One of the main complaints made by journalists working in Iraq is that the country has become so dangerous it is now near impossible to report from there. Thus, the news that reaches us tends either to be about the deaths of coalition forces or of the latest epic sectarian outrage. The net effect of all this recalls Stalin's dictum that "One death is a tragedy; a million is a statistic."
Alive in Baghdad attempts to give a fuller and more rounded - though no less depressing - picture of that benighted country. Its video archive features news and video web logs and covers everything from the plight of orphaned refugees, to the recent and, until now, unreported killing of a young Iraqi journalist at the hands of what are euphemistically known as contractors.
Interviews with school teachers, artists, shopkeepers and others may not help to explain what is happening there, but they certainly help to put a human face to the statistics. It's a huge site that speaks volumes about the courage of the people interviewed and those collating the information.
