Reading Journal - Libya

Lede for where the news is right now:

Pro-Gaddafi forces launch widespread offensives against the opposition forces in Libya. Mass Protests planned for Friday after prayers, but many Tripoli residents too scared to participate.

Andrew Sullivan –

Asides from the coverage provided by The Atlantic, Andrew Sullivan put his two cents in about the protests in Libya. I like Andrew Sullivan’s style overall because he writes short posts, includes links and uses simple language. He also had a set up for following the uprising against Gaddafi; he followed the developments day by day with a title template and a quote. His first post on the day-by-day coverage of the subject is Libya, day 9: “Muammar can go to Hell!”. Sullivan does an excellent job of dissecting information from various sources (videos from the Times, hourly updates/live blogs from Al Jazeera, etc). He’s basically doing what we’ve been assigned to do…except he does it every day…10 times faster.

The Times

While I do try to remain skeptical to the best of my ability, I have to admit that more and more every day, The Times is becoming that “first go-to” source. If I haven’t been following a story for long, or have absolutely no idea about the conflict (happens a lot, more than I’d like to admit), the Times helps me out. This page in particular is a template for what the online editors do with big stories or important people in the news. It’s a sort of ‘fact-sheet’, it’s also a day-by-day account of Hard News stories (yet not as overwhelming as Live blogs). Given, the times has its array of op-eds about Libya, but I use the times more, as I said, for background.

The Guardian

The approach of the British newspaper is more “live” based. I may have been confused about the website, but when I clicked any hard news link about Libya, it just directed me straight to their live blog, which, is important to add, has a feature that allows updates at the discretion of the reader. I like the angle The Guardian took with this article specifically, a quiz that compares Muammar Gaddafi and Charlie Sheen; it's just a way of having a bit of lightness in a heavy subject such as Libya.

Glen Greenwald

I'll just start by quoting the first (kilometric) line of one of his recent analysis-posts on the situation in Libya:

It has been widely documented that many of the worst atrocities on behalf of Libyan leader Moammar Gadaffi have been committed by foreign mercenaries from countries such as Algeria, Ethiopia and Tunisia. Despite that, the U.N. Security Council's sanctions Resolutionaimed at Libya, which was just enacted last week, includes a strange clause that specifically forbids international war crimes prosecutions against mercenaries from nations which are not signatories to the International Criminal Court (ICC), which protects many of the mercenaries Gadaffi is using.

I'm going to be completely transparent here and say that I have no idea of what he is talking about. I know he is getting at one of the core issues of the conflict in Libya, which is, the allegations against leader Gadaffi, but it's very clear that Greenwald has a very specifically educated audience.

---Just a note. I noticed that overall, the coverage of the uprising in Libya is mostly focused on Gadaffi. There are a few stats and updates on refugees and civilians, but in comparison to the Egypt coverage, the coverage that has been given to this revolt has focused more on the country's leader.