Guardian gagged from reporting parliament

Last night the Guardian reported that it has been prevented from reporting parliamentary proceedings ‘on legal grounds which appear to call into question privileges guaranteeing free speech established under the 1688 Bill of Rights’.

“Today’s published Commons order papers contain a question to be answered by a minister later this week. The Guardian is prevented from identifying the MP who has asked the question, what the question is, which minister might answer it, or where the question is to be found.”

Guardian story at this link…

The only information reported:

“The only fact the Guardian can report is that the case involves the London solicitors Carter-Ruck, who specialise in suing the media for clients, who include individuals or global corporations.”

But the Spectator, thought to be the first mainstream title to provide more information, has reproduced what it believes is the question being referred to.

Guido was one of, if not the first, bloggers to speculate which question was being prevented from being reported.

Hashtags #gagcarterruck and #guardiangag have now been introduced into the Twittersphere, with a Silent Flashmob planned to take place outside Carter-Ruck’s offices on Thursday, October 15 at 1pm.

More to follow from Journalism.co.uk.

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freemedia.at: Over 300,000 at Italian press freedom protest

“A press freedom protest organised by the National Federation of the Italian Press, in the Italian capital Rome on Saturday, and which according to the organisers drew over 300,000 participants, was on the same day criticised by Italian public broadcaster Rai 1,” reports the International Press Institute.

Full story at this link…

Related:

This week Italy’s Constitutional Court has overturned a law granting prime minister Silvio Berlusconi immunity from prosecution while in office.

Berlusconi’s lawyers have sued La Repubblica for allegedly defaming the prime minister by repeating its questions about his private life and political aspirations each day (Journalism.co.uk).

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RSF: Lindhout and Brennan still captive in Somalia 12 months on

From Reporters Without Borders (RSF), a reminder of the anniversary of the abduction of Amanda Lindhout and Nigel Brennan in Somalia.

“We are very worried about these two hostages, given the length of their ordeal and the extreme dangers prevailing in Somalia.” Reporters Without Borders said. “We reiterate our support for their families and we hope they will be released without delay.”

Full story at this link…

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Social and mainstream media join forces to cover Afghanistan election

Rivals currently claim to both be on track for victory in the Afghan elections, in a race watched closely by the world’s media – mainstream, citizen and social.

The Guardian, for example, reports that ‘President Karzai’s staff said he has taken a majority of votes, making a second round run-off unnecessary,’ while Abdullah’s spokesman, Sayyid Agha Hussain Fazel Sancharaki, said the former foreign minister ‘was ahead with 62 per cent of the vote,’ even though preliminary results are not yet expected.

But publicity hasn’t always been courted by the government: critics the world over were shocked by the Afghan foreign ministry’s demand for a media blackout. On Wednesday, the government ordered all journalists not to report acts of violence during its elections, as a last minute attempt to boost voter turn out.

Both the foreign and domestic media said they intended to ignore the ban. Rahimullah Samander, head of the Independent Journalist Association of Afghanistan said that they would ‘not obey this order’. “We are going to continue with our normal reporting and broadcasting of news,” he told the Associated Press.

Both domestic and foreign reporters turned out in force to cover yesterday’s election.  Although the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) reports that there have been reports of at least three foreign journalists and several local journalists detained and other acts of aggression towards the media, it is believed that no one was seriously injured.

As with the Iranian election protests, yesterday highlighted the pivotal role social media and citizen journalists now play within mainstream news. Here are a few examples:

• Alive in Afghanistan introduced a new system during yesterday’s elections allowing citizens to ‘report disturbances, defamation and vote tampering, or incidents where everything ‘went well’ via text message. BBC report at this link.

• The Guardian’s live updated its readers via its World Blog and reported ‘explosions’ in areas ‘where the Taliban is very strong,’ linking to a tweet by an Al Jazeera presenter. “Polling stations have opened, but according to Twitter updates, 152 of 643 polls in southern Afghanistan have stayed closed,” it reported at one point.

• Demotix, the citizen-journalism and photography agency which saw its profile rise during the Iranian election protests, was also instrumental in documenting the day’s events. Follow Afghanistan photographs and stories at this link. “We’ve had reports from Kabul, Helmand, Kandahar and most other provinces during yesterday’s election and the preceding weeks. As well as the political campaigns, our reporters covered the fierce violence including last week’s Taliban attack on a NATO convoy,” said commissioning editor Andy Heath.

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Photography Is Not-A-Crime.com: images from the fourth plinth

At the beginning of August the photographer Spike Brown mounted the Trafalgar Square fourth plinth, with a simple message: photographers, both professional and amateur, have the right to take photos in public. He supported two campaigns:

• Photography Is Not-A-Crime.com

The British Journal of Photography aims to raise international awareness about the threat of attack, arrest or harassment to photographers in the UK. A Flickr group pool of self-portraits can be found here.

• ‘AP Rights Watch’

Updates on The Amateur Photographer’s ‘AP Rights Watch’ campaign to protect photographers’ rights can be found at www.amateurphotographer.co.uk.

Brown’s ascent was reported at the time by the Telegraph’s Kate Day here, by the British Journal of Photography here, and by Amateur Photographer here [August 3].

You can see the video of Brown on the plinth here at OneandOther.co.uk.

He has kindly shared his own view from the plinth with us.

This self-portrait:

and another view:

Spike Brown, Blue Feather Photography, www.bluefeather.co.uk

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Cplash: Thank you message from Laura Ling

Citizen journalism website Csplash has reportedly received a message from Laura Ling, the Current TV journalist released from North Korea last week.

“Euna [fellow captive Euna Lee] and I are two of the lucky ones whose story of captivity resulted in a happy ending. But there are so many journalists imprisoned around the world whose fate is still undecided. It is my sincere hope that the energy ignited around bringing us home will be harnessed into raising awareness around these fellow journalists and their struggle for freedom,” writes Ling.

Full message at this link…

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Journalism Daily: Press freedom, the Guardian’s Joseph Harker and MyReporter.com

Journalism.co.uk is trialling a new service via the Editors’ Blog: a daily round-up of all the content published on the Journalism.co.uk site.

We hope you’ll find it useful as a quick digest of what’s gone on during the day (similar to our e-newsletter) and to check that you haven’t missed a posting.

We’ll be testing it out for a couple of weeks, so you can subscribe to the feed for the Journalism Daily here.

Let us know what you think – all feedback much appreciated.

News and features

• Audit Commission will not investigate council newspapers’ impact on local media: The Audit Commission says it will not look at effect on local titles citing ‘lack of expertise’

• @press_freedom: Tracking media freedom and international journalism around the world: Threats and restrictions for journalists and the media around the globe

• Journalism students must seek new opportunities in online marketplace, say industry experts: “There are very few jobs going, but that doesn’t mean there’s no opportunity,” says Guardian’s Joseph Harker

• Q&A MyReporter.com: ‘Nothing happens until the reader asks a question’: Journalism.co.uk interviews the creator of the Knight-Batten Citizen Media Award winning site

Ed’s picks

• I.P.I: Mexican authorities need to act immediately to ’stem systematic killing of reporters’
• CPJ: Journalist trials to begin in Iran; charges of ’sending pictures to enemy media’
• FT.com: ‘There will be a transition to people paying for the internet,’ says Liberty Media chairman
• Global Voices Online: Finding alternative revenue streams as a non-profit org
• MediaShift: What’s the future of cit-j photo agencies?
• Guardian gives comedians right of reply: There isn’t a ‘new offensiveness’ say Herring and Burns
• David Weir: ‘Is AOL on a mission to save journalism?’

Tip of the day

• Number crunching tools

#FollowJourn

• #FollowJourn: @csmlibrary/Christian Science Monitor archivist

On the Editors’ Blog

• The @press_freedom timeline – tracking threats to journalism around the globe

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Amnesty International Media Awards winners in full

Here are the winners from last night’s Amnesty International Media Awards; nominees and judges were reported here. The awards, designed to recognise ‘excellence in human rights reporting’, feature ten categories spread across print, broadcast and online journalism.

Gaby Rado Memorial Award
Aleem Maqbool, BBC News

International Television & Radio
World’s Untold Stories:  The Forgotten People, CNN, Dan Rivers and Mary Rogers

Nations & Regions
The Fight for Justice, The Herald Magazine by Lucy Adams

National newspapers
MI5 and the Torture Chambers of Pakistan, The Guardian by Ian Cobain

New media
Kenya: The Cry of Blood – Extra Judicial Killings and Disappearances, Wikileaks, Julian Assange

Periodicals – consumer magazines
The ‘No Place for Children’ campaign, New Statesman, Sir Al Aynsley Green, and Gillian Slovo

Periodicals – newspaper supplements
Why do the Italians Hate Us? The Observer Magazine, Dan McDougall and Robin Hammond

Photojournalism
No One Much Cares, Newsweek, Eugene Richards

Radio
Forgotten: The Central African Republic, BBC Radio 4 – Today Programme, Edward Main, Ceri Thomas, Mike Thomson

Television documentary and docu-drama
Dispatches: Saving Africa’s Witch Children, Channel 4 / Red Rebel Films / Southern Star Factual, Mags Gavan, Joost Van der Valk, Alice Keens-Soper, Paul Woolwich

Television news
Kiwanja Massacre: Congo, Channel 4 News / ITN, Ben De Pear, Jonathan Miller, Stuart Webb and Robert Chamwami

Special award
This year’s Special Award for Journalism Under Threat was awarded to Eynulla Fәtullayev, from Azerbaijan.

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RSF: Two journalists charged in Bahrain; information ministry steps up internet filtering

“Reporters Without Borders is concerned about freedom of expression in Bahrain. In the past couple of months, two journalists have been charged because of what they wrote and the information ministry has stepped up Internet filtering,” the organisation reports.

“Around 600 websites are currently blocked in Bahrain and online censorship has become more extensive since 21 April, when the authorities ordered that access to the Washington-based news website Aafaq.org, Ghada Jamsheer’s women’s rights blog Bahrain-eve and the blog aggregator Bahrainblogs.org should also be blocked.”

Full story at this link…

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@press_freedom: a new Twitter service from Journalism.co.uk

In December 2008, Journalism.co.uk launched a new Dipity Timeline to track international media and we watched it attract a considerable amount of interest. The idea is to bring together international journalism news and comment, focusing on issues which affect journalists’ freedom of speech. We’ve played around with it a bit and re-launched the timeline (so please make sure you update your bookmarks).

• Twitter: now, as well as following the timeline, you can now follow @press_freedom on Twitter to get all the same updates you would find through the timeline.

• News updates: by following @press_freedom, you will be able to keep up with Journalism.co.uk news and blog items related to media freedom and ethics, as well as links through to the main stories from Reporters Without Borders (RSF), the Frontline Club Blog, the Committee to Protect Journalists and the International Federation of Journalists.

• Conversation: it would be great to get some conversation going too through Twitter and perhaps via the International Journalists group on Wired Journalists. We’re also experimenting with a Publish2 ‘International Journalists’ group – if you’re a user of Publish2, please do join and we’ll see where it takes us.

It would be interesting to see if we (media and journalism reporters) could collaboratively track a breaking press freedom news story some point in the future, as the journalists did with the floods in Washington.

Please contact Judith (@jtownend on Twitter) or Laura (@lauraoliver on Twitter) at Journalism.co.uk with ideas for how to improve the service, or with suggestions for your own involvement.

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