WAN: Arab Press Forum protests against travel restrictions

#jpod – Dying for the story: Citizen journalism and the Arab spring

March 2nd, 2012 | No Comments | Posted by Sarah Marshall in Citizen journalism, Podcast

Much has been written about the tragic deaths of Sunday Times journalist Marie Colvin, French photographer Remi Ochlik and other reporters who have died since the Arab uprisings began.

But what about the citizen journalists who have been killed before and since Colvin and Ochlik?

How many people armed with a camera lens or mobile phone to bring the world images from Syria, Libya, Egypt, Tunisia and elsewhere have been killed?

In this podcast Journalism.co.uk technology correspondent Sarah Marshall speaks to Frank Smyth, executive director of private firm Global Journalist Security and part-time senior advisor for journalist security for the Committee to Protect Journalists, about the dangers and the risks being taken by citizen journalists.

The podcast also hears from Haret Alfasi, a Libyan raised in the UK who runs LibyaFeb17.com, a site he used to curate and translate citizen journalist reports from Libya; Khalil Ghorbal, co-founder of Le PaCTE Tunisien and one of the project leaders of Speak Out Tunisia, which offers training for citizen journalists in Tunisia; and Omar Hamilton, an activist and filmmaker and co-founder of Egyptian citizen journalist collective Mosireen.

Podcast: Download

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Tags: Arab Spring, Citizen journalism, cpj, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Tunisia

Google to help Tunisian journalists pick up new skills

February 10th, 2012 | No Comments | Posted by Paul McNally in Journalism, Training

Google is to sponsor six Tunisian journalists to spend three months at a leading French newspaper, picking up digital news-gathering skills.

The internet giant has teamed up with liberal daily Le Monde, which will offer a newsroom placement to each of the journalists, covering daily news and the French presidential elections taking place in May.

Google’s William Echikson wrote on the company’s European public policy blog:

Our hope is that they then will return home with new skills that will serve to construct a new, free but responsible professional press in Tunisia.

At Google, we are aware of the need to work with publishers to smooth the transition not only from oppression to freedom, but from analogue to digital distribution. We are sponsoring a series of digital journalism prizes with Institut de Sciences Politiques, the International Press Institute in Vienna and the Global Editors Network in Paris.

Meanwhile, journalism academics at City University in London are heading to Tunisia next week to lead a series of workshops for Tunisian journalists on “reporting a democracy”.

The project is the first of its kind being organised by the Journalism Foundation, which was founded last December and is led by former Independent editor Simon Kelner.

City lecturer Roy Greenslade writes on his Guardian blog:

The courses are the first to be held in Tunisia since last January’s overthrow of Ben Ali’s authoritarian regime.

They will provide practical advice to journalists on coping with the realities of reporting in a free society. But the classes will be held amid an ongoing battle for media freedom.

Tags: google, Le Monde, The Journalism Foundation, Tunisia, William Echikson