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Category: Access & Censorship
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Mostly True: The Cover That Never Was
David Burnett and I were comissioned by a high-profile magazine to make a cover image of Michael Phelps. Actually it was David who they wanted. David to his credit and as a testimont to his experience suggested that both of us do the shoot at the same time. It was a pretty smart and somewhat bold idea. Two sets of eyes, two brains working togeather to make the most out of the five minutes that we’d (hopefully) get.
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Londoner videos his bullshit anti-terror stop-and-search – Boing Boing
A Londoner was stopped by a London Transport Police officer under S.44 of the Terrorism Act 2000, and had the presence of mind to whip out his video camera and record the officers tearing through his stuff.
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Bill Would End Ban on Photos of Returning Military Dead
The Department of Defense would be required to grant journalists access to ceremonies honoring fallen military personnel under a bill introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives.
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Foreign media jostled by police near Olympic stadium in Beijing Media | guardian.co.uk
Journalists and photographers were targeted by police during the aftermath of a demonstration by Free Tibet activists near the Olympic stadium in Beijing
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Thomas Hawk's Digital Connection: More on the Whole Simon Blint Fiasco
How sad, for you Thomas. And, everyone rallying around your opinion here. Is there any justice at all to a one-sided rant? This to me is where blogging loses it’s credibility, by the second. I see that you tried to make some grand statement about the rights of photographers, but your method for doing so is selfish, immature, and actually rather cruel. Do you know Simon Blint? Do you have any idea of what it means to be able to safely and securely bring art to the masses? I do, on both accounts. I have worked at SFMOMA. You have used this incident to construct a rather flimsy soap box.
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Thomas Hawk's Digital Connection: Photography is Not a Crime
from the ever-quotable Thomas Hawk:Simon Blint, Director of Visitor Relations at the SF MOMA is a first rate a*hole.
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New Fears Arise on Olympic Press Freedoms
The beating of two Japanese journalists by police in western China drew an official apology Tuesday, but Beijing also set new obstacles for news outlets wanting to report from Tiananmen Square in the latest sign of trouble for reporters covering the Olympics.
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Olympics bans ‘professional’ cameras news – Amateur Photographer – news, camera reviews, lens reviews, camera equipment guides, photography courses, competitions, photography forums
Spectators watching the Beijing Olympics Games will not be allowed to carry ‘professional’ camera gear into the stadium with them, according to strict rules laid down by organisers.
Such cameras are banned alongside guns, grenades, gunpowder and explosives.
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The Public Editor – The Painful Images of War – Op-Ed – NYTimes.com
TWO hundred twenty-one American soldiers and Marines have been killed in Iraq this year, but until eight days ago, The Times had not published a photo of one of their bodies.
The picture The Times did publish on July 26, of a room full of death after a suicide bombing in June, with a marine in the foreground, his face covered and his uniform riddled with tiny shrapnel holes, accompanied a front-page article about how few such images there are.
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In Khartoum, a Surreally Mundane Experience – washingtonpost.com
KHARTOUM, Sudan — Sometimes, the things reporters do here in Africa can seem harrowing from afar. But up close, the experiences tend to be more Seinfeld than 24, more surreally mundane than high adventure. My recent eight-hour non-detention detention by Sudanese intelligence agents in Khartoum was a long, sleepy day of waiting and more waiting with no definitive beginning or end.
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IOC Allows China To Limit Reporters' Access to Internet – washingtonpost.com
The International Olympic Committee and the Chinese government acknowledged Wednesday that reporters covering the Olympics will be blocked from accessing Internet sites that Chinese authorities consider politically sensitive.
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PDNPulse – China Blocking Journalists' Net Access
The Associated Press reports that journalists covering the Beijing Olympics have access only to a censored version of the Internet. According to the AP: “On Tuesday, sites such as Amnesty International or any search for a site with Tibet in the address could not be opened at the Main Press Center, which will house about 5,000 print journalists when the games open Aug. 8.”
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4,000 U.S. Combat Deaths, and Just a Handful of Images – NYTimes.com
If the conflict in Vietnam was notable for open access given to journalists — too much, many critics said, as the war played out nightly in bloody newscasts — the Iraq war may mark an opposite extreme: after five years and more than 4,000 American combat deaths, searches and interviews turned up fewer than a half-dozen graphic photographs of dead American soldiers.
It is a complex issue, with competing claims often difficult to weigh in an age of instant communication around the globe via the Internet, in which such images can add to the immediate grief of families and the anger of comrades still in the field.
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State of the Art: Does This Photographer Look Dangerous?
In the can’t-make-this-up department, we came across a news story about Betty Robinson (left), an 82-year-old amateur photographer who was officially flagged down for shooting pictures of a British wading pool because she might be a pedophile. The pool was empty.
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Police warn UK man that taking photos of "hooded teenagers" is illegal – Boing Boing
The Daily Mail reports that a 64-year-old London man who took photos of teenagers raising a ruckus in front of his apartment could be charged with assault.
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In Burkina Faso, Running Afoul of Mr. X – washingtonpost.com
OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso — He came at us like a hound chasing a squirrel.
“No! No!” he shouted, waving his arms and his laminated government ID card at us.
As it turned out, he was the bureaucrat in charge of this street, the deputy assistant associate section head of something or other. The Man.
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Cop busts guy for taking his pic: "It's illegal to take a picture of a law enforcement officer… if you don't give it to me, you're going to jail" – Boing Boing
Conover quotes the police officer as saying “… you took a picture of me. It’s illegal to take a picture of a law enforcement officer… if you don’t give it to me, you’re going to jail”.
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Father-of-three branded a 'pervert' – for photographing his own children in public park | Mail Online
When Gary Crutchley started taking pictures of his children playing on an inflatable slide he thought they would be happy reminders of a family day out.
But the innocent snaps of seven-year-old Cory, and Miles, five, led to him being called a ‘pervert’.
The woman running the slide at Wolverhampton Show asked him what he was doing and other families waiting in the queue demanded that he stop.
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