Ali Shafeya Al-Moussawi, a 22-year-old reporter for web news program Alive in Baghdad, was killed at home in Iraq on Friday. During an Iraqi National Guard raid in his neighborhood of Sadr City, Al-Moussawi was shot 31 times in the chest and head and died at the scene, according to the Alive in Baghdad blog.
Alive in Baghdad is an excellent unfiltered video show about Iraq reported and filmed by Iraqis and distributed by a small team in the United States. We profiled the show in August, praising its quality but addressing the fact that it continues to have trouble making ends meet. It won our citizen news screening that month.
AiB creator Brian Conley issued updates about Al-Moussawi’s death over the weekend via Twitter, giving a gripping account of his hearing the news and coming to terms with it. At times he questioned whether AiB should continue, but by Sunday he seemed hearted by an outpouring of donations following Al-Moussawi’s death (see donation widget embedded below).
Is it time to quit? We’re barely scraping by, not even making our costs, guys r getting killed. This is real. maybe its time to close down?? 11:17 PM December 14, 2007 from web
Conley wrote that Al-Moussawi was a new reporter for AiB whose stories had yet to air. At the time of his death, Al-Moussawi working on an investigative assignment for AiB, but Conley wrote he “not 100% sure” that the assignment caused Al-Moussawi’s death. Conley lamented that four family members of AiB correspondents had been killed since July.
{"source":"https:\/\/gigaom.com\/2007\/12\/16\/alive-in-baghdad-reporter-killed\/wijax\/49e8740702c6da9341d50357217fb629","varname":"wijax_4cd3731ae7f40b733a73c13079e4a3a5","title_element":"header","title_class":"widget-title","title_before":"%3Cheader%20class%3D%22widget-title%22%3E","title_after":"%3C%2Fheader%3E"}