Results matching “journalists killed in 2”

The adventure has come to an end for Robert Ménard in Qatar.  Less than a year ago, he founded the Doha Centre for Media Freedom (DCMF), with the support of Shaykha Muzah, the wife of the Emir.  He had grand ambitions to show that it was possible to talk about the freedom of the press in the region of the Gulf which practices the most state and self censorship.  

Robert Ménard will resign this week from his post as Director General of the Centre, and several of his colleagues are likely to follow him. How did this situation develop?

A 'landmark' in press freedom was heralded today as a Northern Ireland court ruled it legal for a journalist to protect the identity of her sources.

Judge, Mr Tom Burgess, at Belfast Laganside Court announced that Suzanne Breen's life would be in danger if she conceded to the Police Service of Northern Ireland's demands to reveal the identity of her sources.  Despite the possibility of a five year prison sentence, Breen refused to hand over her material to the police, claiming that her life and those of her family would be threatened. During the course of the case, it emerged that a source close to the Real IRA had warned she could be killed if she co-operated with the police investigation

The governmental and corporate document leaking site, Wikileaks, has been awarded Amnesty International's New Media Award, for its role in the production of the revelatory document, "Kenya: The Cry of Blood - Report on Extra-Judicial Killings and Disappearances, Sep 2008".  The attribution of this award is indicative of recognition of the work done by the site by bodies similarly concerned by the exposure of human rights abuses. Moreover, the accolade should function as an alert to the mainstream press to the exisitence of a penetrative and useful journalistic resource. 

The report was based on evidence provided by Kenya National Commission on Human Rights, which suggested that more than 500 men were killed or made to disappear in a police campaign.  As expressed by Wikileaks, this may have been 'with the connivance' of the Kenyan Government.  The document is not publicly available in Kenya. On Friday, a UN special rapporteur investigating the events called for the resignation of the top Kenyan officials, emphasising the political significance of the evidence revealed in the report, and the utility of the online resource in global campaigns for social justice. 

In many cases, journalism is one of the most dangerous professions around the world. Hundreds of journalists are arrested, harassed and threatened every year. According to a World Association of Newspapers (WAN) press release, "more than 70 journalists were killed world-wide last year, at least 670 were arrested, and 125 remain in prison." Recently, Iranian-American journalist, Roxanna Saberi has been sentenced to 8 years in prison for doing her job.

American journalist, Roxanna Saberi was sentenced to eight years at Evin prison in Tehran, accused of spying on the Iranian government. At first she was arrested in January for buying alcohol, the Foreign Ministry then said she was illegally reporting without press credentials and in April was put on trial for spying. The trial was short and behind closed doors.

According to  a World Association of Newspapers press release, "more that 70 journalists were killed world-wide last year, at least 670 were arrested, and 125 remain in prison." At least two journalists have died in Evin Prison in the past six years.

Since Israel's invasion of Gaza, newspapers have been trying to cover the crisis.  Remaining impartial has proved difficult because foreign journalists have been banned from Gaza by Israel.  As images proliferate across newspapers and the Internet, many are sympathizing with the plight of the Palestinians.  The Guardian argues that perhaps, these images may be the best way to tell the story.

This crisis has changed the way the media is reporting, the Guardian calls is "a simple truth", that "Israelis no longer appear as victims."  Why?  Because of the images that have been emerging from Gaza - they are dramatic and shocking, making people empathize more with the residents of Gaza. 

The Editor-in-Chief of Al Dustour, the daily newspaper in Egypt, has been named the recipient of the 2008 Gebran Tueni Award, the annual prize of the World Association of Newspapers that honors an editor or publisher in the Arab region.

Ibrahim Essa is recognized for his "commitment to freedom of the press, his courage, leadership, ambition and high managerial and professional standards," and will receive the award at the 3rd Arab Free Press Forum, to be held in Beirut next week.

"I think the glitz of technology has taken over common sense," says Michelle Ferrier, Daytona Beach News-Journal's columnist and managing editor, in relation to the Twitter reporting done by Rocky Mountain News (RMN) Berny Morson at the funeral of a three-year-old boy killed in an accident. She goes on to say that live reporting from funerals of private individuals shouldn't be allowed.

Reporter, Berny Morson, from the Rocky Mountain News used Twitter to post a live blog on the newspaper's website at the funeral of Marten Kudlis, a three-year-old boy killed in an ice-cream store last week.    

Twitter is a service that allows for the real-time exchange of quick, short messages. Some reporters use the service to send updates to their websites to offer readers blurbs about an event.

In this case, the media blasted the RMN for covering the funeral with Twitter and has called the decision "inappropriate," "misguided" and "tasteless."  Questions have been raised before about when it is appropriate to use Twitter and whether in some cases it is absolutely necessary.

Sources:  Poynter, Colorado Independent, The Standard, journalism.co.uk

See Also:
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The editors of Kyrgyzstan oppositional newspaper Alibi were arrested last night, after the paper was accused of refusing to pay over US$ 28,000 towards Asilbek Saliev, the nephew of President Kurmanbek Bakiev and son of national security head Janibek Bakiev, reports Lenta.ru.

The paper's staff mentions that they were not refusing to pay the sum, but simply asking to have the payment delayed by three months.

De Facto, another oppositional title, published an article (which Alibi re-published later) suggesting that the nephew was involved in a car accident that killed a pedestrian. The author of the article noted that investigations into the accident were lagging because of Saliev's status.

Saliev filed a lawsuit against both papers and won in both cases. In addition to the US$ 28,000 that both papers were ordered disburse to Saliev, the author of the article had to pay US$80 to him personally.

De Facto put a halt on publishing on June 12, following harassment from authorities. The paper published content that suggested that the Kyrgyz Taxes and Duties Committee was corrupted.

Numerous organizations have questioned the extent to which press freedom exists in Kyrgyzstan and whether the state allows for journalists to report freely.

Source: Lenta.ru

See also:
Kyrgyzstan: newspaper forced to stop publication, pressure from authorities

The Russian division of Human Rights Watch (HRW) declared that coverage of events in Georgia-Southern Ossetia is breeding "propaganda and disinformation".

Tatiana Lokshina, a HRW spokesperson, said that both sides of the conflict are misinforming the public about the situation.  HRW said that one of the reasons for this is the absence of correct data about the number of victims.

Vsepolog Bogdanov, a member of the Russian Union of Journalists, said that the coverage features opinionated material that is "not information", reported gipp.ru. He mentioned that the situation might get more complicated if instead of a "balanced" approach reporters include one-sided points of view.

Guardian blogger Jack Schofield wrote that Georgia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs has resolved to posting information by using Google Blogger. Other blogs include State Minister for Reintegration and Russia and Georgia At War.

Last week, the Georgian military attempted to overtake the pro-Russian Southern Ossetia region. Russia responded by sending its forces into Georgia, reported Reuters. Two Georgian journalists, Alexander Klimchuk, and Grigol Chikhladze, who writes for Newsweek, were killed while reporting the events.

Source: gipp.ru, Reuters, The Guardian, RBC News
See also:
Russia: Authorities call upon national media to abstain from promoting extremism

A new law will protect journalists investigating into corruption in Russia, starting from the beginning of 2009. The law will give them the same protection as court witnesses, reported Russia Today.
 
 "We need to have a clear mechanism of legal regulation on every journalist publication. We need investigations of prosecutor's offices, and some administrative measures if they prove necessary. Only then we'll feel the feedback and reaction on the part of the authorities. And we need journalists to be protected," said Kirill Kabanov, head of the National Anti-Corruption Committee.

This comes as a significant improvement in a country that is the third deadliest in the world for reporters, after Iraq and Algeria. Around 50 journalists have been killed in over 15 years, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and many cases remain unsolved.

Source: Russia Today

See also:
Russia: Politkovskaya murder suspects caught
Russia: Kremlin adviser resigns over reporter's murder
GÖTEBORG: EXTENDED VIDEO - Garry Kasparov challenges Russian press freedom at World Editors Forum
Russia: English-language paper shuts down after government raid

The 61st World Newspaper Congress and 15th World Editor Forum opened at 10 am on Monday the 1st of June.
During the two hour opening ceremony the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra entertained the audience with delightful music. Between musical interludes came presentations about the state of the industry an account of the state of the free press, and a warm welcome by the King of Sweden. Below is a brief summary of the mornings event.

Timothy Balding, Chief Executive Officer of WAN, opened the congress.
He pushed the importance of freedom of the press, as well as WAN and it's impact when founded 1948 in Amsterdam after the war. Sweden was, in fact, he said, one of the twelve founder countries .
This is the third time Sweden is host for the event.

His Majesty, King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden held a brief speech where he invited all the participants to Sweden.
King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden pointed out that the free press has a long history in Sweden.
His Majesty was pleased to talk about Swedish democracy and what it means for the press. This is something which not everybody in the world can enjoy yet. Sweden has a press-ombudsman, said his Majesty.This exists so that the press takes responsibility for its actions and sees to it that nobody gets overrun in a self-disciplinary system not based on legislation.

Gavin O'Reilly, President, World Association of Newspapers opened by saying that the conference often uses the opening ceremony to criticize the host country's press situation. In this case he didn't need to criticize, to the satisfaction of the Swedes at the ceremony. In Sweden you have a press that is as close to utopia as is possible. Since 1766, 20 years before the French Revolution, Sweden had a free press.
A film showing how journalists all around the world have been tortured, harassed, hunted down and killed, showed us the inevitable truth of how the world today still isn't a safe place to make your voice heard, to do your job - to be a journalist.
Sweden invented the free morning newspaper, said Gavin O'Reilly while counting up a few areas where sweden has been a major player on the media scene. Sweden has always been a leading country, he continued.
As Gavin O'Reilly is a big supporter of the printed paper, he urged the strengh of printed newspapers, which has a success story in Sweden. 90% of the Swedish population choose to read a morning paper.

Tomas Brunegård, chairman of the Swedish Newspaper Publishers Association, discussed the importance of the WAN event, working for freedom of the press, as it is under attack in many places in the world today. The speed of change in the industry is extreme, and it needs to turn dramatic change and challenges into opportunities. Free mind and innovation walk hand in hand. Openness is also importan. Regarding sustainability, Tomas Brunegård said that we have to leave something behind that is better than when we started.

Press freedom is under serious threat from many sources -- gangs and corrupt officials in Latin America, autocratic regimes in the Middle East, conflicts in Africa, hostile governments in Asia, and from death threats and prosecutions in central Asia and Europe, the World Association of Newspapers said in its half-year review of press freedom.

The report, presented Saturday to the Board of WAN on the eve of the World Newspaper Congress and World Editors Forum in Göteborg, Sweden, painted a grim picture of attacks, imprisonment and murder facing journalists in many countries.

Twenty-eight journalists have been killed since November 2007. Iraq remains the most deadly country, with 9 killed.

The report, with region-by-region details, is available here.

Source: WAN

On Friday, owners of the Dutch citizen photojournalism website, Skoeps, announced the site will be shutting down after less than two years of existence, after having failed to find a viable business model.

This news comes although Skoeps had seemingly fared successfully, as was described in an interview with them last September. The Dutch site collected pictures and videos from users, which it sold to media outlets. Revenues were shared with contributors.

In March, Skoeps had announced plans to introduce a pay-per-view system for users in order to better compensate its users.

For some, the shuttering of Skoeps actually came as good news.

"Luckily nobody was killed," says new media expert Jonathan Marks. "I am glad Skoeps has gone because it encouraged members of the public to take risks - some of which were unacceptable in my view - like trying to get close to fires or incidents when health and safety were at risk."

Skoeps was also a partner in the Voices of Africa project, which equips journalists in select African countries with mobile gadgets and technology in order to produce mobile journalism. It appears Skoeps' closure won't affect the project though.

After the widespread emergence of citizen journalism platforms in recent years, many of these ventures have been struggling to find viable business models. Is citizen journalism here to stay or not, and in what form?

Source: Follow the Media - Reuters through European Journalism Centre

Last week, journalists Anne Stine Saether and Anders Sooth Knutsen from Norway's VG's online arm were awarded with the Skup-diploma, an investigative prize, for developing the newspaper's biggest multimedia project ever.

The idea for the online project about domestic killings in Norway was born in mid-2007 after a murder case that had been buried in the back pages of the paper. It took six months to complete, but on, Nov. 12 the front page of VG's print edition featured portraits of women killed by their men. The story was planned and executed on all platforms simultaneously, and included online blogs, articles, chats, and video interviews with some of the murderers, next of kin, psychologists, and others.

For the project, VG took on the task of extensively researching anonymous homicide statistics, using all the archives and registers they could access for the multi-media project.

"The idea for the project came as a result of my own anger and feeling of impotence half a year ago. Yet another woman had been murdered and the story was buried far back in the newspaper, I thought, dammit, this happens all the time, which lead to the idea to spray the front page with the faces of women who'd suffered such a fate," said Kjersti Sortland, the managing editor of the award-winning journalists.

The project took half-a-year to finish, but the completed coverage was "groundbreaking" and "led to a change in how murders are reported in Norway," according to Online Journalism Scandinavia's Kristine Lowe.

The Norwegian government plans to map domestic murders, and starting in 2007, the Norwegian police had began to register the relationship between the murderer and victim in their reports.

"In contrast to other countries, we did not know how many women were killed by their husbands, partners and boyfriends in Norway," said the jury who awarded the prize.

Source: Journalism.co.uk (photo)

The Editors Weblog obtained an exclusive interview with Philippe Karsenty, who is currently appealing a 2006 verdict that found him guilty of libel, in a trial opposing him to French public broadcaster France 2 and journalist protégé Charles Enderlin. The hearing on Wednesday Feb. 27 lasted over six hours, but the court adjourned its decision to May 21.

According to Karsenty, France 2's Al Dura "coverage is the media's biggest masquerade to have had such impact." But he doesn't believe that the allegedly fraudulent report is representative of more widespread manipulations in media coverage.

Quick recap of the story: in 2000, France 2 diffused coverage obtained from a local camera man, and voiced over by Enderlin, of the death of a Palestinian boy, allegedly killed by Israeli fire, an iconic image which was widely reproduced thereafter and used as a symbol by pro-Palestinian propaganda.

In 2004, Karsenty's Media-ratings company accused France 2's coverage of being a hoax - for a plethora of reasons. Karsenty was subsequently taken to court and found guilty in October 2006 of defaming journalist Enderlin and his outlet, public broadcaster France 2. He appealed the decision and during the new hearings on Feb. 27, a lot of time was spent reviewing and discussing the video footage and images. And as a Weblog exclusive, you can read the ballistic report, which was commissioned by Karsenty.

Without going too deep into the details about the new trial, Karsenty argues that a lot of coverage produced at the time was staged with the help of the local population, and this seems to be confirmed by footage viewable on Honest Reporting, as well as footage shown in court. "On that day in Gaza, it was a film set," he says. Other major news organizations, including Reuters and the Associated Press, were present.



Are these kinds of manipulative or staged media practices widespread?

"I'm not generalizing," says Karsenty, who insists his only claims are about this specific report in those circumstances. But this event should bring attention to international news organizations' use of local correspondents and camera staffers, whose content the outlets must often trust at face-value, he said.

In fact, the France 2 camera man's footage was offered to CNN, which refused to initially air the report because it didn't obtain the guarantees of authenticity it was asking for.

Whether these media practices are widespread internationally Karsenty didn't say, but he argues they correspond to the media's situation in Palestine, "a situation where the media bends over to the rules of Palestinian authorities," he says (see here about the monitoring of coverage of the Oct. 12, 2000 lynch).

There is another intriguing issue in this affair: in the years since this controversy has started, few French traditional media have openly taken Karsenty's defense or been willing to place it high in the news agenda.

Blogs and independent media have increasingly covered the story, many of them outside of France though. According to Karsenty, a similar affair would have never dragged on as long in the US, because bloggers and truly independent media would have long dug out the truth (evoking Dan Rather and the Killian documents controversy).

What the Al Dura affair also shows is that France is (still) a "system with dominating media that don't recognize their mistakes," says Karsenty. He points out that of the few established blogs and 'independent' news outlets in France, those that are considered legitimate by traditional media, all are held by professional journalists and former journalists who have worked within traditional media.

But Karsenty refuses to see the Al Dura affair as the symbol of commonplace manipulative practices in the media. Nor was France 2's report symptomatic of showbiz-news and news agendas increasingly led by eyeballs and sensationalism. For him, this is simply the story of a local camera man who submitted a faulty report, which was picked up by a mainstream media organization and its well-respected journalist, both of whom didn't recognize their mistake.

According to Karsenty, a US website will shortly be publishing the 18 minutes of raw footage that France 2 showed in court (out of 27 minutes filmed by the camera man).

Karsenty says he is confident about the outcome of the appeal. The court will make its decision public on May 21.

Source: Philippe Karsenty - Metro - Le Monde - Tribune de Genève - Honest Reporting

The year 2007 registered the highest level of journalist deaths worldwide since 1994, up to 64, according to a report from the Committee to Protect Journalists, which has been tracking journalist deaths since 1981.

This might come as a real shocker to editors used to free and investigative reporting about politics: Russian journalists who want to report about the upcoming parliamentary elections on Dec. 2 will have to do so without throwing either negative or positive light on the candidates, whatever that means – by law.

Dmitry Muratov, founder and editor-in-chief of the Russian opposition newspaper Novaya Gazeta, has been given the International Press Freedom Award in New York.

In its half-year report, The World Association of Newspapers reported that 106 journalists have been killed this year on duty in 28 different countries. 45 of these cases were in Iraq.

Since November 3rd and the declared state of emergency in Pakistan, crackdowns on the press have worsened- in a country where the press freedom had reportedly improved in recent years.

Parents of Madeleine McCann, whose disappearance during a holiday in Portugal has resulted in massive media coverage, have launched a libel action against a Portuguese newspaper.

A well-known Sri Lankan columnist has stopped writing, fearing for his life. He was working on an alleged corruption case in a deal for second-hand supersonic jets.