NATO discusses digital media

NATO Review discusses the effects of new media and blogging upon the amount and quality of information coming out of warzones today. The video discussion includes contributions from the founder of liveleak.com – a haven for bomb blasts, humvee crashes and the like. The discussion accompanies an article by our very own Vaughan Smith about how he got into journalism, military minders and the importance of independent reporting,

Managing correspondents in the field has become very much more complex, not least through the expansion in the size of the international press over the last two decades. Less than 500 journalists applied for accreditation for the first Gulf War. By 1998 more than 2,500 journalists were seeking to follow NATO into Kosovo. The huge demand for the limited number of “embed” places available with the British Army in Helmand allows the Ministry of Defence to choose journalists they prefer. link

There’s also a great photodiary by the Afghan blogger Sanjar.