The courageous 'Citizen Journalists' of Iran have given us their definitive answer

By Dan Wooding

(Photo: Fleet Street today minus its newspapers)

LAKE FOREST, CA (ANS) -- When I first entered secular journalism in London, England, back in the late sixties, my colleagues warned me against the dangers of "Citizen Journalism."

In those days, you had to have a National Union of Journalists (NUJ) card to even been get a job on a newspaper and the perks of being a union member were terrific.

We "worked" a four-day week and were pressing for a three-day week because of the "stress" of the four-day week. We got seven weeks paid vacation and wanted even more time off.

My newspaper, the Sunday People, wouldn't allow us to use electric typewriters as that would make it too efficient.

While on assignment, reporters were not allowed to take photographs as that would deprive our unionized photographers of their living.

No wonder, we didn't want "Citizen Journalism" as we just wanted "professionals" to ply our trade and, because if they did, we would lose much of our power in shaping the thinking of our readers.

But Rupert Murdoch changed everything in Fleet Street, the center of British journalism, where I "worked."

(Photo: The Wapping move triggered a lengthy battle with the unions)

His transformation was called the "Wapping Revolution" and in 1986, the owner of News International, moved production of his major titles (The Times, The Sunday Times, The Sun and The News of the World) from Fleet Street to Wapping, set in London's Docklands area, and in so doing, he set about an irreversible chain reaction in the structure of journalism in the UK.

It was one of the most dramatic industrial disputes of the last century.

Murdoch secretly moved his newspaper business overnight to a fortress-like plant in Wapping, east London, sparking a bitter and doomed year-long strike by printers which revolutionized labour relations as well as the newspaper industry.

Andrew Neil, the then editor of the Sunday Times, said, "The ban on journalists using modern computer technology was far from the only absurdity in pre-Wapping newspapers. For most of the 20th century, Fleet Street had been a microcosm of all that was worst about British industry: pusillanimous management, pig-headed unions, crazy restrictive practices, endless strikes and industrial disruption, and archaic technology. If British unions were then (rightly) regarded as the worst in the western world, then Fleet Street's print unions were the unchallenged worst of the worst.

"Wapping changed all that. In the process it saved the British newspaper industry. If Fleet Street had staggered to the end of the last century with pre-Wapping, absurdly high labour costs, world-beating low productivity, antediluvian technology and the industrial relations of the madhouse, then probably only a handful of papers would have survived - concentrated in Rupert Murdoch's News International and Lord Rothermere's Associated [Newspapers.]

(Photo: Rupert Murdoch with two of his titles, the Sun and the Times)

"There would certainly have been no color printing, no multi-section Sunday newspapers, no rise of the big Saturday editions, no new sections during the week, no Independent (which slipped out unscathed during the Wapping dispute while we were locked in mortal combat), no newspaper websites, and a lot less of the diversity and dynamism that makes the British newspaper market the most exciting and competitive in the world. The idea of launching an all-colour, Berliner-size Observer would never have crossed anybody's mind because the very idea would have been beyond the pale."

So "Wapping" destroyed the then print unions in the UK and journalists began using what was called the "new technology" and eventually all the newspapers moved to the Canary Wharf area of London, leaving Fleet Street devoid of its historic role as the newspaper capital of Great Britain.

But it would take many more years and, a new century, for the rise of "Citizen Journalism" to take place with the creation of social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and You Tube, to name a few. Journalism that was "by the people" began to flourish, enabled in part by emerging Internet and networking technologies, such as weblogs, chat rooms, message boards, wikis and mobile computing.

"The Wild Wild West of the Blogosphere," as I call it, has taken "Citizen Journalism" to new heights (or lows) as just about everyone can now post the good, the bad and the ugly on their blogs.

Sadly, much blogging today is negative and hateful with people conducting their personal vendettas on-line and, unhappily, many are conducted by so-called Christians.

I realize that not all blogging is negative, but I do wonder what non-Christians make of the so-called Christian blog sites that are often so vicious in their attacks against other believers.

But now, "Citizen Journalism" has finally shown its good and courageous side with many of the people of Iran, armed with their mobile phones, taking videos of the violence they are being subjected to by the vicious tactics of the Iranian police who continue to attack hundreds of protesters with tear gas and fire live bullets in the air to disperse the latest rally in Tehran, as they have threatened to crush any further protests over the disputed vote, warning a "revolutionary" response.

Tom Silva, writing in the Chicago Tribune, said, "We may not fully realize it yet but the Green Revolution that's taking place in Iran, beyond its political implications, is a singular event because it may be the moment of arrival for citizen journalism.

Reading the tweets from the streets of Tehran as protestors rail against the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmedinajad, and the intractability of the theocracy of the mullahs, is like entering an entirely new category of reporting. It goes beyond the ground-level observations and interviews of even the finest reporting to deliver something close to a longitudinal study of mass consciousness.

(Footage ... YouTube video allegedly shows a woman named "Neda" after she was shot during a Tehran protest on Saturday. [Photo: AFP])

"Tweet after tweet render a population that's beaten, water hosed, tear gassed, arrested and doused in chemicals, but also one that's buoyed by rumors and made defiant by the pain of others. It's horrific and heartbreaking and stirring. What's also extraordinary is technology hatched in America's micro blogging has delivered to this movement the power of instant expression and instant appeal to the court of world opinion."

He added, "The Iranians in the streets who are recording the remarkable events will not be disappeared. As thugs roam the streets of Tehran intimidating and summarily rounding up innocent people, social media is preserving that most sacred of human agencies: their voice and its claim on the truth."

Foreign journalists and TV cameras may be banned from Tehran, but almost every hour, graphic amateur video of violence in Iran is posted on the internet for the world to see.

At last, "Citizen Journalism" has come into its own and, we all should be grateful for these unpaid "journalists" for risking their lives to tell the world about what is happening in their troubled country.

Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has warned that there will be a crackdown and that there will be consequences if people continue to protest.

But the main opposition candidate, Mir-Hossein Mousavi, has told his supporters he's ready for martyrdom.

And his foreign spokesman, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, has told Al Jazeera television the protesters too are prepared to die for the cause.

"We are the winner of this election.," he said.


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Dan Wooding, 68, is an award winning British journalist now living in Southern California with his wife Norma of 45 years. He is the founder and international director of ASSIST (Aid to Special Saints in Strategic Times) and the ASSIST News Service (ANS); and US Bureau Chief for the Missionaries News Service (www.missionariesnews.tv) and Safe Worlds IPTV's Faith, Hope and Charity channel. He was, for ten years, a commentator, on the UPI Radio Network in Washington, DC., and now hosts the weekly "Front Page Radio" show on KWVE in Southern California and which is also carried on the Calvary Radio Network throughout the United States. The program is also aired in Great Britain on UCB UK and Calvary Chapel Radio UK. Wooding is the author of some 42 books, the latest of which is his autobiography, "From Tabloid to Truth", which is published by Theatron Books. To order a copy, go to www.fromtabloid totruth.com.