Category: Access & Censorship
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China: "citizen journalist" beaten to death – Boing Boing
China: “citizen journalist” beaten to death – Boing Boing: “Wei Wenhua was beaten to death after he snapped photos of a confrontation on the street between village residents and authorities. His death has sparked controversy in Chinese media, and the blogosphere: Wei Wenhua was a model communist and is now a bloggers’ hero — a…
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Gang Leader for a Day – Sudhir Venkatesh – Book Review – New York Times
Gang Leader for a Day – Sudhir Venkatesh – Book Review – New York Times: “On a hot summer day in 1989, Sudhir Venkatesh, a callow sociology student with a ponytail and tie-dyed T-shirt, walked into one of Chicago’s toughest housing projects, clipboard in hand, ready to ask residents about their lives. Sample question: ‘How…
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House kicks up an investigation : Updates : The Rocky Mountain News
House kicks up an investigation : Updates : The Rocky Mountain News: “By resolution, the House said: ‘The special committee will investigate the circumstances surrounding the incident that occurred between Rep. Douglas Bruce and a member of the press on the floor of the House of Representatives on Jan. 14, 2008.’ House Republicans on Monday…
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Bruce kicks photographer, takes oath : Updates : The Rocky Mountain News
Bruce kicks photographer, takes oath : Updates : The Rocky Mountain News: “But his patience snapped as photographers from the Rocky and Denver Post crouched before him to shoot his picture as he stood for the House’s morning prayer. Bruce told Rocky photographer Javier Manzano ‘Don’t do that again,’ and then gave him a swift…
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Bjork assaults news photographer – 14 Jan 2008 – Journalism news – NZ Herald
Bjork assaults news photographer – 14 Jan 2008 – Journalism news – NZ Herald: “Iceland’s singing and songwriting sensation Bjork attacked a Herald photographer on her arrival at Auckland International Airport yesterday.”
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Report: Iraqi Government Bans Journalists From Clash Sites
From Iraqslogger via Editor and Publisher, a report that journalists will be banned from covering violent incidents by the Iraqi government. Among the reasons given by man with a long title Iraqi Interior Ministry Operations Director Brigadier General Abdul Karim Khalaf: — To protect journalists from being victims in follow on attacks (insurgents often target…
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Historians Fight Bush on Access to Papers
NYT: In December 1989, one month after the fall of the Berlin Wall, President George H. W. Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev met in Malta and, in the words of a Soviet spokesman, “buried the cold war at the bottom of the Mediterranean.” The Russian transcript of that momentous summit was published in Moscow in 1993.…
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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…