Video blogger dodging bullets, teargas in Oaxaca, Mexico

[Wiley50]

Video blogger dodging bullets, teargas in Oaxaca, Mexico

What's more ballsy than picking up your video camera and jetting off to Baghdad, Iraq to report on conditions for ordinary civilians caught in the midst of a civil war? How about picking up your video camera and jetting off to Oaxaca, Mexico, to report on the conditions of ordinary civilians caught in the midst of civil unrest and a government crackdown?

That's what Brian Conley, creator of the powerful Alive in Baghdad video blog has done with his latest project, Alive in Mexico. Conley, whose work picked up two awards at the recent Vloggies Video Blogs award ceremony in San Francisco, has opened up a new bureau in Oaxaca, Mexico, the scene of a long simmering popular uprising that has boiled over in recent months.

Conley and his collaborative projects (Alive in Baghdad has been run mostly by native Iraqis, armed with video cameras in recent months) is a sterling example of the potential and power of the Internet and portable, easy to use video and audio equipment to revolutionize the way news is gathered and consumed.

You can forget about hearing anything from Matt Lauer about the conditions on the ground in Oaxaca, where villagers are calling for the removal of Governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz and battling with the Federal Preventive Police(PFP). But you can zoom on over to AliveinMexico and see what's its like to stand in the middle of a pitched street battle between the PFP and the protesters. Amazing stuff.

In IM conversations with InfoWorld, Conley said that he's already been arrested by the Mexican police and taken in for questioning. He also says that the situation has, in some ways, been more difficult in Oaxaca than Baghdad, where citizens were happy to come forward and give interviews about conditions on the ground.

In Oaxaca, unlike Baghdad, fear of government reprisal has made one on one interviews hard to come by. However, life on the street is safer and footage from the street protests is easier to come by than in Iraq. (An Alive in Baghdad reporter was kidnapped and held for days after being spotted taking "B Roll" footage of a gas station. His account of his captivity and the disintegration of civil society in Iraq along ethnic lines is one of the more moving pieces of reporting I've seen anywhere, and speaks volumes about the conflict. More recent entries there bring you up close interviews with car bomb survivors. This while the MSM in the U.S. dithers about whether to call Iraq a "civil war," and folks like Lauer are celebrated just for standing up in downtown Manhattan in thousand dollar suits and stating the obvious.

Conley has some powerful people in his corner, including VON founder Jeff Pulver. Donations and sales of raw footage have allowed him to pay meager salaries to his staff in Baghdad and get the ball rolling in Oaxaca. For now, he says he's got enough video in the bag for six or so more posts to Alive in Mexico, providing he can keep one step ahead of the PFP. As he did in Iraq, he's also trying to build a self-sustaining vlogging/news organization that can keep reporting after he boards a jet back home to the U.S. As we hear more and more about countries like China and Iran cutting off access to parts of the Internet that challenge the government's authority or view of reality, you've got to pull for folks like Conley who, despite formal training as a journalist, are living up the truest ideals of the profession and speaking truth to power.

December 05, 2006

Filed under: Blogs and blogging

http://weblog.infoworld.com/techwatch/archives/009172.html

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