August 4, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
The Associated Press perceives the routine standard for online journalism, blogging and social networking, which involves quoting, citing and linking to sources, as injurious to its revenue stream. It is now seeking to institute a blanket global policy, whereby quoting even 5 words by the AP would cost the quoting publication $12.50. Quoting 251 words or more would cost $100. Critics say the AP, like other online news producers, benefits immensely from the incoming links posted across the web by readers and journalists referring back to its news material.
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July 24, 2009 :: Riga Listin :: 2 Comments
Natalya Estemirova was a seasoned journalist and well-known human rights activist and researcher. She was one of the leading sources of information about human rights abuses and major atrocities committed in Chechnya, and was considered a leading voice against authoritarian leader Ramzan Kadyrov.
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July 23, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
Access to the internet must be a basic human right, across the globe, for a number of reasons. First of all, legitimate, transparent democratic processes of government require in today’s world that information flow freely and that citizens be empowered to share information and to find information, according to their choices and their needs.
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July 23, 2009 :: Anjika Sridhar :: Comments Off
The 26-year civil war between the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) has been declared ended, with the taking of the Tigers’ last strongholds, the reported “liberation” of the civilian population of the region, and the killing of LTTE founder and supreme commander Velupillai Prabhakaran, whom the government declared to have died on 18 May 2009, in an attack on an ambulance reportedly carrying LTTE leaders.
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July 19, 2009 :: Webb Tisch :: Comments Off
Sami al-Haj, a reporter working for TV news network al-Jazeera, was jailed for six years at the Guantánamo Bay prison camp, before being cleared and released. He is now setting up a team to file suit against former Pres. George W. Bush and other officials within his administration for damages related to his imprisonment.
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July 18, 2009 :: Riga Listin :: Comments Off
Many in the news business have touted Cronkite’s passionate interest in new technologies and his willingness to take the work of the field reporter to the cutting edge of radio and television media, despite his early start in the business of ink and newsprint. More than oppose emerging media which had shifted the news culture away from his principles, he urged fellow reporters to be rigorous, thoughtful and given to probing investigation, so that the service they provided would be worthy of the expectations the public invests in the free press.
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July 17, 2009 :: staff :: Comments Off
Dear President Obama, As you are about to visit Russia at President Dmitri Medvedev’s invitation, the international press freedom organisation Reporters Without Borders would like to draw your attention to the frequency of crimes of violence against journalists in Russia and the prevailing impunity for those responsible.
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July 15, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: 4 Comments
Natalya Estemirova, from the Russian human rights organization, the Memorial Human Rights Center, was kidnapped today while leaving her home in Grozny, the Chechen capital, and later found dead. She reportedly shouted to bystanders “This is a kidnapping!” No one was able to intervene, as four armed men grabbed her and put her into a white automobile.
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July 1, 2009 :: staff :: 3 Comments
Amid a storm of protest from Chinese citizens, businesses, rights activists and foreign governments, China has suddenly halted its planned installation of a new enhancement to the ‘Great Firewall’ called ‘Green Dam’. In a statement the UK’s Guardian calls “terse”, the state-run news agency Xinhua reported “China will delay the mandatory installation of the ‘Green Dam-Youth Escort’ filtering software on new computers.”
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June 28, 2009 :: staff :: 2 Comments
I’d like to thank you again for your peaceful objections which have received widespread coverage across the world, and would like to ask you that by using all legal channels, and by remaining faithful to the sacred system of the Islamic Republic, to make sure that your objections are heard by the authorities in the country. I am fully aware that your justified demands have nothing to do with groups who do not believe in the sacred Islamic Republic of Iran’s system. It is up to you to distance yourself from them, and do not allow them to misuse the current situation.
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June 28, 2009 :: staff :: 4 Comments
Iranian authorities have reportedly shut down Kalemeh, the official website of opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi. Kalemeh was considered to be Mousavi’s only remaining independent means of communicating directly with supporters or with the world beyond Iran’s borders. The development is an escalation of the government’s efforts to disrupt opposition channels of communication and organizing capacity.
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June 25, 2009 :: staff :: 7 Comments
Reports from Wednesday protests in Tehran include harrowing though unconfirmed accounts of axe-wielding thugs, brutal assaults against civilians and mass detentions. Baharestan Square was reportedly the scene of a messy attempt to stage a pro-opposition rally, but accounts of what took place are hard to verify. At least one victim’s family may have been taken into custody and bans on public mourning have been reported.
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June 23, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: 8 Comments
As Iran’s presidential election has morphed into a massive international spectacle, with opposition protesters demanding justice and a full accounting of how votes were tallied, the regime has used every technological advantage at its disposal to obstruct online communications and mobile phone traffic. The government now has a wealth of powerful technologies, from western firms, it can use to spy, block communications, and even alter messages before they are delivered.
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June 22, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: 11 Comments
Iran’s Guardian Council announced today for the first time that it has found irregularities after reviewing some of the ballots cast in the disputed presidential election. According to state media, the Guardian Council has found that in at least 50 cities across Iran, the number of votes counted exceeded the total number of eligible voters. The Council also has said it would recount all ballots for the effected districts, if the candidates request it.
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June 21, 2009 :: staff :: 7 Comments
Ali Larijani, speaker of the Iranian parliament, has criticized the Guardian Council, alleging that some of the 12 clerics have taken sided with an apparent effort to falsify election results in favor of incumbent pres. Mahmoud Ahmedinejad. Larijani said “a majority of people are of the opinion that the actual election results are different than what was officially announced”.
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June 21, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
As concerned people inside and outside Iran try to get a grip on what is taking place in the anti-government demonstrations, pro-democracy rallies and security crackdown, following the presidential vote of 12 June 2009, social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook have been useful to those trying to get word out about abuses and harsh security measures; the use of proxy servers has allowed journalists, activists and concerned citizens, to circumvent controls on media freedom.
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June 21, 2009 :: staff :: 16 Comments
Today Iranian state television published comments by the government blaming “terrorists” for yesterday’s clashes. With video and numerous eyewitness accounts indicating that government-backed militia attacked unarmed civilians, raided homes and fired live rounds and tear gas at unarmed demonstrators, the use of the word “terrorists” suggests the regime is now classifying all opposition supporters in this way.
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June 20, 2009 :: staff :: 12 Comments
This article is an update to an earlier report on shots fired at pro-opposition demonstrators in Iran. Throughout the day on Saturday and late into the night, the internet was buzzing with rumor and conjecture, anecdotal reports and amateur video footage showing evidence of security forces attacking, beating and even shooting unarmed civilians. The following video shows police attacking students and opposition supporters at Shiraz University, on Saturday…
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June 20, 2009 :: staff :: 17 Comments
Iranian opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi has declared he is “ready for martyrdom” and has urged his supporters across the nation to strike if he is detained or harmed. Responding to the supreme leader’s vocal support for the use of violence to suppress the demonstrations, security forces have reportedly fired shots at or over a crowd of demonstrators in central Tehran. Mousavi has written a letter to the nation’s highest electoral authority, demanding a re-run of the election; the move is being seen as the most overt show of defiance to date against the supreme leader.
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June 20, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: 20 Comments
The Ayatollah Ali Khamene’i, head of state of the Islamic Republic of Iran, has called for an end to massive public demonstrations against the disputed results of last week’s presidential election. He reiterated his view that the results are legitimate and said the Islamic Republic would never cheat. He also declared his personal support for some of the views of Pres. Ahmedinejad. Today it appears security forces have responded by using force.
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June 19, 2009 :: staff :: 18 Comments
Navi Pillay, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, warned Iran that illegal violence by militia groups could sow unrest. Pillay called for the regime to exercise restraint and cease its attacks on demonstrators and organizers. With the legal basis for recent arrests “not clear”, Pillay called on Iran to explain “Why have some of those who have been arrested been denied access to lawyers and members of their families? And why is the whereabouts of others unknown?”
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June 18, 2009 :: staff :: 21 Comments
Tens of thousands of Iranians have gathered at Tehran’s Imam Khomeini Square to mourn demonstrators killed by security forces in opposition rallies earlier this week. The day of mourning was called for by opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi, who says the election was stolen by pro-Ahmedinejad forces. As the demonstrations have persisted, over the last week, a range of prominent political and religious figures have joined Mousavi’s calls for a probe into the alleged fraud and establishment of transparency in the democratic process.
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June 17, 2009 :: staff :: 16 Comments
On Tuesday, as opposition demonstrations calling for a full accounting for all votes cast in Friday’s election spread, authorities revoked press credentials for foreign journalists and warned media not to report from the protest marches. Opposition leaders, protest organizers and some media staff have reportedly been rounded up and held in undisclosed locations.
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June 17, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: 23 Comments
An Iran observer last night told CNN that sources inside Iran report Hashemi Rafsanjani, one of Iran’s most pre-eminent political figures, and a powerful leader of the Expediency Council —which resolves disputes between Parliament and the Guardian Council— and former president, has called for an emergency meeting of the Assembly of Experts, in Qom. The Assembly of Experts is a group of clerics who are the only body in the Islamic Republic able to select or unseat the supreme leader of the Guardian Council. The news suggests an effort by Rafsanjani to charge that Ayatollah Ali Khamene’i may have violated the Iranian Constitution and participated in or condoned the rigging of the election.
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June 16, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: 29 Comments
Supporters of opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi allege the official results are electoral fraud, and accuse Pres. Ahmedinejad of an effective “coup d’état”. Such language has led some to believe the supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamene’i has been pressured by other political heavyweights to acknowledge that wrongdoing may have occurred.
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June 12, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
The first broadcast electronic television signal was established in the UK in 1936. The first experimental black-and-white “mechanical” television service was established in the UK in 1926. Several countries, including Switzerland, Italy and the Netherlands, had adopted sustained mechanical television services as early as 1932. The United States began selling television receivers in 1938. Today, 12 June 2009, all analog television signals across the US “go dark”.
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June 11, 2009 :: Denver Lessing :: Comments Off
The Associated Press is the most widely distributed news wire service in the world. Credible impartiality is vitally important to its reputation as an unbiased source of global reporting. However, that journalists might have opinions, perhaps informed opinions, on matters on which they are not reporting for pay should never be in and of itself cause for reprimand. The AP, like any reputable news agency, has a moral obligation to honor the inherent value of press freedom, and that includes the right of individuals to express their views in other venues.
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June 8, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
California-based Korean-American journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee have been sentenced to 12 years hard labor in North Korea for “grave crimes” allegedly stemming from their filming video across the North Korean border, from Chinese soil. Reports suggest the two women were abducted by North Korean border guards, who crossed into Chinese territory to seize the journalists in a military raid, while the two women were reporting for Current TV.
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June 3, 2009 :: staff :: Comments Off
BBC reporting from 4 June 1989, day of the massacre at Tiananman Square. A BBC reporter delivers her report from among the crowd, under constant gunfire. She reports: “the air was filled with shouts of ‘fascists! stop killing!’” / “they’re shouting ‘stop the killing!’ and ‘down with the government’” / “the young man in front of me fell dead; I fell over him” / “two ambulance drivers were shot and injured” / “There was not one voice on the streets that did not express despair and rage. ‘Tell the world’ they said to us.”
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June 3, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: 2 Comments
The Chinese government, in Beijing, controlled by a Communist party that allows no dissent, and no opposition, continues to suppress public awareness, discussion or inquiry, regarding the events of June 1989, in which the Chinese military massacred hundreds of student demonstrators. The term Tiananmen produces filtered results in web searches, and the regime has blocked access to Twitter, Flickr, Blogger, the Huffington Post, LiveJournal, MSN’s Bing, and other sites, in an effort to prevent Chinese internauts from locating any reporting on the massacre of 4 June 1989.
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May 31, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
Publishing models determine which texts are made available to a wide audience, and by what means. New media, like this social network, are providing new opportunities, but the crossover between print and digital media will provide bold new opportunities for making the best new ideas available to the people who can do the most with them.
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May 23, 2009 :: Riga Listin :: Comments Off
Roxana Saberi, a freelance journalist who has reported for the BBC and NPR, has returned home to the United States after spending 4 months in prison in Tehran. She had been convicted of spying for the US on evidence that has never been made public. Rights activists, the US government, her family, her lawyers and [...]
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May 12, 2009 :: Riga Listin :: Comments Off
Sri Lanka’s government has expelled three reporters for the UK-based Channel 4 News. Nick Paton Walsh, producer Bessie Du and cameraman Matt Jasper, were detained by police in the town of Trincomalee, in eastern Sri Lanka, after reports highlighting the conditions facing refugees who fled the fighting between government and rebel forces.
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May 12, 2009 :: Denver Lessing :: Comments Off
The release of Roxana Saberi —an Iranian-American journalist sentenced to 8 years for espionage by an Iranian court allowing her little due process and with no known credible evidence against her— is an important victory for advocates of both fair trial and press freedom. But as her story, which played out on a global stage, has highlighted the need for action to curb persecution of journalists, questions are being raised about the treatment of journalists in the US ‘war on terror’.
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May 11, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
Iranian-American journalist Roxana Saberi, jailed in Tehran on allegations of espionage, has had her sentence reduced from 8 years to 2 years, suspended for 5 years. Iranian officials announced today that she was free to leave Evin prison immediately. Saberi, originally detained for buying a bottle of wine, was subsequently charged with reporting without government credentials, then espionage. Her trial was a 15-minute closed-door hearing in which no defense was permitted.
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May 10, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
The lawyer representing Roxana Saberi in an Iranian appeals court today has expressed hope, saying he is “optimistic she will be acquitted”. Ms. Saberi was convicted in April by an Iranian court of spying for the US, a charge related to her conducting journalistic activity without a government-issued license to do so. There has been an international outcry calling for her unconditional release, and Iran’s president ordered the courts to hear her appeal.
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May 8, 2009 :: Riga Listin :: Comments Off
If I am moved to give my mind and my energies to revealing the hidden details behind a story about a storyteller, beset by the political winds and deprived of her basic human intimacies, a reporter, a poet, a seer of deep patterns, it must be because we all have a fundamental human dignity that we wish would reach across the void to others, and if we are honest, we see when it is threatened.
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May 6, 2009 :: staff :: Comments Off
A mounting movement in the south of Yemen, in opposition to the government has led to the government ordering the closure of 7 major newspapers. Large anti-government rallies led to clashes in which at least 8 people were killed, and the government has now banned the publication of newspapers it says threaten “national unity”.
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May 4, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: 2 Comments
As the world marked international Press Freedom Day yesterday, there was growing concern about the conditions facing journalists around the world. Reporters without Borders (RSF) has expressed concern a Tibetan editor jailed in China may be suffering torture, the American journalist Roxana Saberi is said to be frail due to an ongoing hunger strike in protest of her 8 year sentence for ‘espionage’ in Iran, and numerous heads of state are listed as ‘predators’ working against press freedom.
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May 3, 2009 :: Riga Listin :: One Comment
Lin Zhao was a Chinese poet who hoped that the end of feudal imperialism in 20th century China would lead to real democratic rights for its people. She was executed in 1968 as the regime of Mao Zedong sought to crush all dissent and sweep away potential cultural and conceptual rivals to its rule.
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May 2, 2009 :: Riga Listin :: 5 Comments
UNESCO Committee on Communication and Information representative presents award for research into press freedom. Debate discusses anti-press actions that have impeded the free flow of information about civilian suffering in war-zones ranging from Gaza to Sri Lanka to Iraq. The debate is hosted and moderated by William Horsley, of the Association of European Journalists.
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April 30, 2009 :: Riga Listin :: Comments Off
Nobel-prize-winning Iranian human rights lawyer Shirin Ebadi has joined the defense team representing Iranian-American journalist Roxana Saberi. She says Saberi was convicted in a trial that took place in violation of Iran’s own laws governing due process. She urged Saberi should have access to her lawyers and that evidence should be reviewed in open hearings.
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April 30, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: 2 Comments
The election of 2008 is historic for a variety of reasons: it saw the election of the first African American president, a second consecutive “wave election” —not seen since 1930 and ’32—, saw two women come very close to the most powerful job in the world, mobilized millions of voters and saw record amounts of fundraising from “small donors”. It was, however, also a watershed moment in the fundamental decentralization of the American political process.
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April 29, 2009 :: staff :: One Comment
Barack Obama’s first 100 days in office have been a flurry of major reforms and of global political and economic strategy. He took the oath of office on 20 January 2009 with the worst recession in 70 years setting in, major banks on the verge of insolvency, record numbers of home foreclosures, two wars in Asia, an increasingly hostile Russia and a predecessor’s policy of using torture to “enhance” interrogations. Not only has he moved forward on the economy, healthcare, security, and energy; he has reformed the entire American diplomatic paradigm, moving toward a “smart power” based on 3d vision: diplomacy, development, defense.
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April 25, 2009 :: Riga Listin :: Comments Off
Roxana Saberi, jailed for 8 years by Iran for alleged “espionage” (read: reporting without a censor’s license), is now in her 5th day of a hunger strike. She says she will continue her hunger strike until she is freed. Her father, Reza Saberi, says he has spoken to her, she is determined to refuse food until released, and that she “seems weak”. Foreign governments, the US, as well as individuals and rights groups, are calling for her immediate, unconditional release.
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April 24, 2009 :: Riga Listin :: One Comment
North Korea is proceeding with a trial against two Korean-American journalists from California, despite witnesses claiming they were detained when North Korean border guards entered Chinese territory to seize them while their cameras were rolling. The trial will be held behind closed doors, and foreign governments have expressed concern the process will not allow the journalists a fair hearing or even a defense.
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April 20, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
A court in Iran has jailed Iranian-American journalist, Roxana Saberi, to 8 years in prison, alleging that she spied for the US. Saberi had been detained originally on charges she violated Iranian law by reporting without an official press license. The charges were later raised to espionage, and within one week, she was found guilty, after a one-day closed-door trial.
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March 30, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
Investigators in several countries say they have uncovered a global “ghost net” of cyber-espionage, with major centers in three Chinese provinces and a foothold in California. Just one of the group’s alleged cyber-spies is said to have created a system that hacked into 30,000 computers per day. The investigation began with a probe into alleged hacking of computers used by the Dalai Lama in exile in India.
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March 19, 2009 :: The Editors :: One Comment
Andry Rajoelina, legally 6 years too young, assumes Madagascar presidency, after Marc Ravalomanana is forced to step down. Ravalomanana had vowed to fight to keep his office and had proposed a referendum to let the people decide, but military forces stormed the presidential palace and the president resigned and fled. From Johannesburg, Xinhua reports: The [...]
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February 19, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
A criminal court in Moscow has acquitted three men charged with the assassination of crusading journalist Anna Politkovskaya. The murder, which took place on then president Vladimir Putin’s birthday, shook Russian media and journalism and the human rights world, and put pressure on the Kremlin to crack down on all violence against reporters.
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