The fast and the furious

Robert Worth's NYT Week in Review piece on MEMRI is out. Worth, who reported from Baghdad and knows what he's talking about, points out the extent to which journalists have come to rely on bloggers, translations services like MEMRI, terrorism monitors like SITE and Jamestown:

WHEN an Iraqi insurgent group releases a new videotape or claims responsibility for an attack, Western reporters in Baghdad rarely hear about it firsthand. Nor do they usually get the news from their in-house Iraqi translators.

Instead, a reporter often receives an e-mailed alert from a highly caffeinated terrorism monitor sitting at a computer screen somewhere on the East Coast. Within hours, a constellation of other Middle East analysts has sent out interpretations — some of them conflicting — and a wealth of contextual material.
...

Journalists in Iraq are far too busy with the perils of on-the-ground reporting to sit at screens for hours browsing for terrorist Internet traffic. That is why the new array of online expertise has become an essential tip sheet for them. A whole new mini-industry of instantaneous translation and analysis has arisen, and it often erodes the traditional distinctions between credentialed foreign policy experts and mere amateurs.

Some of the groups are well-known and generously financed outfits like the Middle East Media Research Institute, or Memri, whose primary function is to translate Arabic and Muslim media.

But among the best informed are one-person shows — a driven Arabist with a bedside computer. They gain access to terrorist Web sites, sometimes by posing as terrorists themselves, and translate jihadist communiqués and chatter that would not otherwise be available. Others write blogs, translating and commenting on terrorism and politics in general.

This conduit up to the mass media has long struck me as one of the crucial points about the influence of blogging and these internet sites which direct measures (like blog hits or links, surveys about blog reading patterns, or "scalp counts") miss.  It's very interesting to see bloggers like me, Juan Cole, and Josh Landis (and many others not mentioned in his piece) essentially put in the same category as professional, full-time and multi-person staffed organizations like MEMRI, SITE or Jamestown.   What bloggers and these organizations do is very different, as is how we do it.  But from Worth's perspective as a journalist seeking useful information and analysis, our output falls into the same category.  I think he's right about the consumption of this information by specialist audiences (government agencies, journalists, academics, etc).  There's an interesting research project to be done (by someone else!) on the implications of these new sources for public debate and for policy-making alike. 

With regard to MEMRI, Worth highlights the selection bias issue which has long been my primary criticism of its output: "While differences in translation can be an issue, the main disagreement among the interpreters is usually about selection: Which texts are worth highlighting? Which are significant?": 

"They say they highlight liberal voices along with the dangerous radicals, which is fine," said Marc Lynch, a scholar of Arab politics at Williams College who has criticized Memri on his own blog, Abu Aardvark. "But what that conceals is the entire middle ground, where most of the political debate goes on in the Arab world."

Mr. Carmon, in a telephone interview, dismissed this criticism, noting that Memri has expanded its translations immensely over the years, and now highlights Arab reformist views.

I find Carmon's response fascinating and revealing.  If Worth conveyed his objection accurately, then Carmon is effectively admitting the accuracy of my earlier critique, with his defense being that MEMRI now does a better job with Arab reformists than it used to do.   Maybe, maybe not - a lot would depend on the definition of "reformist" (is it Wafa Sultan, or is it people who actually matter for mainstream Arab political discourse?).   But I'm gratified to hear Carmon effectively conceding my long-standing point about MEMRI, at least in the past (when I actually made the criticisms). 

Whether or not MEMRI has changed, it doesn't bother me as much as it used to because the proliferation of sites has somewhat reduced the dangers of its selection biases.  I think that there's been enough criticism of MEMRI by now that most responsible people with any background in the region take their stuff with a degree of caution, and can take the source into account when drawing their conclusions.  And because there's an ever growing range of alternative sources of information, MEMRI no longer has any kind of monopoly as a window on to Arab debates.   Like Greg Gause, quoted in Worth's article, I've always felt that the more of this stuff that gets out into the public realm the better, and then let people make up their own minds about it. 

There's a long way to go before this process is complete, of course.  Bloggers do this on the side, in addition to our full time jobs (see below), and can't be counted on to fill translation gaps.  I know that there are various projects in the works to translate news and TV, which will help considerably.  Until then, two things which I would love to see to push this diversification of sources quickly to an acceptable level:

• Mideast Wire:  from what I've seen, this relatively new service offers by far the most comprehensive, well-selected, and well-chosen translations from the Arab media. Unfortunately, it's subscription only.  All newsrooms should provide their journalists with subscriptions to it, or else some foundation should pony up the funds to allow Mideast Wire either to be a free service or at least to offer its services free to journalists.  (I don't work for them or even know them - I was just impressed with them during my free trial a while back)
• US Open Source Center:  Juan Cole's readers are often treated to the translations from the US Government's Open Source Center.   But those translations should be far more widely available.  Those with access to a university library can usually access a much abridged version of what used to be FBIS (that's where Juan's stuff comes from, I believe).   But the full-scale translation service is locked up, available only to government employees and contractors.  That's a shame:  if these translations are so important (and they are), then shouldn't the public have access to the expert, non-partisan work of the OSC rather than having to rely on bloggers or potentially biased private organizations?

 

One last thing:  My experience with Abu Aardvark definitely confirms Worth's narrative -  I've been really surprised over the last year or so that in a wide variety of forums, including policy workshops, I'm now almost always introduced as the writer of Abu Aardvark.  Two years ago, I'm fairly sure that most people in these audiences would have hardly heard of blogs, much less of Abu Aardvark.  Over the last few months, I've been giving more and more thought to the implications of this change - both for my personal blogging and for the whole academic/ specialist blogging phenomenon in general.  For instance, it's made me sometimes think twice before posting cute stories about my kids, or waxing rhapsodic over the charms of certain newscasters, or engaging in once-entertaining blog-wars.   It also, sad to say, sometimes makes blogging feel more like part of my job and less like the hobby and amusing side-project that it began as - a problem at times when my real full time plus job makes it hard to find the time to blog.   That may merit another post sometime down the road...

Comments

[sunship]

The market will bear what the market demands, I suppose. Although, I'm less sanguine regarding translation services as an absolute good. I give as an example of what it allows more of, though it be only a personal anecdote: I have a friend going through the same IR program I am with an interest in ME Policy, which we share. He wants to work in government and I pray he never gets within 50 feet of a policy making position. The reason? He sees no reason to take even a single arabic class. He places no value whatsoever in having the ability to be able to tune in personally to arab debate. What is the market solution for ignorance?

[debbie]

oh please do not feel bad about posting stories and other amusing things! That's what makes blogs blogs, and why I read this one and bitch phd and others like it, instead of reading books (well, I do that too, but you know what I mean...). Interspersing personality into academic material and news and analysis is the spice of life.

[Leila Abu-Saba]

Re: personal stuff - yabbut you have to realize you're on a larger stage now, and what's cute amongst your friends when you're a nobody is too easily misunderstood when you're read around the world, in many different cultures. I have politely expressed my concern about the newscaster thing more than once... I get it and would find it amusing as a pet obsession of some guy who is a friend...but you are a professor teaching young people and a pundit traveling around the world, (esp. the Middle East), you have to consider how your amusements might play in public. Do you really want to explain the whole Buffy thing to a bunch of Egyptian judges?

You'd never tell the BOard of Trustees the same racy tale shared with your oldest friend, right?

You're paying for the success of the blog by having to become more formal. It's just the reality of social life.

Now Landis and Cole, who aren't as unbuttoned and ironic as you are, do keep separate websites devoted to their personal lives, hobbies etc. So if we want to look at Mr. Syria Comment's wedding and family pictures, we can, and if we want to know all about Mr. Informed Comment's Star Trek and Khalil Gibran obsessions (and mystical explorations) that's available too. You just have to browse their personal pages on their faculty sites. And they still don't say anything (that I've noticed - I'm not looking that carefully) that would get them in trouble with the Board of Trustees.

I'm sure that Mrs. Aardvark in her position has plenty of good sense on this sort of comportment topic. And I'm sure that in the end you take her advice seriously, after the obligatory Aardvarkian resistance...right? (I have my own in-house comedian, I know all about this marital dynamic between the rebel comic and wife)

Don't get me wrong. I'm quite proud of you and the success of the blog, ya Ustaz Aardvark. Too bad things change and the devil-may-care days of your anonymity are long gone...Such is life. All that ironic, high-spirited Aardvarkness with its charmingly masculine appreciation of female accomplishments will have to get edited a bit.

Or not - it's a free country, for some people - but I don't think you got as far as you did in academia without appreciating the value of diplomacy and discretion.

End of 19th-century-sounding lecture. Forgive me, I come from a long line of preachers and teachers, and can't help myself...

[John Burgess]

Comments on two points:

MEMRI is doing a better job, and yes, that means they were not doing a good job before. They fairly regularly (i.e., once ever 4-6 weeks) find a reformist Arab to translate from the Saudi press at least. But it's usually a one-for-one or one-for-two deal, with the negatives being given most space. Translation quality and elisions are another matter. I think they're generally okay, but I've seen some egregious "errors" of translation.

MEMRI is "dangerous" to the extent that it e-mails its translations to every congressional office on Capitol Hill, presenting one side of a story exclusively. By framing the argument they also close it down.

FBIS can't put the stuff they translate freely because they don't want to get crosswise in international copyright disputes. With a limited distribution of their translations they can claim "fair use". I had a similar problem at the US Embassy in London when the British media tried to claim copyright license fees for our transmission of selected editorials back to the US for USG-only use. (And that was generally restricted to certain offices in the WH, DOD, and State). Making translations publicly available would be a flagrant violation of copyright ownership, unless some sort of li$cening arrangement could be made. Do you think Congress would pop for it?

BTW, I don't think MEMRI is paying copyrights for its translations...

[the aardvark]

John,

Thanks, that's fascinating. But FBIS used to be able to circulate to universities without problem - I remember using those old blue books of FBIS-NES translations a lot back in the early 1990s. There must be some way to overcome that...

[John Burgess]

The early 90s sound about right for the time when those blue books stopped being available. I think that's when the USG realized that unfettered distribution--and especially to a paying, public readership--was presenting a unwanted legal vulnerability.

By 1995, the British copyright org. set up by publishers was threatening legal action against embassies. (It wasn't only the US that was reporting on the media, of course.) The embassies essentially took a "sovereign domain" tack and blew off the complaints. But we weren't selling other people's product, either...

[patrik]

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