a big one.

By my primitive calculations, if comScore’s stats are correct, during the month of December 2007 2,237 person-years were spent watching online video. (That’s assuming each of those 10 billion videos was watched for :30.)

For comparison, 2,237 person years would be the equivalent of:

• one human watching online video  continuously, without bathroom break or time spent dying and being reborn, since the reign of Julius Caesar.
• 2,237 people spending one year, day and night without rest or time to stretch, planting the Great Plains with switchgrass.

And that’s just one month in 2007! In 2008, I’m sure enough person-years of video will be watched worldwide to rebuild the Great Pyramid of Giza by hand (20,000 men 20 years, according to recent estimates).

This is either a preposterous bit of stat-pumping or a terribly, terribly sad commentary. Or, probably, both.

Visions of ‘08, Vol 2

Today’s prognostication for the year ahead is near and dear to my heart: A warning that all the video people are watching on the web (along with music, phone calls and other bandwidth-sucking activities) will soon slow the Internet to a crawl.

The prediction appears in Harvard public policy lecturer Emily Kamarck’s op-ed in the Boston Globe.

False apocalypse?

Another reason to boycott web video?

Or a wise warning that the Internet free ride may have to end? Which is to say, someone [and we always know who that "someone" is] will have to pay for the new infrastructure needed to keep things moving along so you can exercise your god-given right to watch Battlestar Galactica ruruns on Hulu?

We’ll find out, maybe, in ‘08.

[n.b.: The home page of today's Boston.com, home of the Globe, includes a particularly well-done, if terribly earnest, Globe-produced video.]

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