The C-SPAN live panel discussion has just finished. It was an emotional experience. Kudos to Jim Hake, Spirit of America, and the donor/supporters of Spirit of America for funding and organizing this event.
It is the first case of an historic event, that I’m aware of, where the public was able to receive direct, unfiltered reportage and commentary. This “truly free channel” bypassed the “legacy media” completely. So we were able to hear directly from Iraqis all over Iraq, from expats in the US, with objective studio commentary by serious people. Not in view were any network $6M-anchors spinning the story.
If you missed the live cable coverage, or the webcast, I believe you’ll be able to order the broadcast from the C-SPAN archives here [it takes a couple of weeks for the content to become available].
As I mentioned earlier Michael J. Totten was asked to serve as the “editor” of questions submitted from the web to the panelists. A description of the process and some snippets from the panel discussion are here on Michael’s site.
If you’re wondering from where Michael was receiving the online questions, that Friends of Democracy comments page is here. . Be warned that the comments are also un-filtered, there are some pro-Saddam comments in the mix.
There are also comments at Michael’s site.
I won’t close with a lot of “yes, but” qualifiers - there will be a quite ample supply of that reportage to be read/heard in the legacy media. For now I’m happy to celebrate with the Iraqis their success in today’s battle, just one battle of a long war against tyranny.
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