Tag Archives: press freedom

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

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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

Ed’s picks

Tip of the day

#FollowJourn

On the Editors’ Blog

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

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In December, Journalism.co.uk launched a page, and subsequently a Twitter service (@press_freedom), to track violations of freedom of expression around the world.

This week we’ve added a few more sources to the Dipity timeline. Headlines from the Index on Censorship, Global Voices Online and Global Voices Advocacy and the International Journalists’ Network will now be included, along with those from the original organisations – Reporters Without Borders, the Committee to Protect Journalists, the International Federation of Journalists, the Frontline Blog, and ourselves.

Visit the page here: http://www.journalism.co.uk/5/articles/533032.php and please re-tweet it to raise awareness for the ill-treatment of fellow journalists and bloggers around the world, prevented from doing their job. Finally please do get in touch with suggestions for the page, or potential stories for Journalism.co.uk: judith at journalism.co.uk or laura at journalism.co.uk.

Recent press freedom updates:

Amnesty International Media Awards winners in full

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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.

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

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“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…

‘Governments at war are winning the battle of controlling the international media’ – motion debated at Frontline Club now

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From the Frontline Club, live now:

“To mark World Press Freedom Day, we’ll be debating the state of press freedom at the Frontline Club this morning. We start at 10am GMT May 1. The debate will cumulate in an audience vote on the motion ‘Governments at war are winning the battle of controlling the international media.'”

Update – Final video below:

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

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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.

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.

LA Times: New law to protect student press freedom

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Journalism students and their teachers in the US are to get more protection under a new state law which prevents administrators from taking punitive action against staff who to try to protect student press freedom (hat tip to Adrian Monck), writes the LA Times.

The Journalism Teacher Protection Act will also coincide with another initiative that seeks to educate students about 1st Amendment feedoms, the News Literacy project. This scheme will send working journalists to teach students how to “distinguish verified information from raw messages, spin, gossip and opinion,” Alan Miller, project founder, tells the Times. Full story…

CNN.com: Zimbabwe demands registration fees from foreign journalists

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Foreign journalists working in Zimbabwe will have to pay $4,000 (USD) a year under new licensing rules announced by the country’s government.

Foreign media groups must pay around $32,000 for application, accreditation and administration as part of the new regulations.

The fees don’t apply to journalists working for Zimbabwean organisations. Full story…

CNN: Zimbabwe demands $36,000 fee from journalists

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CNN reports that the Zimbabwean government is demanding that foreign journalists pay a combined annual licence fee of $36,000 to practice journalism in its country. This appears to be supported by a story in the Zimbabwe Times. Full story…

NYTimes.com: Chinese government defends decision to re-block websites

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Liu Jianchao, a spokesman for China’s Foreign Ministry, has said that the Chinese government had a right to censor web sites that violated the country’s laws, reports the New York Times.