The Indie Dispatch - NYC Cameraman’s Death in Oaxaca Adds to a Record Number of Journalists Killed

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When I first read that a 30-something American cameraman for an online news outlet had been shot to death in Oaxaca, I was immediately struck by the uniqueness of his death – as well as its familiarity.  Brad Will was a videographer and volunteer cameraman for the IMC (Independent Media Center), an online organization that emerged during the infamous 1999 WTO protests in Seattle to present grassroots news coverage.  That Brad Will worked for a strictly online news organization, that he was a volunteer journalist rather than a hardened pro, and that he died reporting from a Mexican tourist destination rather than the Middle East makes his death stand out. What makes this death unsettlingly commonplace is that journalists on the front lines are being killed at an unprecedented rate.

According to WAN (the World Association of Newspapers), 2006 has been the deadliest year ever for journalists.  As of October 5th, when they first issued their report, 75 journalists had died this year, including 26 in Iraq.  Shortly after the October report, Anna Politkovskaya, a Russian journalist who gained prominence for her coverage of the Beslan massacre, was assassinated. While Politkovskaya’s murder was covered heavily by the international press, given her high profile, Brad Will’s death is receiving attention for very different reasons.  Unlike Politkovskaya, he practiced the kind of participant or “citizen journalism” that has proliferated in the internet age.  Several converging trends suggest that the ranks of participant, activist, and citizen journalists will continue to swell.   The emergence of services like YouTube and Google Video enable anyone with a camcorder, a laptop, and a high-speed internet connection to broadcast content to an audience of dozens – or millions.  In addition, the drop in equipment cost and increase in video quality make it feasible for would-be reporters to set themselves up as self-contained ENGs for a few hundred dollars.  This new breed of journalist can deploy quickly to domestic trouble spots like post-Katrina New Orleans and foreign desitinations like Oaxaca City, only a few hours from the US by air.

Brad Will’s death is a tragedy, as are the deaths of the other seventy-plus journalists who died this year in pursuit of the truth – but I see a silver lining to this deadly trend.  While the rise of citizen journalism and participatory media initiatives like the IMC are putting more reporters in harm’s way, they also represent a shift away from a media dominated by a few conglomerates.  Brad Will chose to report from Oaxaca, and in fact volunteered to shoot there as a representative of the IMC.  I won’t speculate on Will’s personal motivations for covering this particular conflict, but people like him have the potential to contribute immeasurably to the public body of knowledge about the events they cover.

At Camcorderinfo.com, we most frequently discuss camcorders in the context of the consumer market.  In recent years, the price-to-quality ratio for camcorders has been steadily improving, and this year saw the introduction of some groundbreaking models, including Sony’s AVCHD camcorders.  With microphone inputs, excellent manual controls, and HD-quality video for less than $1500, these camcorders are the kind of tool that make it possible for casual shooters to record amazing home movies.  Yet in the wake of Brad Will’s death, it’s also worth noting that a mere “consumer” camcorder also has the potential to record the kind of footage only a well-funded professional ENG could muster a few years ago. 

As the context and methods used to report the news evolve, many more journalists like Will are travelling to the front lines of conflicts.  Dying in pursuit of the truth is no longer a fate reserved for professionals like Politkovskaya or American journalist Daniel Pearl.  Participant journalism is an exploding field, with videographers, bloggers, and podcasters of every political stripe contributing to the mediasphere.  Despite the dangers, that is a good thing.