MOPORT.org is a free service for generating and sharing mobile phone reports. This site allows people to collectively report in real-time using mobile phones (or digital cameras and computers). Recent events moved us to create this service. The most dramatic was the unsanctioned release of hundreds of photographs detailing the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by US soldiers. These images, along with reports by Seymour Hersh in The New Yorker and other media accounts, pushed the US government to publicly address an issue it had largely suppressed. The official response was less than forthcoming, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld even tried to shift blame to the mere existence of the cameras and photographs rather than administration policy. Rumsfeld charged: "People are running around with digital cameras and taking these unbelievable photographs and then passing them off, against the law, to the media to our surprise when they had not even arrived at the Pentagon. " (Listen to clip.) Of course, if these images had arrived first at the Pentagon, they would have surely never appeared in newspapers and on televisions around the world. So, as we have seen before—and as we will continue to see as long as we live in a free country—the camera can be a powerful check on those in power. 

Taking pictures is only half the story; circulating images and making sure people see them is the other. As the primary distributors of world information, the news media has at times fallen asleep on the job and forgotten its journalistic ideal of objective reporting. For example, a full 40 years too late, former editor of The Lexington Herald-Leader and the current editor of The Los Angeles Times recently admitted: "It has come to [my] attention that the Herald-Leader neglected to cover the civil rights movement. We regret the omission." We regret and pay dearly for this omission too. Overlooking uncomfortable or difficult facts is sadly even more of an issue today in the US as media becomes increasingly consolidated and controlled by corporate interests.

With this in mind, we built MOPORT.org to take advantage of consumer electronics and easy distribution methods so that anyone with a camera phone (or a digital camera and email) can be a reporter. These tools could potentially balance powerful vested interests and keep the media honest through simple, but tested, means. Of course they could also become a platform for upskirting, test cheating or celebrity stalking like some other moblogs. Quite honestly we don't know what to expect. We look forward to seeing exactly what unfolds!