Looking for Trouble » Journalism

Tell Syria to Free Journalist Dorothy Parvaz

admin — Sat, 07 May 2011 22:44:35 +0000

As of today, journalist Dorothy Parvaz has been detained in Syria for eight days. We need to get the message out that the World community won’t allow journalists to be detained for doing their job! What you can do: Call the Syrian Embassy in D.C.
(202-232-6316, ext. 139) to politely press for Dorothy’s release.

E-mail: as1@syrembassy.net or consular@syrembassy.net

The video below starts out with 10 minutes or so about Dorothy Parvaz done by Enrique Cerna of KCTS with me and Melanie McFarland, a close friend of Dorothy’s and like me a former colleague at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer newspaper in Seattle.

Watch the full episode. See more KCTS 9 Connects.

Ryan Grim: Al Jazeera English TV blacked out across most of the U.S.

admin — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 21:46:00 +0000

This article by Ryan Grim originally appeared at The Huffington Post, and is used by permission of the author.

WASHINGTON – Canadian television viewers looking for the most thorough and in-depth coverage of the uprising in Egypt have the option of tuning into Al Jazeera English, whose on-the-ground coverage of the turmoil is unmatched by any other outlet. American viewers, meanwhile, have little choice but to wait until one of the U.S. cable-company-approved networks broadcasts footage from AJE, which the company makes publicly available. What they can’t do is watch the network directly.

Other than in a handful of pockets across the U.S. – including Ohio, Vermont and Washington, D.C. – cable carriers do not give viewers the choice of watching Al Jazeera. That corporate censorship comes as American diplomats harshly criticize the Egyptian government for blocking Internet communication inside the country and as Egypt attempts to block Al Jazeera from broadcasting.

The result of the Al Jazeera English blackout in the United States has been a surge in traffic to the media outlet’s website, where footage can be seen streaming live. The last 24 hours have seen a two-and-a-half thousand percent increase in web traffic, Tony Burman, head of North American strategies for Al Jazeera English, told HuffPost. Sixty percent of that traffic, he said, has come from the United States.

A little perspective on hard times for journalists in the United States

admin — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 19:28:42 +0000

These are hard times for journalists in the United States. Newspapers are losing money and trimming staff. Some papers have gone out of business – the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, for example, where I worked as the National/Foreign editor. Across the country, roughly 20,000 journalists have lost their jobs since the beginning of 2008. Few of my 160 or so colleagues at the P-I have found work at all, not to mention work as journalists.

Sometimes, just to keep things in perspective, I look at what’s happening with journalists in other countries, where losing their jobs isn’t the biggest worry.

Here’s part of just one week’s report, from the International Freedom of Expression Exchange, of what journalists face overseas:

In Vietnam, nine Vietnamese bloggers and writers were charged with anti-government propaganda and sentenced to severe prison terms. The bloggers were convicted of demanding greater “political pluralism, democracy and respect for human rights.”

In Yemen, a demonstration in the capital Sana’a – organized by the NGO Women Journalists without Chains – which called for freedom of expression, was broken up by police who injured several of the demonstrators and destroyed several video cameras.

In Nepal, the government intends to use journalists as informants as part of a security plan, a decision that would undermine the role of independent media and increase attacks on journalists.

In Kuwait, a journalist known for his reporting and activism on corruption was attacked and beaten by an unknown assailant while the journalist was at a conference on transparency.

In Israel, Israeli security forces disguised themselves as photojournalists in the midst of a Palestinian demonstration and later arrested protesters.

OK, I know this is little consolation to any journalist in this country who is out of work, with little prospect of a job on the horizon. Still, it helps me to know, as I fill out my unemployment claims for the seventh month in a row, that I can blog about any damned thing I want, and no one is going to come after me for it.