Blogger Ansel has written a wonderful post that will probably get attention for the pointed way in which it lays out the formulaic, and therefore ultimately useless, character of the vast majority of reporting on post-earthquake Haiti.  I find it interesting because it screams out for one of my pet projects – the need to connect the global poor to one another and to those in wealthier countries in an unfiltered manner.  Nearly-useless journalism is a huge problem if it is the only source of information emerging from a given place.  The impact of this same problematic journalism, however, can be greatly lessened by the presence of many voices reporting from many angles on the same subject.  At this time, despite the various platitudes about the wonders of mobile phone technology and the internet that are repeated in development circles, the enormous potential of these tools has yet to be realized.  We need to be more honest about this, lest it sound like the technology is there and the only problem is the backward people who won’t use it.
I wonder, though, how comfortable the development industry will be with the gradual, inevitable emergence of many voices through these technologies.  What will we do when the people in whose names we are ostensibly working start telling us no and begin to call out our failures – and do so in a public forum?