The Washington Post profiles one of my favorite milbloggers, Bill Roggio, who runs The Fourth Rail and ThreatsWatch. Another ground-breaking milblogger, Michael Yon, gets a mention. The article’s undertone is critical of Bush administration efforts to reach out to the blogosphere, and paints milbloggers as “weapons” in an “information war.” The WaPo’s take on bloggers as tools easily exploited by one major political party or the other is typical–and typically misinformed. Again, I ask: Is it too much to expect reporters who write about blogs to actually read them?

Matt at Blackfive is collecting best milblog posts for an anthology due out last in 2006 from Simon and Schuster. His announcement back in October about the book is worth repeating here:

In the past, the experiences of war have produced poetry and novels and memoirs. The War on Terror is different: we’re seeing through a new set of eyes, a new kind of literature. In real time, on the Internet, officers and enlisted men and women are chronicling the war on weblogs.

As the number of blogs continue to rise dramatically, blogging’s advent – the effect of which has been likened to that of the printing press on the Reformation - is giving the world the opportunity to experience the world’s latest war – the War on Terror – first hand.

Bloggers are being characterized as an army of millions of “citizen reporters.” Their strength lies in their advantages - instantaneous publication (speed), expertise in any subject matter imaginable (knowledge), and low, low cost of production (free in most cases). But their greatest advantage may be their ability to reach their readers with content unfiltered by an editor and to engage in a similarly direct and unmediated dialogue with them.

Like everything else, blogging changed after September 11, 2001. The US and its Allies were officially declaring a war against terrorists worldwide. Soldiers were being deployed in massive numbers to the Middle East. The world was rapidly changing. People were nervous and curious about what was going on with the government and the military; curious beyond their nightly or cable news. Blogs were the perfect source to fill in the gaps of information that people really wanted to know about. Websurfers were turning to the soldiers themselves to find out what was happening overseas.

Imagine if the men and women fighting World War II could have somehow told their stories daily for all to hear…imagine if Audie Murphy or George Patton could have broadcast their experiences of a battle the day after it occurred – while the experience was still fresh in their minds and without time taking the edges off of their memories.

That’s what military bloggers are doing today – offering unfettered access to the War on Terror in their own words – each one speaking to anyone, everyone who has access to the Web. For the first time, the public does not have to wait months or years to hear what happened from the individual soldier’s point of view. They don’t have to settle for the government’s approved messages.

Or the MSM’s.

***

An afterthought: Don’t you love these MSM types going after citizen journalists as tools in the information war? Because, you know, the MSM would never let themselves be used that way. Rigghht.

***

James Joyner at OTB weighs in on the WaPo story.

comments (0)   trackbacks (10)