Category: Access & Censorship
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France bans citizen journalists from reporting violence
MacWorld: The French Constitutional Council has approved a law that criminalizes the filming or broadcasting of acts of violence by people other than professional journalists. The law could lead to the imprisonment of eyewitnesses who film acts of police violence, or operators of Web sites publishing the images, one French civil liberties group warned on…
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Russian Police Beat Democracy Activists
Washington Post: Several thousand people chanted “Shame!” as they marched down St. Petersburg’s main avenue to protest what they said was Russia’s rollback from democracy. The demonstration, called the “march of those who disagree,” was a rare gathering of the country’s often fractious opposition. … Mayor Valentina Matviyenko, a close ally of Putin’s, called the…
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Who's killing Putin's enemies?
The Observer: One day, at the Ninth Municipal Hospital in Grozny, the Chechen capital, Anna Politkovskaya encountered a 62-year-old woman named Aishat Suleimanova whose eyes expressed ‘complete indifference to the world’, as she wrote in a typical piece. ‘And it is beyond one’s strength to look at her naked body. She has been disembowelled like…
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Wires Reject Handout Photo Of Bush Speech
PDN- The White House broke with tradition Wednesday night and refused to let photojournalists shoot still pictures of the president at the podium after his prime-time address on the Iraq war. As a result, newspapers and wire services had little choice but to run low-quality frame grabs from the video of the speech. An official…
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Afghan kidnappers 'want convert'
BBC: The kidnappers of an Italian journalist in Afghanistan have offered to free him in exchange for a Christian convert who fled the country, an aid agency says. Photojournalist Gabriele Torsello was seized last week while travelling on a bus in southern Afghanistan. The kidnappers will free Mr Torsello, a Muslim convert, if Abdul Rahman…
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Journalist Kidnapped In South Afghanistan
Washington Post: Italian photojournalist Gabriele Torsello was seized by five gunmen on the highway from Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand province, to neighboring Kandahar province, the independent Pajhwok news agency quoted Torsello’s traveling companion, Gholam Mohammad, as saying. Pajhwok said its call to Torsello’s mobile phone was answered by a man saying: “We are…
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How Do You Photograph the Amish? Let Us Count the Ways
CJR: The AP’s Carolyn Kaster appreciates this approach but has a slightly different philosophy: whenever possible, do no harm. “You can go through this business and try to make pictures of impact and importance but if an image is to have a journalistic purpose, to communicate something, if you can communicate it in a different…
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In a Risky Place to Gather News, a Very Familiar Story
NYT: Russia is unquestionably a dangerous place for journalists — less so than only Iraq and Algeria, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Thirteen of them have been killed since Mr. Putin came to power in 2000, a little more than two a year on average. The killings — and the failure to solve…
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Iraqi Journalists Add Laws to List of Dangers
NYT: Last month, more than 70 news organizations signed a nine-point pledge supporting the national reconciliation plan of Prime Minister Maliki, promising not to use inflammatory statements or images of people killed in attacks, and vowing to “disseminate news in a way that harmonizes with Iraq’s interests.” Days later, the police barred journalists from photographing…
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U.S. Detains AP Photographer
Wired: The U.S. military in Iraq has imprisoned an Associated Press photographer for five months, accusing him of being a security threat but never filing charges or permitting a public hearing. Military officials said Bilal Hussein, an Iraqi citizen, was being held for “imperative reasons of security” under United Nations resolutions. AP executives said the…
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Filkins, 'NYT' War Reporter: 'Anarchy' Curtails Reporting in Iraq
Editor & Publisher: He estimated that there are probably 50 murders and 20 to 30 kidnappings in Baghdad every day, and said that it had gotten to the point where it was no longer just Sunni-Shiite clashes or insurgent mayhem. “Nobody trusts anybody anymore,” he said. “There’s no law, and the worst people with guns…
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Iraq's Endangered Journalists
NYT: I have experienced nearly all of these threats firsthand. In May 2004, a Canadian journalist and I were seized by insurgents inside Falluja. I was able to convince our captors that the Canadian, who spoke no Arabic, was not a Westerner but my older brother, and that he had suffered a stroke that left…
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The War You See, and the War You Don't
CJR: On July 25, Fox News reporter Bill Hemmer stood on a balcony and pointed to a hilltop on the Lebanon side of Israel’s border. The camera zoomed in. “It’s possible the latest Katushya rocket round left that high point,” Hemmer said, the camera following his sweeping hand over the hazy landscape, “and went down…
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Open Season on Journalists in the Middle East
CJR: The Israeli government said it bombed three sets of telecommunications towers deep in the Christian heartland to cripple Hezbollah cell phone communications. But the attacks, which killed one technician and injured another, came just days after Israeli helicopters rocketed the Beirut headquarters of al-Manar, the controversial Hezbollah television station, wounding seven people. At about…
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Lifting the Cover of the Hezbollah PR Effort
From CJR: Anderson Cooper followed up this past Monday with a similar report, telling viewers that “we found ourselves with other foreign reporters taken on a guided tour by Hezbollah … They only allowed us to videotape certain streets, certain buildings.” “This is a heavily orchestrated Hezbollah media event. When we got here, all the…
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Photographers Face Danger, Limited Mobility in Lebanon
From PDN: Getty Images photographer Spencer Platt says photographers in Beirut have been scrambling to the scene of explosions whenever they hear them, but doing so isn’t easy because Hezbollah is keeping photographers at arms length. “They’re very suspicious of our motives,” he says, explaining that they suspect there are Israeli spies among the Western…
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White House Photo Op
From the Chicago Tribune, via Rob Galbraith: A real-time presentation of a photo-op in the Oval Office of the White House with President Bush and Australia Prime Minister John Howard. (30 seconds.) Here.
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Miller's family to meet attorney general
From the Guardian: Relatives of James Miller, the British cameraman shot dead by Israeli soldiers in Gaza three years ago, will today meet the attorney general. The jury at last month’s inquest in London into Miller’s death decided the shooting was unlawful and that the 34-year-old the father of two had been murdered. Miller was…
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Media banned from red light district
From the Guardian: Robert Kilp, the head of the city’s public affairs department, said if a journalist was caught filming in the area the tape would be removed and a warning issued, but if he or she was caught a second time the consequences would be more serious. “The second time we will be really…
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No, I do not need permission to photograph in a public place
From Journal of a Photographer: That made this lady furious and she said “I will call the cops now” and took out her cell phone. It was a bizarre situation and the only think I could say in that moment was “Alright, go ahead and call the police. Then we can speak about that again.”…