Covering Libya's conflict by way of 'Planet Rixos'
The last five days have been a real life drama that was stranger than fiction. But fiction has to make sense to sell, and the reality of the #Rixos4 #Tripoli (actually by the end there were 40 people held) was too strange to sell to any sane editor. Many tweeters around the world were already on edge from the war itself, but now to add to the stress, we find that 35 international journalists were being held against their will by Gaddafi loyalists. I can probably speak for many when I say that we tweeted too much, smoked too many cigarettes, and drank too much coffee thinking and wondering how to get them out. Alive.
We updated one another at #Rixos or #Rixos4 with any scrap of information that we could get our hands on, we speculated, tried to contact the journalists (my favorite was @mchancecnn), strategized, contacted #FFs (freedom fighters) we knew on the streets of Tripoli, called #NATO, worried, prayed. We forced ourselves to back away from the computer, back away. We tried to work. We tried to sleep. We failed to back away for long, sleep or work. We watched all news all over the world, tweeters from Japan, UK, US, Libya, France, Qatar, Syria, Dubai, Morocco, and did I leave anyone out? Sultan AlQ, where are you from. I feel like you are all my best friends now. Should we get together for coffee soon?
What we experienced in this case was the new paradigm of global subversive collaboration. Not subversive in a bad way, but by leaping over old walls and old models of communication, we found a community of concerned and committed global citizens who were working together on real problems in real time from all over the world. It was beautiful. The future is here and we have stepped into it, and I am honored to have worked with this group of people whom I will probably never meet. For a time we were all brothers and sisters reaching hands across the globe.
In the end, the journalists were released without any help from us, other than maybe by the strength of our prayers and encouragement. Jomana, a CNN producer fluent in Arabic, used the common human connection one-to-one with the loyalists who detained the group of journalists. Another great triumph of the power of the human spirit of connection.
We are all in this together, even if we're sometimes on different sides of the fence. Fences and walls can and will fall. Let us all recognize the essential truth of the necessity of cooperation and humanity in solving our problems. Let us reach out our hands to tear down the walls, leap over old models, hold out our hands in cooperation for all our brothers and sisters on planet Earth.
Okay, I'm getting a bit sappy here. Somehow, I got a photo of 12 of the detainees at the #Rixos hotel from a French source, and it could have been a journalist, but my French is rusty. I would like to give you credit for the photo, but you were lost in the fog of war. Thank you. In any event, the photo was spread all over between the Planet #Rixos tweeter thinktank group, and wound up on CNN as one of the still shots shown as the journalists were just being set free from the five long days of captivity. How sublime. It made me smile to know that there for a brief moment was evidence of our team collaboration, a memento of our efforts being shown as they emerge from the ordeal. I wish that all tweet team members could receive a badge with that photo for their efforts over the course of the five days of Planet Rixos.
We'll all get along without a badge. The freedom of the journalists today, and the freedom of the Libyan people from the shadow of the dictator is our satisfaction and reward. What an honor to be involved in even our tiny way.
