In this Telegraph.co.uk audio interview, Colin Freeman describes how he and his fellow detainee, Spanish photographer Jose Cendon, slept in a cave and ate boiled goat during 40 days of captivity in Somalia.
“The kidnappers didn’t really treat us too badly,” says Freeman.
“We’re were also told on one occasion, the gang that were holding us had had an argument, they were threatening to hold us for another year. We don’t think they’d have really done that, but in that situation your mind dwells on the worst possibilities.”
Following his release on Saturday, Freeman said he would enjoy spending time with his family - and a strong pint of lager.
Tags: Colin Freeman, Jose Cendon, Somalia, Telegraph.co.uk[Note: spellings of Muntazer al-Zaidi vary; we have gone with this spelling, as widely used by the UK press and agencies.]
MWAW LETTER
Robert Holmes Tuttle
US Ambassador to the Court of St James’s
24 Grosvenor Square
London
W1A 2LQ
Dear Sir,
We as journalists believe that our colleague Muntadar al-Zaidi, who protested at President George W. Bush in Baghdad on Sunday is guilty of nothing but expressing Iraqis’ legitimate and overwhelming opposition to the US-led occupation of their country.
We call on you to guarantee his safety and effect his immediate release from custody.
Media Workers Against the War
http://www.mwaw.net/
Today sees the first week of Journalism.co.uk putting its new timelines and maps to use - a way of flagging up and documenting important journalism events each day.
We’ve had some good feedback via email and other blogs so far and we’d encourage you to either directly help edit them yourselves, or email us with things you’d like to see added (judith or laura at journalism.co.uk)
The idea is to keep these up-to-date with varied sources, and as frequently as necessary, so we will have built up a good resource to look back on for story research, or other purposes. You can add locations, links, video and photographs to each event.
Dipity is proving a good tool so far, although has a few problems (for example, the automated WordPress RSS feed seems to have disappeared in one of them). We’ll follow up with some more thoughts on using Dipity in the new year.
So link them, use them, and add to them if you feel so inclined. We hope you enjoy and find them useful.
Journalism industry job losses tracked here.
International journalism media freedom tracked here.
Tags: dipity timelines, job losses, Journalism.co.uk, media downturn, press freedom, Press freedom and ethicsFurther to our blog post this morning, showing police interfering with photojournalist Marc Valleé while he was attempting to photograph protests at the Greek Embassy on Monday, the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) has released a statement criticising the Metropolitan Police for the way they handled media coverage of the protests outside the Greek Embassy on Monday.
The NUJ said it had received reports that ‘at least one of its members suffered physical injury as a result of their handling by the police’.
“There are clear guidelines which discuss how the police should work with the media and officers policing demonstrations need to be made aware of their responsibilities. The police know very well our concerns around cases like this and it’s simply unacceptable for our members to continue to have problems when covering protests. Such basic infringements of our members’ rights must stop,” the release said.
“Heavy-handed policing meant journalists were prevented from doing their jobs as they tried to report on the protests which took place on Monday. Photographs from the protests show the police deliberately obstructing photographers in their work and journalists have complained of being physically removed from any area from which they could document events.”
“The police must remember that they have responsibilities towards the media,” said NUJ Legal Officer Roy Mincoff, in the release. “Even where a protest is itself illegal, the media have a right to report on events and the police should not be taking action with the intention of obstructing journalists in their work,” he added.
Journalism.co.uk is following up, and will report more when further information is received.
Tags: Greek Embassy, Journalism.co.uk, Marc Vallee, media coverage, Metropolitan Police, National Union, Roy Mincoff
Main news from Journalism.co.uk