Battle blogging for profit

As morally repugnant as Yahoo's actions may be, other tech vendors before it have acted similarly. "Many big companies, such as Microsoft and Nortel, in their quest to gain shares of the large Internet market in China, transform China into an information prison by collaborating with the Chinese regime on questions of censorship," Guo said. "They should not forget all moral principles under the temptation of financial gain."

Yahoo's hypocrisy is even more shameful because it is also in the news business. The company recently opened a news production division with promises of hard-hitting stories that U.S. mainstream media are afraid to report.

Yahoo launched "Kevin Sites in the Hot Zone," pledging to send the former television reporter to "every armed conflict in the world within one year" and dispatch blog-sized "bites" of war.

Several years ago, I introduced Sites to the world of blogs, collaborating with geek friends to launch kevinsites.net. I helped him publish his firsthand impressions of the Iraq war as a not-for-profit project. But as the war heated up, Sites' employer, CNN, forced him to shut down the blog. Sites later joined NBC and videotaped the shooting by a Marine of an unarmed Iraqi. As a way to explain why that piece of truth mattered, he reopened his blog. (Last November, these pages excerpted his explanation of the shooting.) Another "warblogger" is BBC news producer Stuart Hughes, who stepped on a landmine while covering the Iraq war. On his blog, he documented the amputation of his right leg and his recovery. Like me, he is troubled about "Hot Zone."

"It seems like the journalistic equivalent of a Simpson and Bruckheimer high-concept movie -- all concept and very little content," Hughes said from London. "I've lost too many friends in war zones -- and come too close myself -- to have any time for this 'stamp-collecting' approach to conflict. The presentation is distasteful -- war reporting comes with a strong public service agenda, and it's cheapened by this 'Geraldo Rivera' presentation. This goal of covering every armed conflict in the world -- so what? At what cost? It leaves a very nasty taste in my mouth."

The launch of Yahoo's corporate-powered warblog, and its promise of more newsertainment to follow, raises anew the question how to define journalism.

One obvious answer: Real journalists don't treat war as entertainment, and real news companies don't help imprison a man for reporting the truth -- even if that would ensure profits.