An emerging organization

In the beginning of the revolution there was no organization. Benghazi was in rebel hands, and the scene was chaotic. No international journalists had arrived. On February 17^th Hana Galal went to the burnt out courthouse, and people started to give here mobile phones so she could talk to journalists. Because of the uncertainty of the situation, she did not give the reporters her name. After the first few days they saw that the rebellion grew, and the activists at the courthouse understood that they needed to get organized. Galal founded something called the “Media and Humanitarian committee”. At the time there were a number of different committees with different objectives. They worked as a coalition of volunteers. The groups were translating, talking with journalists via phones, collected documentation, and tried to get people on the roof of the courthouse to get internet connection. The regime tried to cut and shut down both internet and phone connections, so an alternative method was to bring the

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documenting material by car to the border of Egypt, and get people to publish it from there.

After the first week Galal was taking part in the formation of the NTC. At first, the leadership of NTC did not have a plan concerning media handling, and in the beginning they reportedly did not give much attention to the importance of media. Mohammed Elkish and a group of his friends gave the leadership of NTC a presentation of a potential media structure for the organization.

“We told them that communication is important in such a war. The main goal should be to transfer a transparent picture about what was happening on the ground, letting the world know what is going on in Libya. (…) We said that the leaders needed to bring forward a clear message that could be reported, to show what they are after, and show the suffering of the people. Gaddafi had his own media, and they were very good at propaganda, so we thought: Let’s give him a battle’. In the end the leadership of the NTC was convinced.”

From then on the Media and Communication Committee was formed. They had an international media unit, a military media unit, a social media unit, a local media unit, and a print and digital section. Each unit had its hierarchy and its own team. They also had a group they called “Media Influence Team”. I will come back to that under the propaganda section.

In all 35-40 persons worked in the committee. Much of the committee’s job was to help the rebel leadership with media handling. They corrected the mistakes they did, and came up with advice. Sometimes they abstained from translating aspects in documents they knew would be bad marketing for the rebellion. They arranged press conferences and put people in the front that they knew would express the revolutionaries point in a best manner. “We were cleaning up the mess. We were strong revolutionaries committed for the revolution to succeed”, says Mrs. Galal. The committee had a morning meeting every day, where the heads of the different units attended. They discussed events from the day before, and what would happen the present they, if they knew. They strategized and planned. The different units had different tasks:

• The Social media unit was the biggest, with about 20 people. They used Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to push news and messages about the rebellion. They also monitored the international media, and made a report for the committee members every day. Primarily, they reported on how Gaddafi’s propaganda had been used by international media, but also what aspects should be focused on, and pushed further to journalists. Also, if mistakes were made in the media, the committee would call the

59 actual media organization and say that, for example, the number of casualties they reported was wrong.

• The Military media unit worked to give reporters information about how the military conflict proceeded. The frontline moved often, and the unreliable information about the fight was something the journalists were unhappy about. The unit worked from the military operational center in Benghazi, and they had direct contact with the commanders in the front line. The Head of the unit, Busin, says it was difficult to get all information right. Sometimes he physically drove out to the scene of a given event, talked to rebel soldiers and witnesses, and passed the information to journalists. He also claims that the unit had spies inside Tripoli that fed them with information that was passed on to journalists.

• The International media unit was primarily dealing with, and briefing, international journalists during the conflict. It was this unit that embraced the so-called Media Centre described in the previous subchapter. The youth was placed under this unit as it became apart of the NTC hierarchy. Dealing with registration, press passes, and authorization to go different places was a part of their job. One of the main tasks was the press conferences. They were usually arranged in the hotels where the journalists lived. The head of the unit, Mohammed Elkish, says he treated the conferences like a marketing event. He was mainly doing sales and marketing events before he became a part of the revolutionary movement. “I considered NTC as a customer and they wanted a perfect press conference. I made sure I had the new Libyan flag, and that all journalists were invited. It was a marketing event”, he says. In front of the press conferences the people higher up in the hierarchy, like the vice-president and president of the NTC, was briefed and informed by the staff, before they went out to the journalists.

• The head spokesman role was to take part in the committee’s work, continually try to have an overview of the situation, do interviews, arrange interviews with the frontline staff, counter ‘false’ news, and participate in the international news organizations’ live shows as a representative of NTC. At the same time Jalal Galal also saw it as his task to lift morale and eliminate fear in the population of Libya. “We did not have time to evaluate if we were as effective as we could be. We had to proceed, proceed and proceed”, he says.

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The committee members worked from morning to night, and they say international journalists called 24 hours a day. After Tripoli fell in August, the committee moved together with the rest of NTC to the capital, where they continued working in the same way.