Kevin Sites mentions

PISMO BEACH - A Pismo Beach man, covering the war in Iraq for CNN, is now safe after he was held captive Friday. Armed Iraqi forces believed he was an American spy.

Iraqi soldiers fired an AK-47 round at Kevin Sites' feet and tied him up for four hours as he negotiated his release through a translator. Sites and his three-man crew were harassed and stripped of their broadcast gear before they were let go outside Tikrit in northern Iraq. The Iraqis kicked two crew members in the head, but Sites was not injured.

Some journalists, notably Kevin Sites of CNN, established blogs, online diaries that are frequently updated.

While war blogs may be changing the shape of journalism, not all embrace the BBCs approach. Most American news networks so far have taken a hands-off approach to their correspondents free lancing online. CNN did ask one of its reporters, Kevin Sites, to stop running his blog despite his disclaimer on his site.

The war on Iraq is the Internet’s first big war. And Pismo Beach war correspondent Kevin Sites is at the center of an Internet controversy that news networks have never had to deal with before. Sites, 40, a former New Times correspondent during the Afghanstan invasion and Cal Poly lecturer, is a CNN correspondent stationed in Chamchamal, northern Iraq.

He had been posting journal entries and weblogging (commonly called blogging) on his web site, www.kevinsites.net, while reporting for CNN. Shortly after the war started, CNN asked Sites to stop posting his diary on the Internet.

"Covering for CNN is a full-time job and we ask him to concentrate on that only," said Edna Johnson, CNN publicist.

Some of Sites’ loyal web visitors and fellow bloggers were upset that CNN would take away this valuable source of information. Many of the bloggers are news junkies who can’t wait for news broadcasts after work. They check into web sources like Sites’ for minute-by-minute information on the war.