For a decade now, news out of Iraq has been bleak and sparse.This year, Bagdad saw one of its bloodiest summers.. In July alone, over 1,000 Iraqi civilians lost their lives in attacks and bombings. In a recent report, Gyorgy Busztin, General Secretary for Iraq at the UN Assistance Mission states, “The impact of violence on civilians remains disturbingly high, with at least 4,137 civilians killed and 9,865 injured since the beginning of 2013.”
Those numbers are rarely heard in the news today. Media coverage in the region recently gathered steam when this month it was alleged that, “Al Qaeda Terror Warnings,” posed an elevated threat to U.S. travelers. In response, the State Department closed 19 missions across North Africa and the Middle East, including in Iraq.
But what about the Iraqi people? Americans are still brought next to no information about the average Iraqi citizen. Iraqis who go to work day-to-day trying to rebuild their country never make it into the 24-hour news cycle. Earlier this year Stephan Said, an Iraq-American recording artist and human rights activist, decided to break this trend.
Said traveled to Iraq on the anniversary of the 2003 invasion to film a music video for his song, ‘Love, Make the World Go Round.’ He filmed with other Iraqi artists, youth, camera people, producers and civilians. Their goal was simple.
“We wanted to portray daily life there that nobody sees in the rest of the world: to humanize Iraq and to humanize Baghdad,” Said said. “We keep hearing only about the war and the destruction. These people have a life that they’re building.”
Said’s work as a peace activist led him to be selected for the Summer of Peace initiative, a free online resource that brings together social change leaders to discuss and teach way to create and make steps towards peace.
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.
You can help by giving today. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger gift, Truthout only works with your support.