MTV News part of network's evolution, correspondent says

OREM — Prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, an MTV News crew headed to the Middle East and broadcast a story — about "how troops took the drop of a new 50 Cent record," reporter Gideon Yago said.

Yago, who spoke to about 150 students Wednesday at Utah Valley State College, explained MTV is owned by Viacom, which also owns Interscope Records, the rapper's label.

But Yago said he's proud of other work he's done at MTV News in the Middle East, such as a piece about a young man who was excited to purchase a new Marshall Mathers CD.

But while following him around Baghdad as the boy purchased water and cooking oil, the MTV crew also captured the life of a young person who was living life on the brink of war, he said.

MTV News left before the initial "shock and awe" in Baghdad in 2003. Journalism is difficult in Iraq — before and after Saddam Hussein — because reporters are assigned a government "minder" who tries to spin the story. Minders observe interviews with Iraqi residents, and can intimidate them into silence, Yago said.

Yago — who wore his trademark eyeglasses, casually cursed throughout his speech and got some laughs from the students — also told the story of 25-year-old MTV, which he described as generating "literally tens of billions (of dollars) a year not just in operating costs but in profits as well."

MTV began as an all-music video station but had to evolve, he said.

"It came to the attention of my corporate masters that if you watch a music video you don't like, you're prone to flip the channel, and MTV gradually got into the youth lifestyle" niche, Yago said.

MTV gathers data about youth through statistics and "ethnographies," research by teams of people that observe people's dorms, apartments and hard drives in an attempt to discover what young people are interested in.

Yago began working full-time for the cable network after he graduated from Columbia University. In the almost seven years he has been with the network, he has realized that its position in popular culture may be dwindling "because you guys spend as much time reading each other's Web and blog pages," he said.

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E-mail: lhancock@desnews.com