There has been a lot of coverage in the Caribbean about the arrest of alleged drug lord José Figueroa Agosto in Puerto Rico and his girlfriend Sobeida Felix Morel.

Figuero is wanted on more money laundering, drug and murder charges than can be enumerated here. (Suffice it to say his operations are said to have made the Colombians look like amateurs.)

Felix was wanted in the Dominican Republic on more charges than she was in the United States so when she was caught in Puerto Rico, the DR government asked for her to be extradited to the Dominican Republic for trial.

The U.S. government agreed.

On July 21 she arrived in Santo Domingo. The arrival was recorded by a lone newspaper reporter. And the picture was dramatic.

The photographer, Tomas Ventura, described for the readers of Diario Libre how he was in the right place at the right time and how he got the picture.

Taking Sobeida’s picture was not easy

The “how I got it” story is one that journalists in free societies around the world can relate to. We have all had our great moments.

And we all love to talk about them.

For now, let’s celebrate with Ventura his tenacity and skills.

Nice piece in the Washington Post by Amy Gardner about entering the world of multimedia journalism. (My baptism into the brave new world of modern journalism)

She learned what broadcasters have known all along: You don’t have to film/tape everything. Or if you try, make sure you have either extra batteries or the ability to plug your recorder into an electrical outlet.

For a short while I did some freelance radio work for a Hong Kong station while in Washington. (I did even less work for a DC-based station as well.) One of the things I learned real fast is to find the hot box so I could get a clear recording of what was being said from the podium and — as noted earlier — to either bring lots of extra batteries or find the outlet right away.

And now with HD recording, the need to understand the difference between what a Flip HD and a Blackberry can generate is also important. (Not to mention HOW TO HOLD THE BLOODY THING!)

Gardner’s blog entry is a must read for any of the older ink-stained wretch generation who want to keep their jobs. (And then, make sure you get a little training in how to use the new equipment.)

Maybe we could get a few student journalists and j-profs to submit material to this project to see if we can get what we do and why included.

Life In A Day: July 24

First posted at Journalism, Journalists and the World.

Interesting story in the Times magazine this weekend: Digital Diplomacy.

It got me thinking that just 10-15 years ago the State Department was at the absolute bottom of rankings in use of technology. The main State HQ in Washington and the embassies around the world still depended on WANG work stations as late as 1996 when the rest of the government was moving to PCs.

Shortly after that, State was focusing on moving some of its records to an electronic system accessed using only GOPHER while the rest of the world was uploading databases using FTP and linking to it with Mozilla (and later Navigator and Internet Explorer).

Eventually State caught on and is now using new technology to carry out its mandate. Even with the technology in place, the problem still remains with the suits who don’t get this Internet thing. (They get e-mail, but Twitter? For most, not really. And the bureaucratic mindset still doesn’t get it.)

To be sure that is changing. But the bureaucracy is tied to a paper and ink mentality. Just taking a look at many of the websites or Tweets offered by some of the embassies shows that the folks in charge of those postings see the Internet only as a means of transmitting press releases instead of actually engaging the public in the US or in the host countries.

The strength of new technology at the State Department is focused on the Public Diplomacy section and Consular Affairs. And that is how it should be. After all these are the two sections of State that have the most contact with the general public.

The U.S. embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia does get it. According to a report back in April, the embassy has 128,000 “friends” for its Facebook page. And this is out of 161,000 “friends” for ALL U.S. embassies.

Making diplomacy less “pinned-striped cookie pushers” and more relevant to the American people can only help. this means using technology to engage people in a discussion about foreign affairs instead of just pushing information out. The technology allows American diplomats to establish a dialogue with the American people and the people of host countries more easily but only if the diplomats understand how to use it. (And so we come back to Jared Cohen and Alec Ross, the focus of the NYT article.)

And let’s face it, the problem of demystifying diplomacy and international relations is not limited to the diplomatic corps. The news media also play an important role.

A role they often fail to fulfill.

Until the US media and diplomatic corps get the point that domestic and international issues are linked, there will be less understand and limited support for our international activities. And more confusion about what is going on in the world.

First posted at Journalism, Journalists and the World and the SPJ International Committee blog.

I have to admit, from the time I heard CNN had fired Octavia Nasr for her Tweet on the death of Hezbollah spiritual leader Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah I was upset she wrote what she did and at the same time I thought firing was a bit harsh but probably necessary.

Her response to the uproar over her Tweet was the usual backpedaling “what I meant to say is…” variety. She is a journalist and should know the importance of the use of words. But her firing from CNN was a bit more problematic for me. And now, it appears it is also a problem for Tom Friedman.

In his July 16 column — Can We Talk? — Friedman points out the loss to journalism and to America’s understanding of the Middle East by the loss of Nasr.

[We] gain a great deal by having an Arabic-speaking, Lebanese-Christian female journalist covering the Middle East for CNN, and if her only sin in 20 years is a 140-character message about a complex figure like Fadlallah, she deserved some slack. She should have been suspended for a month, but not fired. It’s wrong on several counts.

For too many years news organizations have depended on parachute journalism to get stories from hot spots around the world. The ever shrinking presence of American media journalists around the world — with the exception of NPR and PBS — does Americans and American society a disservice.

Here is a woman who is fluent in three languages and whose heritage is Arabic. She knows the Arab cultures and societies in the Middle East and can speak their language. Name me other journalists so blessed with talent.

And her credentials as a journalist are also impeccable. This is a partial list from the CNN website, which still had her bio up as of today:

• Edward R. Murrow Award for Continuing Coverage of the 2006 war in Lebanon;
• Golden Cable ACE Award in 1993 for CNN’s coverage of the Gulf War
• Overseas Press Club Award in 2002 for CNN’s post 9-11 coverage.

Her comments were wrong. However, it is still possible to respect someone without signing on to all the other parts of that person’s life. (There are a number of us who will always respect Richard Nixon’s political skills while despising everything he did to damage the Constitution and integrity of the presidency.)

I don’t see how anyone could respect Fadlallah’s hate for Israel, the United States or most democratic institutions. Yet, according to Nasr, Fadlallah was a pioneer in defending women’s rights in Shia circles.

[To] me as a Middle Eastern woman, Fadlallah took a contrarian and pioneering stand among Shia clerics on woman’s rights. He called for the abolition of the tribal system of “honor killing.” He called the practice primitive and non-productive. He warned Muslim men that abuse of women was against Islam.

This, clearly is a position to be respected.

So the question is: Who will replace Nasr? How will CNN get news that explains how and why the Arab governments and societies operate the way they do. Anyone can report WHAT happened but the WHY is just as important.

And it is getting the WHY in international events that has been so weakened in the U.S. media. Having a bureau in London does not mean the reporters can get the full story in Poland or any of the African countries. Reporters are needed in key cities around the globe.

And yet, the U.S. news organizations keep pulling back. It is not enough to hire a few freelancers or pick up a story from “a partner” in another country. The foreign news needs to be made relevant to American audiences.

Americans are a notoriously isolated people. It is the responsibility of journalists to present news and information that people need to make intelligent decisions. And sometimes that means spending time and money to get the story right.

WHY a foreign event is important to Americans is just as vital as the WHAT and HOW of the event. And maybe it is time to start focusing on this point again.