By Melissa Pachikara
 Iraqi blogger Zeyad Kasim spoke at the ONA conference. Photo: Reuters |
“A great deal of coverage is focusing on the Iraqi government, and I think that’s really irrelevant,” Kasim said. “It should focus on the people and what’s going on in the street.”
He said the number one untold story right now is about neighborhoods shelling neighborhoods.
Interviewed by Mark Memmott, a USA Today blogger who has done reporting in Iraq, Kasim talked of his own mixed neighborhood, mostly Sunni surrounded by Shiite.
“Almost every night an exchange of mortar shells between the neighborhoods,” Kasim said. “And I haven’t seen that in any Western media coverage. It goes on every night, and at least 10 people are injured every night from that.”
While the Western media have reported about sectarian violence by militias, Kasim said, “Sometimes it’s just ordinary people from both neighborhoods. Just, you know, the trust has gone.”
Author of Healing Iraq, Kasim started his own blog after getting hooked on other Iraqi blogs started in the months after the Iraq war began.
“I could spare an hour every day and write about what was going on in Iraq,” Kasim said, noting that he wrote about what he thought about the war, post-war planning, and what his friends, neighbors, colleagues at work, and relatives, thought. He also included photos from the street.
He noted that Internet access in Iraq started only about two years prior to the war.
The presentation highlighted two of his blog entries that had significant impact.
The first was when he covered a pro-democracy demonstration in Baghdad on Dec. 10, 2003, against insurgent attacks. Having seen several Western media outlets at the demonstration, he didn’t think his reporting would be particularly unique. In the evening, he found out that thousands of people were logging onto his blog to look at the photos.
“I got hundreds of comments; it was a very welcoming reaction,” Kasim said, noting that it encouraged him to continue blogging.
Despite their presence, Western media outlets did not cover the event.
“We were extremely surprised because we thought this was a significant event,” Kasim said.
Another noteworthy entry Kasim mentioned was his Jan. 8, 2004, blog entry. It broke the news of the death of his cousin, reporting that he had been pushed into a cold river in the winter by U.S. soldiers, who had caught him breaking curfew.
Kasim posted a letter his cousin’s mother wrote to government and international leaders, including George Bush. Kasim noted that another relative had been with the cousin who had died and lived to tell the story.
The entry caused a lot of blogger backlash, especially because the blog had been optimistic about the war prior to that.
Kasim had criticisms of Western media coverage of Iraq, saying that he thought newspapers did a better job covering Iraq than television did. However, his opinions of what parts of the conflict are not being covered well over the years have changed.
“…[I]n the beginning, three years ago, I thought that media was not covering the good part of what was going on. Over the last year, I think that they’re not covering how bad it is, so that’s a real change.”
Kasim said that The Washington Post had done a good profile of a neighborhood in Western Baghdad that was very meticulous and covered both sides of the equation – both Sunni and Shiite – and how the longtime neighbors started mistrusting each other. He said the story was an example of good coverage but said it was not enough.
Kasim acknowledged that it’s difficult for Western media to get that story because they have to go into different neighborhoods at different times and be in touch with local Iraqis.
Kasim gets his information from his surroundings in neighborhoods and follows local Iraqi message boards, both regional and sectarian, where people post their experiences, cell phone photos, videos and audio files.
“I think it’s a great treasure trove of information. Sometimes you just have to sift through a lot of rubbish and propaganda, and sometimes, it gets ugly and they swear at each other, but sometimes you get gems in these local sites.”
Local staff of Western media could monitor these sites to improve their local coverage, Kasim said. He also said that while it can be difficult for Western media, it’s important for them to be embedded in local neighborhoods and be in touch with local Iraqis. He said it was important to cultivate and rely on a variety of sources for verification purposes.
He also said it would help if journalists could publicize blogs because they put a human face on the war.
Kasim noted that there are about 220 Iraqi bloggers (whose blog links are listed on Kasim's blog) but noted that a lot of the good bloggers have left the country. That includes Kasim, who is attending CUNY to study journalism.
“I thought I should learn some new tools and get the American experience,” he said.
He said he plans to eventually go back to Iraq or Jordan.
