CNN's iReport and the War in Georgia

Mainstream Western media is faced with a challenging task in covering the situation in the country of Georgia (again, that’s the COUNTRY of Georgia).

It’s a nation that even the most educated Westerners know very little about, politicians and government officials – let alone the news media – are not sure of the Russian and Georgian governments’ motivations or what they are doing on the ground and the Western press isn’t even allowed to go to the most hard-hit areas of fighting.

Enter CNN’s IReport. While the most popular videos on CNN were about prostitutes and a whale who mistook a yacht for its mother, the conflict in Georgia had the top tag on Monday afternoon on the Turner news organization’s amateur video page. And these videos are not your normal user-generated fare.

Many of the reports come from a “superstar” user named Georgian82 and are of professional quality.

This videographer has pages of gripping footage that shows access to victims of the war, videos of hospitals in the country and photos of Georgian communities being atacked. While the New York Times was left to bemoan its lack of coverage, Georgian82 has actual video from inside the van of Turkish journalists under fire from Russian troops.