Citizen war-reporter? The Caucasus test
o watch Russian leaders and media make the public case for war with Georgia when the conflict was still in its infancy was also to wonder why at that point there was still so little factual evidence - particularly photos and videos - from observers on the ground in South Ossetia's capital, Tshkinvali. The Kremlin's spokespersons wanted the world to believe that the city had just suffered a Stalingrad-like devastation - though there was as yet no visible proof of the thousands of victims claimed.
It seemed a golden opportunity. After all, Time magazine had famously proclaimed "you" - that is, all of us - its "person of the year" in 2006. Surely news of the award, and the technology to act on it, had reached South Ossetia - so that at least one person would produce a conclusive account of how much damage had been inflicted on the city and its inhabitants. Where, in short, were the citizen journalists?
The screen of war
As the Caucasus war unfolded, those traditional media organisations that still had bureaus anywhere near that exotic part of the world struggled to fly in professional reporters. The Kremlin already had a head-start in winning its domestic public-relations battle: in the absence of much evidence to the contrary, its claims of more than 1,500 victims of "Georgian aggression" found a ready, and outraged, audience. Only later did humanitarian organisations such as Human Rights Watch release reports suggesting that the true number of casualties was much lower and that level of destruction had been greatly overstated; few in Russia seemed to be paying attention by that point.
http://www.opendemocracy.net/article/citizen-war-reporter
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