Journalism: a dangerous job, and oft well done (2023)

This is the latest iteration of a thread which began a few years ago. The OP posted, "Those of you who would like to report news of journalists being attacked throughout the world are welcome to do so under a thread that has not been given an ugly title." This was a welcome response to a previous abusive thread which indeed had an ugly title and which accused journalists of being stupid drunks who deserved to be physically assaulted, if I recall correctly. I would add that as well as reports of the dangers, difficulties and attacks faced by journalists throughout the world, this series of threads has also included inspiring stories of their courage, professionalism, achievements and outstanding contributions to society at large.

For the last couple of years I have been posting regular updates from the Committee to Protect Journalists, which gives a sense of the scale of the problems faced by journalists, but there is so much of it that it becomes a bit overwhelming, so I will not be doing that any longer. Nevertheless I, and I hope others, will still post from time to time relevant stories which find their way into the mainstream media. And may I wish everybody a happy and peaceful new year, hopefully one in which fewer journalists will be murdered, physically assaulted, detained and otherwise harassed simply for doing their job.

Six journalists arrested over footage of South Sudan president wetting himself (Guardian)

Six journalists have been detained by South Sudan security forces over viral footage of the country’s president apparently urinating on himself, a press freedom watchdog has reported. The clip, filmed during an official event, shows South Sudanese leader Salva Kiir standing for the national anthem, initially oblivious as a stain spreads on his trousers and a pool forms at his feet. The camera abruptly turns away after Kiir and his entourage appear to notice what is happening. On Friday, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) reported that six journalists for the state-run South Sudan Broadcasting Corporation (SSBC) had been detained by the country’s National Security Service under suspicion of an unauthorised release of the footage. The CPJ, citing media reports and people who spoke on condition of anonymity, named the detainees as control room director Joval Tombe, camera operator and technician Victor Lado, camera operators Joseph Oliver and Jacob Benjamin, camera operator and technician Mustafa Osman, and control room technician Cherbek Ruben. Muthoki Mumo, CPJ’s sub-Saharan Africa representative, said the arrests match a “pattern of security personnel resorting to arbitrary detention whenever officials deem coverage unfavourable”...

Hopes rise for press freedom in Tanzania as number of censured journalists falls (Guardian)

The number of journalists being censured for their work in Tanzania has fallen slightly, raising hopes that press freedom is improving in the country. Last year, 17 “press violations”, which include threats, arrests, denial of access to information and equipment seizures, were reported in the east African nation, the Media Council of Tanzania told the Guardian. This compares with 25 in 2021 and 41 in 2020. The country’s previous president John Magufuli, who died in March 2021, was considered “hostile” to the media. During his term, Tanzania tumbled down the world press freedom index, from 71 in 2016 to 124 in 2021, out of 180 countries. The new president, Samia Suluhu, has adopted a more progressive stance. In her first month in office, she announced she did not want Tanzania to continue being infamous for violations of press freedom, and instructed the minister of information to lift some media bans imposed during Magufuli’s tenure...

Guardian confirms it was hit by ransomware attack (Guardian)

Media firm says personal data of UK staff members was accessed in ‘highly sophisticated’ cyber-attack last month...

Why reporting on Iran comes at a heavy price (BBC)

Reporting on one of the biggest international stories of the moment is an ongoing challenge for BBC Persian Service journalists, who are not allowed into the country, suffer daily harassment, and whose families back home are persecuted...

Maria Ressa: Nobel-winning Philippine editor keeps a ‘go bag’ in case of arrest (Guardian)

Nobel laureate Maria Ressa says she keeps a prison “go bag” with bundles of cash for bail and runs simulations of police raids with her staff as she fights for press freedom in the Philippines. The editor of news website Rappler won acquittal on four tax-evasion charges on Wednesday but said she was prepared for the worst from the three further outstanding cases that could see her sent to jail or her online news organisation shuttered. Ressa, who shared the Peace Prize with Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov in 2021, has been battling a series of cases that media advocates say were brought because of her criticism of former president Rodrigo Duterte and his drug war, which claimed thousands of lives...

Journalist Timothy Carney(Wash. Examiner) reports that the American Assoc for the advancement of science's journal Science admits that Covid jab supporters in the "woke"media (my emphasis) and their allies in Big Pharma, Pfizer, Modena, and Johnson & Johnson all used cells from aborted babies during design and development and production phrases. Snopes the left wing fact checking outlet acknowledged the statement " that such cell lines were used in the development of covid vaccine is accurate". Moral reservations about taking a vaccine tainted by the use of cells obtained through abortion and Big Pharma's evasiveness about cell lines and other effects have many Americans concerned....JMJ....

As independent media blossoms in Cuba, journalists face a crackdown (Guardian)

‘Chilling’ new criminal law penalizing internationally funded journalism comes as repression in the country is on the rise...

Biden accused of hypocrisy as he seeks extradition of Julian Assange (Guardian)

Ad-hoc tribunal of legal experts and supporters pressures US administration to drop ‘attack on press freedom’...

Two men to stand trial for murder of journalist Lyra McKee (Guardian)

Peter Cavanagh, 35, and Jordan Devine, 22, are charged with killing of journalist in Derry in 2019...

Mike Pompeo dismisses ‘faux outrage’ over murder of Jamal Khashoggi (Guardian)

The former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo has dismissed the indignation prompted by the murder of Jamal Khashoggi as “faux outrage” – and cast doubt on whether the Washington Post columnist was a genuine journalist at all...

More journalists killed in Latin America and Caribbean than Ukraine in 2022 (Guardian)

More journalists were killed in Latin America and the Caribbean than in any other part of the world last year, including the Ukraine war zone, the press watchdog Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has said. In a report released on Tuesday, the group said that, globally, at least 67 journalists and media workers had been killed in 2022...

UK government ‘let lawyers bypass sanctions’ to help Putin ally sue journalist (Guardian)

British lawyers were given government dispensation to bypass sanctions in order to help Yevgeny Prigozhin, the controversial Russian businessman and Wagner group founder, sue a journalist, according to documents made available to the website Open Democracy. The documents concern a libel case brought by Prigozhin against Eliot Higgins, the founder of the investigative group Bellingcat, in 2021. The revelations will raise further questions about the controversial use of UK libel law by super-rich, non-nationals...

Russia outlaws Meduza in attempt to stamp out independent news (Guardian)

Russia has declared the news outlet Meduza an “undesirable organisation”, in effect outlawing one of the country’s best-known sources of independent reporting on the Kremlin and war in Ukraine. Meduza, founded by Russian journalists in Riga, Latvia, in 2014, was declared an undesirable organisation by the general prosecutor’s office on Thursday for “posing a threat to the foundations of the Russian Federation’s constitutional order and national security”. The ruling is meant to obstruct the outlet’s continued reporting on Russia, by threatening its correspondents, sources and donors with fines or criminal prosecution for continuing to produce journalism from the country...

How writing became my refuge as a woman escaping South Sudan’s war (The New Humanitarian)

‘My stories have had a major impact’... I had just endured a terrifying few weeks. Our hometown had emptied as clashes between the South Sudanese army and unknown gunmen encroached. The security situation was so volatile that we had to spend nights hiding in distant villages. But it was this news about my looted home that kickstarted a period of depression and trauma. I was 28 years old. Me and my husband had lost everything, including our jobs. We didn’t know how we were going to raise our newborn son in exile. Yet after several years passed living in Bidi Bidi resettlement camp – which is in northern Uganda and is one of the largest refugee camps in the world – I finally found a lifeline: writing and journalism. I had previously worked as a reporter in South Sudan, and managed to bring my skills to Bidi Bidi. In recent years, I have covered all kinds of issues, from the impact of COVID-19 and aid ration cuts on refugees to the plight of women and girls here... Yet while journalism has provided a refuge, it has also proved a challenge. Sometimes when I want to write stories, people tell me that I am a refugee and a woman who should just sit quietly and depend on the UN’s refugee agency, UNHCR...

A French Catholic Journalist reports over 5,000 Christians were murdered last year, 4600 imprisoned and 2600 churches trashed....AMDG....

>12 brone: Huh? In the US alone, 600,000 people are imprisoned a year. Since Christians represent 65% of the total US population, at least 300,000 Christians are imprisoned in the US alone a year. Similar, if less dramatic, numbers exist for murders.

I'm really sorry for anyone murdered or persecuted. But Christians aren't a persecuted group as a whole, and these worldwide numbers seem to be more about luxuriating in a feeling of martyrdom instead of doing anything to prevent murders or help those being persecuted.

Three charged with Iran-backed plot to assassinate journalist in US (Guardian)

US prosecutors have charged three members of an eastern European criminal organization with ties to Iran’s government with conspiring to assassinate a journalist and activist who is an American citizen, the attorney general, Merrick Garland, said on Friday...

To defeat Putin, we must support the brave Russian journalists telling the truth (Guardian)

Despite a Soviet-style clampdown, we can help the exiles who are preserving independent journalism for Russians back home...

“Barbaric, inhuman, unacceptable”: Catholic Bishops in Cameroon on Murdered Journalist (ACI Africa)

Catholic Bishops in Cameroon have described the alleged assassination of a radio journalist in the Central African nation as a “barbaric, inhuman and unacceptable act” and urged the government to “shed light” on his abduction and eventual death. In a statement shared with ACI Africa Monday, January 30, members of the National Episcopal Conference of Cameroon (NECC) condemn the abduction and murder of Arsène Salomon Mbani Zogo who was serving as managing director of Amplitude FM, a private radio station in Cameroon’s capital city, Yaounde. On January 17, journalist Zogo was abducted near his home by unidentified men after trying to enter a police station to escape his attackers,” Reuters reported. The mutilated body of Mr. Zogo was reportedly found on January 22 near Soa, a suburb in Yaounde...

Indian journalist freed on bail after being jailed for two years without trial (Guardian)

Indian journalist Siddique Kappan, who was held in jail for two years without trial, has walked free after being granted bail in a case human rights groups alleged was politically motivated. Kappan, a Muslim journalist from the southern state of Kerala, was arrested in October 2020 as he was on his way to the northern state of Uttar Pradesh to report on the high-profile case of a Dalit girl who was gang-raped and later died. Kappan, along with three others, was picked up by Uttar Pradesh police and accused of belonging to an Islamist fundamentalist group and being part of a conspiracy to incite violence among Muslims...

NowThis @nowthisnews | 8:13 PM · Feb 9, 2023:
NewsNation reporter Evan Lambert was arrested at the scene of a Gov. Mike DeWine {Ohio} press conference on Feb 8 while reporting on the train derailment {toxic, explosive} cargo in East Palestine, OH.
DeWine criticized the journalist’s arrest, saying Lambert had ‘every right’ to do his job.

NewsNation Reporter Arrested at Ohio Governor’s Press Conference
A reporter for NewsNation was arrested at the scene of a Gov. Mike DeWine press conference in Ohio
0:42 https://twitter.com/nowthisnews/status/1623852499236163584

Dictator Hun Sen shuts down Cambodia’s VOD broadcaster (Guardian)

The dictator Hun Sen has ordered the shutdown of one of the last independent local news organisations in Cambodia, saying it had attacked him and his son and hurt the country... He ordered Phnom Penh police to “keep order” but not seize property. He said foreign donors to VOD should take back their money and its staff should find new jobs...

Reporter's dismissal exposes political pressures on West Virginia Public Broadcasting
David Folkenflik | February 13, 2023

Late last fall, West Virginia Public Broadcasting's Amelia Ferrell Knisely reported one story after another about allegations that people with disabilities were abused in facilities run by the state.

The state agency Knisely was covering demanded that one of her key stories be fully retracted. While her coverage remains on West Virginia Public Broadcasting's website, Knisely is gone. She says she was told the decision came from the station's chief executive.

Interviews with 20 people with direct knowledge of events at West Virginia Public Broadcasting indicate Knisely's involuntary departure from her position as a part-time reporter was not an aberration but part of a years-long pattern of mounting pressure on the station from Gov. Jim Justice's administration and some state legislators...

Since 2017, politicians have sought to eliminate state funding. The governor appointed partisans hostile to public broadcasting to key oversight positions. And the station's chief executive has intervened repeatedly in journalistic decisions...

https://www.npr.org/2023/02/13/1153590012/west-virginia-public-journalist-dismis...

‘I felt kidnapped’: Canada police sued for arresting photographer covering protest (Guardian)

A Canadian environmental publication has announced plans to sue the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), arguing it violated the rights of a photojournalist after she was arrested and detained while on the job. The lawsuit, if successful, could have significant implications for Canadian journalists reporting in areas where police try to limit both public and media access. In 2021, award-winning photojournalist Amber Bracken, who has previously worked with the Guardian, was arrested during a police raid on a protest camp in British Columbia. She was detained for three days before she was released. Police were enforcing a court-ordered injunction against demonstrators, more than a dozen of whom were also arrested. Bracken was on assignment at the time for the Narwhal, and editors with the environmental publication had previously notified police that Bracken was reporting in the area. She was provided with a letter of assignment and had identification tags on her cameras... In 2019, a Canadian court in Newfoundland and Labrador recognized that injunction orders do not apply to journalists working in the field. But even though Bracken told police of the precedent, none appeared aware of the rights of media...

Iran protests: Female journalists targeted in spate of arrests (BBC)

Female journalists in Iran have been targeted by security forces since anti-government protests began in September, activist groups say. Figures vary, but at least 17 have been arrested, an international group for press freedom says. Another puts the number about three times that or more...

BBC India: Search of offices in New Delhi and Mumbai ends after three days (BBC)

The search of BBC offices in India by tax officials has ended after three days. The authorities entered the offices in New Delhi and Mumbai on Tuesday, with staff facing lengthy questioning or told to stay at the office overnight. The BBC said: "We will continue to co-operate with the authorities and hope matters are resolved as soon as possible." It said it "will continue to report without fear or favour". The investigation comes weeks after the BBC aired a documentary in the UK critical of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi...

Why are so many journalists being killed in Mexico? asks Al Jazeera.

During Donald Trump's time with title of POTUS, the USA topped the list as the most dangerous place in the world for journalism, and that dominated conversation here. Now the danger in the USM is receiving attention.

UK-based Iranian TV channel moves to US after threats from Tehran

A UK-based Iranian broadcaster has moved its operation to the US after mounting threats and safety concerns against its journalists from Tehran. Acting on advice from the Met police, Iran International TV “reluctantly” closed its London studios after state-backed threats, a statement said, as safety concerns made it no longer possible to protect the channel’s staff and the surrounding public. “I cannot believe it has come to this. A foreign state has caused such a significant threat to the British public on British soil that we have to move,” said Mahmood Enayat, the station’s general manager. The channel will continue its output from its Washington DC site, while Afghanistan International TV continues as normal to broadcast from the London studios. Enayat described the escalation as a threat to the British public, calling it an “assault” on the values of sovereignty, security and free speech. “We refuse to be silenced by these cowardly threats. We will continue to broadcast. We are undeterred,” he said...

Indian journalists say BBC raid part of drive to intimidate media

Media staff targeted for criticising BJP government fear tax raid is escalation of coercion...

Both from the Guardian.

Turkey fines broadcasters for coverage critical of earthquake response

Halk TV, Tele 1 and FOX penalised for reporting shortcomings in the Erdoğan government’s handling of the disaster...

Journalist and child killed near scene of fatal Florida shooting earlier in day

Police say man involved in earlier killing returned to scene and fired on news van before walking to nearby home and shooting girl...

Both from the Guardian.

{Kenyan vice president} Gachagua attacks journalist assaulted by wife's aides (Star)

the journalist was roughed up by Ruto’s aides at Kangari market with his then spokesperson David Mugonyi explaining that Mwangi was taking photos and declined to heed the aides’ calls to move away...

Photographer describes Florida ordeal that killed journalist: ‘He kept shooting’ (Guardian)

In interviews from his hospital room, a wounded news photographer has described surviving the harrowing shooting on Wednesday that killed his fellow Florida journalist while they reported on an earlier shooting allegedly committed by the same attacker. The photographer, Jesse Walden, said that he and his colleague Dylan Lyons had just arrived at a street in the Pine Hills neighborhood of Orlando where a local woman, Nathacha Augustin, had been murdered earlier the same day. It was no longer an active crime scene, and Walden and Lyons believed the area was safe. While removing his camera from the trunk of a car, Walden suddenly heard gunshots and felt a bullet puncture his groin. When he saw a man shooting toward him, Walden initially thought he’d been caught in a gang shooting. “I was assuming he was shooting at a house or something behind me, and I just happened to catch a bullet,” Walden told the news station KOB. “But he kept shooting at me”...

Turkish journalists detained over earthquake reports (BBC)

Freelance journalist Mir Ali Koçer was 200 miles from the epicentre when Turkey was struck by a deadly earthquake on 6 February. Grabbing his camera and microphone, he drove down to the affected region to interview survivors. He shared stories of survivors and rescuers on Twitter and is now under investigation on suspicion of spreading "fake news" and could face up to three years in jail. He is one of at least four journalists being investigated for reporting or commenting on the earthquake. Press freedom groups say dozens more have been detained, harassed or prevented from reporting...

How fake copyright complaints are muzzling journalists (BBC)

Journalists have been forced to temporarily take down articles critical of powerful oil lobbyists due to the exploitation of US copyright law, according to a new report. At least five such articles have been subject to fake copyright claims, including one by the respected South African newspaper Mail & Guardian, according to the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP). The claims - which falsely assert ownership of the stories - have been made by mystery individuals under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), a law meant to protect copyright holders. Just last month, three separate false copyright claims were made against Diario Rombe, an investigative news outlet that focusses on Equatorial Guinea... the DMCA process was often abused by "unknown parties" who create backdated fake articles to target critical news reports. Under the US law, any online author saying that their content has been stolen can seek to have what they claim is the infringing material "taken down" by triggering a formal legal process through web servers who host the material. The process differs depending on the server provider, but it can mean content is removed from the web for weeks while the genuine author proves their credentials...

Americans Have the Lowest Trust in News in the World |
John Halpin, Substack

News junkies sorrowfully look back at the 'good old days' when Chris Wallace was the crown jewel at FOX News. CW's exit appears to be the point at which the 'ship' began to quickly sink after hitting the election iceberg the year before.

Florida bill would require bloggers who write about governor to register with the state
Sam Sachs | Mar 2, 2023

Florida Sen. Jason Brodeur (R-Lake Mary)... proposal, Senate Bill 1316: Information Dissemination, would require any blogger writing about government officials to register with the Florida Office of Legislative Services or the Commission on Ethics.

...those who write “an article, a story, or a series of stories,” about “the Governor, the Lieutenant Governor, a Cabinet officer, or any member of the Legislature,” and receives or will receive payment for doing so, must register with state offices within five days after the publication of an article that mentions an elected state official.

If another blog post is added to a blog, the blogger would then be required to submit monthly reports on the 10th of each month with the appropriate state office. They would not have to submit a report on months when no content is published...

https://www.wfla.com/news/politics/florida-bill-would-require-bloggers-who-write...

>32 margd: Freedom!

> 33 DeSantis's FL should be a warning to us all: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/florida-republicans-bill-ban-stat.... Proposed bill doesn't quite ban Dem party, just parties that had slavery in platform--and they couldn't reconstitute under previous name. Talk about "woke"!!

Anger grows over Afghan journalists still stranded by Home Office inaction (Guardian)

Hundreds of Afghan journalists remain stranded in increasingly “dire” circumstances as frustration mounts over the UK government’s refusal to share the latest entry criteria for its flagship resettlement programme... Germany, France and Kosovo are among the countries that have offered safe refuge to a number of journalists, with critics accusing the UK of failing to meet its obligations to the journalists who supported the west’s mission in Afghanistan...

BBC crew and aid workers under fire in Ukraine (BBC)

A BBC team has come under fire in Ukraine while following a group of local aid workers. The volunteers deliver food to villages in southern Ukraine and have continued to work well within artillery range of Russian troops. As our BBC team witnessed, the work frequently comes close to costing them their lives.

Liberia's war and peace: Lessons from 30 years' reporting (BBC)

retiring journalist Jonathan Paye-Layleh reflects on his 30-year career covering the tumultuous events in his home country, Liberia... I am glad I managed to stay alive to pen these words. Over the last three decades, colleagues have died while doing their job and I have found my life threatened, especially when covering Liberia's conflicts. But I survived...

Dmitry Muratov: The Russian journalist refusing to be silenced (BBC)

The Russian authorities may have shut down his newspaper, but journalist Dmitry Muratov refuses to be silenced... "People in Russia have been irradiated by propaganda," Mr Muratov says. "Propaganda is a type of radiation. Everyone is susceptible to it, not just Russians. In Russia, propaganda is twelve TV channels, tens of thousands of newspapers, social media like VK {the Russian version of Facebook} that serves completely the state ideology"... "Our younger generation is wonderful," replies Mr Muratov. "It's well-educated. Nearly a million Russians have left the country. Many of those who've stayed are categorically against what is happening in Ukraine. They are against the hell that Russia has created there. "I am convinced that as soon as the propaganda stops, this generation - and everyone else with common sense - will speak out." "They're already doing so," he continues. "Twenty-one thousand administrative and criminal cases have been opened against Russians who've protested. The opposition is in jail. Media outlets have been shut down. Many activists, civilians and journalists have been labelled foreign agents"...

Russia arrests US journalist Evan Gershkovich on spying charge (BBC)

US journalist Evan Gershkovich has been arrested in Russia and accused of spying while working for the Wall Street Journal. An experienced Russia reporter, he was working in the city of Yekaterinburg at the time of his detention. The White House has condemned his detention "in the strongest terms". The Kremlin claimed he had been caught "red-handed" but the Wall Street Journal vehemently denied the allegations against him. Mr Gershkovich, 31, is well known among foreign correspondents in Moscow and BBC Russia Editor Steve Rosenberg describes him as an excellent reporter and a highly principled journalist...

Murder of Jeremy Gordin ‘has robbed South African journalism of one of its best’ (Daily Maverick)

Journalist Jeremy Gordin was found dead in his home in Parkview, Johannesburg, police have confirmed. He was found on Friday, 31 March after his family unsuccessfully tried to contact him. In a statement issued on Saturday, Gauteng police confirmed they were investigating a case of house robbery and murder. Gordin was a former associate editor of the Sunday Independent as well as a former editor of the Daily Sun. He was an author who co-authored two investigative journalism books, The Infernal Tower and A Long Night’s Damage. He also published a biography of former president Jacob Zuma, Zuma: A Biography in 2010, and three volumes of poetry. In later years, he ran the Justice Project at the University of the Witwatersrand’s School of Journalism. Recently, he was a regular columnist for Politicsweb...

Current leaders in U.S. Worthless, corrupt, shamelessly biased and professionally inept, power-serving Shit-Journalism:

The New York Times
The Washington Post (owned by the Graham Holdings Company,
formerly called The Washington Post Company; the Graham family has been the owner-publisher of The Washington Post since Eugene Isaac Meyer, its owner-publisher from 1933 to 1946, handed the paper over to the direction of Philip Graham, husband of his (E. I. Meyer's) daughter, Katherine, who, as Katherine Graham, became publisher of the Post.) Once famous and respected for its reporting throughout the infamous "Watergate scandal", The Washington Post has since become one of the worst pieces of shit in the world of professional newspaper publishing.
Slate.com on-line magazine, a piece of shit organ of The Graham Holdings Co.
MS-NBC
The Atlantic Monthly
Time magazine
Newsweek (A Graham Holdings Co. entity as part of the Washington Post's legacy operations.
The New Yorker (weekly) magazine, once a bastion of high-brow literary writing, it is now a laughable piece of weekly junk.
Nature science journal and its parent publishing group, since 2015, owned by Springer Nature Group. This once-respected journal, founded in London in 1869 (Nature Journal) by Norman Lockyer & Alexander Macmillan, the journal has lately (esp. since its association with Springer publishing) abandoned its principles of disinterested publishing of respectable scientific research.
Guardian Media Group plc (GMG) , owned by the Scott Trust, Ltd. (London), publishers of The Guardian newspaper (London) and The Observer (Sunday) newspaper (London).
The Daily Telegraph (London)
The Financial Times (London)

These so-called "leading news organizations" are prime examples of the source of present-day professional journalism's having become a disgraceful shit-show of evil and liberty-destroying bias. There is now virtually nowhere to turn for respectable news reportage outside of a tiny few online bloggers--such as, notably, Matt Taibbi's and Glenn Greenwald's work and that of a few others which they cite approvingly.

Eat Me, MSNBC Reviewing the last six years at the network that claims now to be concerned with integrity and accuracy | www.racket.news | by Matt Taibbi

(excerpt)
... "It’s extremely rare that a journalist who’s actually trying to avoid mistakes makes even one factual mistake as big as falling for the Hamilton hoax or the Steele Dossier, or dismissing the Nunes memo. These people managed all three at once. If I’d made even one error of that magnitude early in my career, I wouldn’t have had a career. This kind of thing was basically constant for years, when MSNBC was the staging ground for many lunatic conspiracy theories involving Trump, Russia, and their delicacy item, the Dossier.

As I was leaving the set of my last appearance on All In six years ago, Rachel (Maddow (of MS-NBC)) was getting ready to go on and re-frame how the network did news. My shrugging take was that if journalists didn’t have confirmation, they couldn’t report. Rachel argued the opposite, that official silence meant you could assume things:

(citing Maddow)
"I mean, had the FBI looked into what was in that dossier and found that it was all patently false, they could tell us that now, right? I mean, the dossier has now been publicly released. If the FBI looked into it and they found it was all trash, there’s no reason they can’t tell us that now. They’re not telling us that now. They’re not saying that. They’re not saying anything." ...

(end excerpt)

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2023/mar/29/american-principles-project/cl... says "In response to a request for evidence of the claim’s accuracy, American Principles Project PAC Executive Director Terry Schilling responded by tweeting that the group does not consider PolitiFact to be a legitimate fact-checking organization."

This is a frustrating sign of >41 proximity1: creeping into our social system. PolitiFact has biases, but it's clear they're trying to be factual in their checks on both sides. APP could have had a full response to PolitiFact, or a canned response to the general issues brought up, but instead decided to dismiss the legitimacy of PolitiFact.

Google translate (Russian to English):
Russian independent journalists and representatives of civil society published a letter in support of Evan Gershkovich

“We believe that the accusations against Gershkovich are far-fetched and unfair. Evan Gershkovich has an impeccable reputation as a journalist whose work has always met the highest standards of journalism.

In turn, the FSB investigation has been destroying its own reputation for years through the hands of its own detectives, and society has long had no reason to trust these "professionals".

We, Russian independent journalists and representatives of civil society, support our foreign colleagues who take risks by continuing to work in Russia and demand the immediate release of our colleague Evan Gershkovich.”
-----------------------------------------------

ЭХО @echofm_online | 3:36 AM · Apr 4, 2023:
Круглосуточная трансляция любимых программ и новостей в приложении «Эхо online». Всё самое главное — на сайте «Эха»
https://twitter.com/echofm_online/status/1643155506347819009

🔻Российские независимые журналисты и представители гражданского общества опубликовали письмо в поддержку Эвана Гершковича

«Мы считаем, что обвинения в адрес Гершковича надуманны и несправедливы. У Эвана Гершковича безупречная репутация журналиста, чьи работы всегда соответствовали самым высоким стандартам журналистики.

В свою очередь, следствие ФСБ годами уничтожало собственную репутацию руками своих же сыщиков, и оснований доверять этим "профессионалам" у общества давно уже нет.

Мы, российские независимые журналисты и представители гражданского общества, поддерживаем наших иностранных коллег, которые рискуют, продолжая работать в России и требуем немедленно освободить нашего коллегу Эвана Гершковича»

https://echofm.online/news/trebuem-nemedlenno-osvobodit-nashego-kollegu-evana-ge...
---------------------------------------------------------

Посольство США в РФ/ U.S. Embassy Russia @USEmbRu | 3:38 PM · Apr 4, 2023:
U.S. Embassy Moscow’s official account.

We applaud the courageous show of support for free and independent press from Russian journalists and civil society leaders.

Dozens of Australian politicians urge US to abandon Julian Assange extradition (Guardian)

Australian federal politicians from across the political spectrum have jointly asked the US attorney general, Merrick Garland, to abandon attempts to extradite Julian Assange from the UK. The 48 MPs and senators – including 13 from the governing Labor party – warned that the pursuit of the WikiLeaks founder “set a dangerous precedent” for press freedom and would damage the reputation of the US... “If the extradition request is approved, Australians will witness the deportation of one of our citizens from one Aukus partner to another – our closest strategic ally – with Mr Assange facing the prospect of spending the rest of his life in prison,” the letter said. “This would set a dangerous precedent for all global citizens, journalists, publishers, media organizations and the freedom of the press. It would also be needlessly damaging for the US as a world leader on freedom of expression and the rule of law”...

Australians picked a poor time to advocate for Assange. Looks like a wannabe dumped a bunch of US secrets on social media, secrets that could have repercussions for Ukrainian soldiers, human assets, and US spying techniques:
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/leaked-us-documents-reveal-po...

Advocating for truth, justice and press freedom doesn't have a "poor time", and shouldn't depend on what other people are doing.

>45 margd: US secrets dumped on social media, contd.

From Discord to 4chan: The Improbable Journey of a US Intelligence Leak
Aric Toler | April 9, 2023
https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2023/04/09/from-discord-to-4chan-the-improbable-...

>45 margd: >47 margd: US authorities will be in a book-throwing mood, methinks.

Washington Post: Leaker of US intelligence documents reportedly worked on military base
The Kyiv Independent news desk | Thu, April 13, 2023

...an early to mid-20s gun enthusiast who sought to create an online community by sharing classified information.

...The leaks began with “near-verbatim transcripts of classified intelligence” originating from the military base where OG worked. After experiencing a lack of engagement in the invitation-only channel with around two dozen members, OG began sending pictures of the documents instead.

The anonymous Discord community member said OG knew what he was doing — “these weren’t accidental leaks of any kind.” After the classified information began spreading past the small Discord community, OG “seemed very confused and lost as to what to do,” the member said...

https://news.yahoo.com/washington-post-leaker-us-intelligence-062136161.html
------------------------------------------------

Michael Weiss @michaeldweiss | 9:51 PM · Apr 12, 2023:
Senior Correspondent @yahoonews, @foreignoffpod. ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror: http://goo.gl/Jb6uEA. Next book: GRU @twelvebooks.
https://twitter.com/michaeldweiss/status/1646330341278318593

“In a video seen by The Post, the man who the member said is OG {the leaker} stands at a shooting range, wearing safety glasses and ear coverings and holding a large rifle. He yells a series of racial and antisemitic slurs into the camera, then fires several rounds at a target.” https://washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/04/12/discord-leaked-documents...

Implication is the kids from the chat have IDed OG to the FBI. I’d be surprised if he weren’t in custody already.

>48 margd: Person of interest...if it's him, he just traded impressing 30 online "friends" for (30?) years in the slammer...

Michael Weiss @michaeldweiss | 12:15 PM · Apr 13, 2023

“The national guardsman, whose name is Jack Teixeira, oversaw a private online group named Thug Shaker Central, where about 20 to 30 people, mostly young men and teenagers, came together over a shared love of guns, racist online memes and video games.”

The disclosures have rattled the Pentagon, and the diplomatic community.

nytimes.com
Leader of Online Group Where Secret Documents Leaked Is Air National Guardsman
Federal investigators are searching for the person who shared top secret documents that revealed government secrets about the Ukraine war.

Russian Ambassador to the US Anatoly Antonov proposes cutting the number of US journalists in Russia to the number of Russian journalists in the US

More crackdowns on US journalists could follow Evan Gershkovich's detention
- Samuel Ramani @SamRamani2 |6:04 AM · Apr 14, 2023

African journalists are dying. They need the world’s help to hold power to account (Guardian)

On Friday 14 April, a team of west Africa-based journalists will arrive in Cameroon, one of the most oppressive countries on the continent. Our three colleagues will be there to conduct an “Arizona Project”, named after the events in 1976 when journalists in the US state came together to finish the story that a murdered colleague had been working on. Their motto – “You can kill a journalist, but you cannot kill the story” – applies now more than ever, especially in Cameroon...

Dominion's case against Fox News goes to trial this week. Is the First Amendment really on the line?
Jacob Shamsian | Apr 16, 2023

Fox News claims Dominion's $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit poses a grave threat to free speech.
Some First Amendment experts worry a Dominion victory could erode legal protections for the press.
Others think it's important for the media to lose sometimes — especially in this case...

https://www.businessinsider.com/fox-news-dominion-defamation-lawsuit-trial-first...

How a Colombian reporter predicted his murder – and why a global team is finishing his work (Guardian)

After posting a video denouncing alleged corruption, Rafael Moreno was fatally shot – but thanks to documents he left behind, he wasn’t silenced...

Last images taken by Japanese journalist killed in Myanmar in 2007 released (Guardian)

The family of a Japanese journalist killed while reporting on Myanmar’s 2007 Saffron Revolution have released his last pictures, sharing footage from a recently obtained video camera missing since his fatal shooting 15 years ago... Nagai was shot when the military opened fire on protesters. Widely seen footage smuggled out of Myanmar in 2007 showed a soldier aiming a rifle near Nagai, who falls backwards on the road. A Reuters photographer captured an image of Nagai on the ground...

Ukrainian journalist killed by Russian snipers in ambush near Kherson (Guardian)

A Ukrainian journalist working with reporters for La Repubblica has been shot dead by Russian snipers in southern Ukraine, while his Italian colleague was injured, the Italian newspaper said on Wednesday... Zunino, who had extensively covered the conflict, told La Repubblica he had been wearing a bulletproof vest with “press” written on it when the reporters were attacked...

https://www.mediaite.com/tv/newsnation-expands-to-24-hours-adds-new-live-show/
NewsNation Expands to 24-Hours, Adds New Live Show

In addition to its line-up of big names like Mediaite owner Dan Abrams (host of Dan Abrams Live), Elizabeth Vargas (host of Elizabeth Vargas Reports), Chris Cuomo (host of Cuomo), and Ashleigh Banfield (host of Banfield), NewsNation is adding a new live block from 1-5 p.m. ET Monday through Friday called NewsNation Now.

***
This cable news channel gives info junkies like me a new choice when it comes to fact-based news. Dan's father is Floyd Abrams the well-known and widely respected First Amendment lawyer.

Two more journalists killed in Haiti as gang violence continues to rage (Guardian)

Ricot Jean found dead after reportedly being kidnapped and Dumesky Kersaint reportedly killed by a stray bullet...

When journalists are persecuted, we all suffer (Guardian)

The world is becoming more dangerous for journalists. On this World Press Freedom Day, there are ways to help... “The first and most important source is what journalists see in front of them – their ability to give a firsthand, eyewitness account”... But with journalists threatened with harassment, danger and even imprisonment around the world, that crucial ability to report on the ground – to get the invaluable eyewitness account – has been sorely diminished. The situation is dire; as democracy declines worldwide, there are more journalists in prison now than at any time since the CPJ began keeping track. The organization’s annual prison census showed 363 reporters in prison at the end of last year – an increase of 20% from the previous year, with the most journalists jailed in Iran, China, Myanmar, Turkey and Belarus. This ugly trend means less on-the-ground reporting – not only by the imprisoned journalists but by many others who flee conflict zones or are forced to censor themselves in order to avoid the growing dangers...

The journalists imprisoned for reporting the death that shook Iran (BBC)

Mahsa Amini's name made headlines around the world when she died in custody last September, sparking waves of protests in Iran. But not many people have heard of Niloufar Hamedi and Elaheh Mohammadi. The two female journalists helped break the story of Ms Amini's death and have been detained in two of Iran's most notorious prisons ever since. On Tuesday, they and the imprisoned Iranian human rights activist Narges Mohammadi were awarded the 2023 Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize by the United Nations' cultural agency, Unesco. "They paid a hefty price for their commitment to report on and convey the truth. And for that, we are committed to honouring them and ensuring their voices will continue to echo worldwide until they are safe and free," said Zainab Salbi, the jury chair...

TikTok tracked UK journalist via her cat's account (BBC)

Two days before Christmas, TikTok called London-based journalist Cristina Criddle to tell her two of its employees in China, and two in the US, had viewed user data from her personal account without her knowledge or consent. "It was just really chilling and horrible and, personally, quite violating," she says... Last summer, Cristina had been talking to TikTok staff unhappy with company practices...

Rightwingers praise free speech at CPAC Hungary – then eject Guardian journalist (Guardian)

US Republicans and their European allies tore up news headlines and ejected a Guardian journalist from a conference of radical rightwing activists, on the same day that they highlighted the importance of free speech. Speaking at the second annual meeting in Budapest of the US Conservative Political Action Coalition (CPAC), Kari Lake, a failed Republican gubernatorial candidate, said that “truth-tellers and peacemakers” were being destroyed by “fake news”... , a Guardian journalist was ejected from the conference, during an interview with Rick Santorum. The former Republican senator was praising Hungary’s parental leave policies, when one of the conference organisers grabbed him by the arm and pulled him away mid-sentence. A security guard then led the reporter to the exit. Meanwhile, speakers including the Newsweek comment editor, Josh Hammer, were preparing for a panel on “Free Speech”. CPAC later described the reporter’s registration for the conference as a “system error”. The International Press Institute (IPI) denounced the Guardian’s ejection from the event as a “shameless move” and an “attack on media freedom”. Enmity towards the media has been a constant theme at CPAC’s Hungarian iteration. Last year the organizers refused entry to journalists from all US media outlets, including Vice, Vox, Rolling Stone, the New Yorker and the Associated Press. This year, most independent journalists were refused accreditation for the event, held in a country where the IPI has said media freedom “remains suffocated”.

Julian Assange writes letter to King Charles and urges him to visit Belmarsh prison (Guardian)

The WikiLeaks founder writes that he has been captive in the prison for more than four years ‘on behalf of an embarrassed foreign sovereign’...

Three from the Guardian this morning.

UK is a hostile environment for LGBTQ+ journalists, study suggests

LGBTQ+ journalists face a hostile environment in the UK, with most finding themselves the objects of online harassment and abuse, a study has suggested. The research, which was commissioned by the Sir Lenny Henry Centre for Media Diversity (LHC), indicated that many saw their roles as dangerous and wanted more support from senior colleagues. The study particularly noted abuse targeted at transgender people, with LGBTQ+ journalists saying taking part in media coverage of trans issues often led to high levels of abuse...

Investigative journalism at risk from ‘corporate timidity’, says Tina Brown

The former Vanity Fair editor said investors like the idea of winning prizes for original reporting, but that when they go into board meetings, “they look at the numbers and go, ‘Let’s just cut it.’” Her comments come as outlets such as BuzzFeed and Vice are slashing the size of their newsrooms despite winning plaudits for their work...

Julian Assange: Australian MPs urge US ambassador to end extradition bid

A cross-party delegation of Australian parliamentarians pressed for an end to the pursuit of WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, at a meeting with the US ambassador, Caroline Kennedy, in Canberra on Tuesday morning. Independent MP Andrew Wilkie, one of the co-chairs of the Bring Julian Assange Home Parliamentary Group, said they were “grateful for this opportunity” to meet with Kennedy to raise “the widespread concern in Australia about the ongoing attempts by the US to extradite Mr Assange to America”. “In particular we impressed upon the ambassador the broad concern in the Australian parliament for Mr Assange, which was echoed clearly by both the prime minister and opposition leader last week when they said this matter had gone on long enough”...

French journalist killed in Russian rocket strike in Ukraine (Guardian)

A French journalist working for Agence France-Presse news agency has been killed in Ukraine in a Russian rocket strike near the battle-torn eastern city of Bakhmut. Arman Soldin, a 32-year-old video coordinator, died on Monday when a Grad missile landed close to where he was lying. Soldin was with Ukrainian soldiers in the town of Chasiv Yar, six miles (10km) from Bakhmut, where fighting has raged for months. His colleagues were with him when the attack happened. The rest of the team was uninjured. “The whole agency is devastated by the loss of Arman,” the AFP chair Fabrice Fries said. “His death is a terrible reminder of the risks and dangers faced by journalists every day covering the conflict in Ukraine.” At least 11 journalists, fixers and drivers for media organisations have been killed covering the war in Ukraine, according to the group Reporters Without Borders...

Good Riddance to pseudo-journalism piece-of-shit "Vice"

Tunisian journalist given five-year prison term in ‘attack on press freedom’ (Guardian)

A Tunisian appeals court has sentenced a radio journalist to five years in prison for disclosing information about the country’s security services. Khalifa Guesmi, of the Mosaique FM radio station, had appealed against a one-year term handed down in November before the sentence was increased under an anti-terrorism law. Amira Mohamed, vice-president of the Tunisian journalists’ SNJT union, said: “This is the heaviest sentence pronounced by the Tunisian courts against a journalist. It presents a dangerous authoritarian drift and is a flagrant attack on the freedom of the press”...

BBC News: Jerusalem: Journalists attacked as Israeli nationalists march in Old City

Thousands of Israeli nationalists have marched into the Muslim quarter of Jerusalem's Old City, with violence directed at media covering the event... A group of marchers threw stones, sticks and bottles at Palestinian and foreign journalists at the Damascus Gate entrance. They also cheered and chanted racist slogans, including "Death to Arabs". Far-right Israeli cabinet ministers joined the procession...

Observer’s Carole Cadwalladr facing heavy legal costs in Arron Banks case (Guardian)

The award-winning Observer and Guardian journalist Carole Cadwalladr has been ordered to pay significant legal costs to the prominent Brexit backer Arron Banks... Guardian News and Media, the global news organisation that publishes the Observer and Guardian, criticised the latest development in the four-year battle between Banks and Cadwalladr for delivering a “chilling precedent” that could inhibit press freedom. “Carole Cadwalladr’s award-winning journalism has prompted worldwide debate about social media, privacy and political targeting,” GNM said. “The very high costs award made against Carole despite her journalism having been found to be in the public interest is very concerning, and has the potential to stifle freedom of expression in this country”...

Slovakia: court acquits tycoon in retrial over 2018 killing of journalist and fiancee (Guardian)

A court in Slovakia has acquitted for a second time an executive accused of masterminding the 2018 killing of an investigative journalist and his fiancee. The specialised criminal court in Pezinok, near the capital, Bratislava, which handles Slovakia’s most serious cases, ruled on Friday that Marián Kočner was not guilty of murdering Ján Kuciak, who had written about him in the past, and Martina Kušnírová, both 27. The crime shocked the country and caused the government to fall. The court said “it was not proven” that Kočner was the mastermind. Nevertheless, Kočner’s associate, Alena Zsuzsova, was convicted over her role in the killings and sentenced to 25 years in prison...

US professor fired after machete threat to New York Post reporter (BBC)

A Hunter College professor has been fired after threatening a New York Post reporter and a photographer with a machete. The journalists were trying to speak to Shellyne Rodriguez about an incident in which she criticised anti-abortion activists on campus, the Post said. Ms Rodriguez followed them onto the street with the machete, video showed. Hunter College, part of the City University of New York, confirmed she had been "relieved of her duties". The reporter, Reuven Fenton, along with a photographer, went to Ms Rodriguez's address in an effort to speak with her after a viral video showed her criticising anti-abortion students at the university. According to the Post, she shouted: "Get... away from my door, or I'm going chop you up with this machete." The Post's article on the incident says "she held the machete to the reporter's neck" after opening the door. The reporters said they left immediately but were followed by Ms Rodriguez onto the street - with the subsequent interaction caught on a car dashcam and published by the Post...

Man charged with allegedly making threats against ABC journalist Stan Grant (Guardian)

A man has been charged for allegedly making online threats against Stan Grant after the ABC journalist made a complaint to NSW police. In a statement, police said they received a report at about 11.50am on Tuesday of alleged online threats against a 59-year-old man and commenced an investigation into the incident. After making inquiries, police arrested a 41-year-old man...

Iran begins trial of journalist who covered Mahsa Amini’s death (Guardian)

A revolutionary court in Iran has begun the trial of a journalist behind closed doors on charges linked to her coverage of a Kurdish-Iranian woman whose death in custody last year sparked months of unrest, her husband has said. Mahsa Amini’s death while held by the “morality police” for allegedly violating Iran’s strict dress code unleashed a wave of mass anti-government protests for months, posing one of the boldest challenges to the country’s clerical leaders in decades. A photo taken by Niloofar Hamedi for the pro-reform Shargh daily newspaper showing Amini’s parents hugging each other in a Tehran hospital where their daughter was lying in a coma was the first sign to the world that all was not well with 22-year-old Amini. Tuesday’s trial session “ended in less than two hours while her lawyers did not get a chance to defend her and her family members were not allowed to attend the court”, tweeted Hamedi’s husband, Mohammad Hossein Ajorlou. “She denied all the charges against her and emphasised that she had performed her duty as a journalist based on the law,” he said. Hamedi, along with another female journalist, Elaheh Mohammadi, who went on trial on Monday, face several charges including “colluding with hostile powers” for their coverage of Amini’s death. In October, Iran’s intelligence ministry accused Mohammadi and Hamedi, who have both now been imprisoned for more than eight months, of being CIA foreign agents...

Julian Assange ‘dangerously close’ to US extradition after losing latest legal appeal (Guardian)

Julian Assange is “dangerously close” to being extradited to the US after losing his latest legal appeal, his family and observers of his long-running legal challenge say. His lawyers say they will appeal again to the same court, amid growing fears he could spend the rest of his life in prison for publishing thousands of classified military and diplomatic documents... Assange’s wife, Stella Assange, said her husband would make a “renewed application for appeal to the high court” next week. The matter would then be heard before two new judges in a public hearing...

Palestinian journalist hit in head by bullet during raid on terror suspect’s home (Guardian)

A Palestinian news photographer is in a serious condition in hospital after being hit in the head by a rubber bullet during a rare Israeli raid in Ramallah, the Palestinian administrative capital in the occupied West Bank. A convoy of Israel Defence Forces (IDF) vehicles entered the city late on Wednesday night in order to demolish the home of a terrorism suspect... At least six people were hospitalised overnight, three with gunshot wounds... Moamen Sumreen, 22, a journalist covering the operation, was seriously wounded after being hit in the head by a rubber bullet, his family said. His uncle Mohammed Sumreen, also a journalist, told Agence-France Presse they had been part of a group of reporters and photographers watching events from the roof of a nearby building, and that Moamen had been wearing a jacket clearly marked “press” when he was fired at...

Tory peer ‘undermined and humiliated’ journalist, finds Lords commissioner (Guardian)

A prominent Conservative peer and donor bullied and harassed a female journalist after she publicly criticised him and an organisation he runs, the Lords standards commissioner has ruled. Rami Ranger has apologised and promised to attend a behavioural course after the House of Lords commissioner for standards found he had broken the house’s code of conduct with a barrage of messages and tweets aimed at Poonam Joshi...

Outrage in Guatemala as crusading journalist given six-year prison term (Guardian)

José Rubén Zamora, 66, convicted and sentenced on money-laundering charges press freedom groups say were trumped up...

Guardian wins international journalism prize for work on Russian oligarchs (Guardian)

The Guardian has won a prestigious international journalism prize for its work identifying assets owned by Russian oligarchs. Russian Asset Tracker, a collaborative project led by the Guardian and the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, won the Innovation award at the European Press Prize in a ceremony held in Tbilisi, Georgia, on Friday. The project involved more than 100 journalists from media organisations across the world, including Le Monde in France, Miami Herald in the US and NDR in Germany...

Draft EU plans to allow spying on journalists are dangerous, warn critics (Guardian)

Draft legislation published by EU leaders that would allow national security agencies to spy on journalists has been condemned by media and civic society groups as dangerous and described by a leading MEP as “incomprehensible”. On Wednesday, the European Council – which represents the governments of EU member states – published a draft of the European Media Freedom Act that would allow spyware to be placed on journalists’ phones if a national government thought it necessary... The Dutch MEP Sophie in’t Veld, who has overseen the European parliament’s investigation into the use of Pegasus spyware on journalists and public figures, said the claim that permission to spy on the press was needed in the interests of national security was “a lie”. “I think what the council is doing is unacceptable. It’s also incomprehensible. Well, it’s incomprehensible if they are serious about democracy,” said In ‘t Veld...

‘Detachment was considered a strength’: how a war correspondent’s calling created a trauma timebomb (Guardian)

From the Boxing Day tsunami to Iraq, journalist Dean Yates rarely stopped to process the events he reported. They caught up with him in a Melbourne hospital...

Pope Francis holds meeting with Julian Assange’s wife (Guardian)

Pope Francis has met Stella Assange, the wife of the imprisoned WikiLeaks founder, who said the pope’s gesture in receiving her was evidence of his “ongoing show of support for our family’s plight” and concern over the suffering of her husband, Julian. After the audience, Stella Assange said Francis had sent a letter to her husband in March 2021, during a particularly difficult period. “He has provided great solace and comfort and we are extremely appreciative for his reaching out to our family in this way,” she told the Associated Press. “He understands that Julian is suffering and is concerned..."

US ambassador to Russia says jailed Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich in ‘good health’ (Guardian)

Ambassador Lynne Tracey was allowed to meet the journalist in a Moscow jail in her second such visit since his arrest in March...

BBC News: Chechnya Milashina attack: Armed thugs beat up Russian journalist and lawyer

Prominent investigative journalist Yelena Milashina has been badly beaten and had fingers broken by masked men as she travelled to a court in the Russian republic of Chechnya, colleagues say. Ms Milashina has received death threats in the past from Chechnya's notorious leader, Ramzan Kadyrov. She was travelling with a lawyer, Alexander Nemov, who was also attacked...

Attackers break Russian journalist’s fingers and stab human rights lawyer in Chechnya (Guardian)

Elena Milashina and Alexander Nemov were on their way to the sentencing of a human rights activist in Grozny when they were assaulted...

Mexico: body of missing journalist found in Nayarit state

Syria cancels accreditation of two BBC journalists

Both from the Guardian

Belarus arrests prominent journalist amid wider crackdown on opposition figures (Guardian)

Authorities in Belarus have arrested a prominent journalist who has previously written for the US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), the latest step in a years-long crackdown on opposition figures, independent journalists and human rights activists. The Belarusian Association of Journalists said Ihar Karnei, 55, was arrested in the Belarusian capital, Minsk, on Monday. His apartment was raided, with police seizing phones and computers, his daughter, Polina, told the Associated Press. The authorities have offered no explanation for the arrest and the searches. However, RFE/RL has been labelled extremist in Belarus, and working with it or spreading its content is punishable by up to seven years in prison...

Kansas newspaper police raid: co-owner dies after becoming ‘stressed beyond her limits’ (Guardian)

The co-owner of a small Kansas newspaper whose offices and staff were raided by local police officers conducting a leak investigation has died after the situation left her “stressed beyond her limits”, according to the publication. Joan Meyer, 98, collapsed on Saturday afternoon and died at her home a day after she tearfully watched officers who showed up at her home with a search warrant cart away her computer as well as an internet router, reported the Marion County Record, which she co-owned. After officers also photographed the bank statements of her son, Record publisher Eric Meyer, and left her house in mess, Meyer had been unable to eat or sleep, her newspaper said. The search was strongly condemned by US media organisations, with more than 30 major outlets including Reuters, the Associated Press, the New York Times and the Washington Post writing an open letter to police that said there “appears to be no justification for the breadth and intrusiveness of the search”...

Berlin prosecutor investigates possible poisoning of Russian journalist (Guardian)

German authorities are investigating a possible poisoning attack in Munich last autumn on a Russian dissident journalist who had written critical articles about her country’s invasion of Ukraine, the Berlin prosecutor has confirmed. In an article published with Russian-language outlet Meduza and US publication n+1 on Tuesday night, journalist Elena Kostyuchenko said she was tipped off by a source in Ukrainian military reconnaissance last March about Russian plans to assassinate her. Kostyuchenko, who was at the time reporting for the now-shuttered independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta from near Mariupol, Ukraine, initially managed to escape to Berlin. On 17 October, the journalist travelled to Munich to apply for a Ukrainian visa to continue covering the war for Meduza, an independent news website headquartered in Riga in Latvia. On her return train journey to Berlin, she started to experience symptoms of poisoning, including severe headaches, weakness, shortness of breath and nausea...

Russia bans dozens of UK journalists, media figures and politicians (Guardian)

List of 54 Britons includes Guardian reporters and executives, a defence minister and the culture secretary...

Russia sanctions UK politicians and journalists (BBC)

Russia has banned 54 British nationals and people working for UK organisations from entering the country in retaliation for UK sanctions on its citizens, its foreign ministry says. They include Culture Secretary Lucy Frazer and International Criminal Court chief prosecutor Karim Khan. A number of journalists from the BBC, the Daily Telegraph and the Guardian are also on the list. The BBC said it would "continue to report independently and fairly"...

'Any story could be your last' - India's crackdown on Kashmir press (BBC)

The BBC has spent more than a year investigating accusations against the Indian government that it is running a sinister and systematic campaign to intimidate and silence the press in the region. We had to meet journalists in secret, and they asked for their names to be hidden, fearing reprisals. Over many trips we spoke to more than two dozen journalists - editors, reporters and photojournalists working independently as well as for regional and national outlets - all of whom see the government's actions as a warning to them... At the G20 meeting in Srinagar in May we asked Manoj Sinha, the region's top administrator, about allegations of a media crackdown. He said the press "enjoys absolute freedom". Journalists were "detained and arrested on terror charges and for attempts to disrupt social harmony, not for journalism or for writing stories," he said. We have heard multiple accounts which belie the claims...

Russia adds Nobel prize-winning journalist Dmitry Muratov to list of ‘foreign agents’ (Guardian)

Russia has added respected journalist and Nobel prize co-recipient Dmitry Muratov to its list of foreign agents, a label authorities commonly use to stifle critics. The move targeting the editor of Russia’s top independent publication, Novaya Gazeta, is part of a wider crackdown on respected civil society institutions that has accelerated with Moscow’s assault on Ukraine. Muratov “used foreign platforms to disseminate opinions aimed at forming a negative attitude towards the foreign and domestic policy of the Russian Federation”, Russia’s justice ministry said to justify the decision. The ministry also accused Muratov of creating and distributing content from other foreign agents...

Iran jails two female journalists over ‘conspiracy and collusion’ (Guardian)

Two female Iranian journalists will spend about a month in prison as part of a three-year partly suspended sentence for “conspiracy” and “collusion”, local media reported...

>84 John5918: "Elnaz...Mohammadi’s sister, Elaheh, who also works for Ham Mihan, has been in prison since September 2022 after reporting on the funeral of Mahsa Amini, 22, who died in police custody."

Golnaz Esfandiari @GEsfandiari | 6:19 AM · Sep 16, 2023:
Managing Editor, RFE/RL's Radio Farda

On the 1st anniversary of Mahsa Amini's death in custody that triggered a wave of antiestablishment protests in Iran, a reminder that 2 brave journalists who helped break Amini's story, Niloufar Hamedi and Elahe Mohammadi, remain in jail on bogus charges. #JournalismIsNotACrime

Maria Avdeeva @maria_avdv | 5:02 PM · Sep 19, 2023:
Security expert covering invasion from day one. Countering Russian disinformation since 2014 (Kharkiv, Ukraine)

Swedish TV4 team targeted by a Russian drone in Stepnohirsk, Zaporizhzhia. Reporter Johan Fredriksson & photographer Daniel Zdolsek got out of the car to film when it was hit by drone. Another deliberate attack on journalists, despite them wearing vests and helmets clearly marked 'PRESS'

Photo, destroyed car ( https://twitter.com/maria_avdv/status/1704239575248359843/photo/1 )

France accused of attack on press freedom after journalist arrest (Guardian)

Ariane Lavrilleux, who reported on leaked documents alleging French intelligence used to target civilians in Egypt, is in custody...

Below, looks like D Senator Robert Menendez and his wife may have help ed EGYPT intelligence cover its involvement in WaPo journalist Jamel Khashoggi's murder...
{ Menedez indictment: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2023/09/22/read-the-indictment-mene... }

Amy W. Hawthorne @awhawth | 8:33 PM · Sep 22, 2023:
Following Arab world & Turkey, human rights & democracy, politics here and there. Former @POMED @StateDept @ACMideast @carnegieendow @hollingscenter .
https://twitter.com/awhawth/status/1705379847063982332

Earlier today a smart friend found an interesting detail in the Menendez et al. indictment, so I re-read the doc...& putting together the pieces, it does seem "Egyptian Official-5" introduced on p. 17 as a "senior Egyptian intelligence official" is Intel Director Abbas Kamel
1/x

The indictment says that on/a June 21, 2021, Nadine Menendez and a "Eg Official-4" organized a private meeting btwn "Eg Official-5" and Sen. Menendez at a Washington, DC hotel, prior to a meeting the next day (6/22/21) btwn "Eg Official-5" and other US senators.
2/x

The dates match up with what @Isikoff reported in this June 21, 2021 @yahooNews article: Egyptian intel chief Abbas Kamel "is visiting Washington this week to meet with US intelligence officials as well as members of the Senate Foreign Relations Ctte"
https://news.yahoo.com/egyptian-intelligence-chief-to-face-questioning-over-alle...
3/x

The indictment says that on the day of Sen. Menendez's private mtg, "he provided his wife with a copy of a news article reporting on questions that other US Senators intended to ask 'Eg. Official-5' regarding a human rights issue." @Isikoff
report suggests the issue was...
4/x

...Egypt's potential involvement in Jamal Khashoggi's murder. "Senate staffers said...a number of senators are preparing to ask Kamel" about reports that the jet carrying the Saudi assassins made a middle-of-the-night stopover in Cairo to pick up drugs used to kill Khashoggi.
5/x

(@YahooNews reported that on Oct. 2, 2018, a Gulfstream jet carrying a team of Saudi assassins to Istanbul made a stopover in Cairo...to pick up a lethal dose of “illegal” narcotics that was injected a few hours later into Jamal Khashoggi, killing him
https://news.yahoo.com/exclusive-saudi-assassins-picked-up-illicit-drugs-in-cair...

Back to the indictment: it says (p. 17) that "Egyptian Official-4" told Nadine Menendez that in his private mtg with {Abbas Kamel} Sen. Menendez "raised the human rights issue {Egypt's possible role in Khashoggi killing?}, we appreciate it."
7/x

The indictment then says that 2 days after Sen. Menendez's private meeting with Abbas Kamel, Wael Hana "purchased 22 one-ounce gold bars, each w/ a unique serial number. Two of these gold bars were subsequently found during the June '22 federal search of the Menendez home"
8/x

The indictment also says (p. 18) that when Sen. Menendez and his wife visited Egypt in October 2021, in what was originally planned as an "unofficial" visit, they had a private dinner at the home of Egyptian Official-5 Abbas Kamel?. The photo on p. 18 could be Kamel.
9/x

s it unheard of that a US Senator, especially the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, would be invited to dine at the Egypt's intelligence chief's home when in Cairo?
Given the close intel ties between US and Egypt, I don't think so.
10/x

What is unusual, to say the least, is 1) senator's wife allegedly acting as a go-between to set up meetings with foreign officials, esp. a foreign intel chief 2) the senator's wife allegedly being paid by someone w/ possible ties to foreign intel (https://madamasr.com/en/2019/12/29/feature/economy/how-the-multi-million-dollar-business-of-certifying-halal-meat-imports-was-monopolized/)
11/x

and of course a senator allegedly having at his home gold bars purchased by someone who has close ties to a foreign government with key issues before the senator, and on whose behalf the senator reportedly intervened w/ USDA concerning his company...all unusual indeed.
12/end

Sudanese journalists, activists face growing repression by warring parties (Sudan Tribune)

Since the commencement of the conflict on April 15, freedom of the press and expression has significantly deteriorated. Both sides of the armed conflict have curtailed journalists’ ability to practice their profession freely, resulting in the arrest and harassment of numerous journalists in Khartoum. The Sudanese Journalists Network issued a statement condemning the RSF’s actions, stating that “A Rapid Support force took journalist Mohamed Ibrahim Al-Haj, a correspondent for Al-Ghad Channel, to an unknown location after storming his house in Al-Jarif West and several neighbouring residences.” The network denounced the RSF’s “repeated and deplorable behaviour,” noting that the RSF has consistently engaged in the forced disappearance of journalists and citizens...

Aidan McLaughlin @aidnmclaughlin | 8:41 PM · Sep 24, 2023:
editor in chief @mediaite

Trump accuses NBC and MSNBC of “country threatening treason” and pledges to target the company if elected president
Text ( https://twitter.com/aidnmclaughlin/status/1706106605178118441/photo/1 )

India police raid journalists' homes in China funding probe
DW | 3 Oct 2023

Another independent news outlet has been targeted by police in India after reports of illegal funding. Journalists said their homes were raided and devices seized.

...The NewsClick online portal describes itself as "an independent media organization dedicated to covering news from India and elsewhere with a focus on progressive movements." It's known for critical coverage of Narendra Modi's governnment.

"A special investigations team launched a search operation to identify all those individuals who were possibly getting funds from overseas to run a media group with the main agenda of spreading foreign propaganda," an interior ministry official overseeing the police raids in Delhi said.

...The investigation was launched following a report in the New York Times in August that said NewsClick had received funds from US-born billionaire Neville Roy Singham who has close ties to Beijing. Ties between India and China have been strained since border clashes in 2020.

Prabir Purkayastha, founder of NewsClick, rejected the allegations at the time and said they would respond in court...

https://www.dw.com/en/india-police-raid-journalists-homes-in-china-funding-probe...

South Sudan ‘attacking’ journalists and activists who criticise the state (Guardian)

South Sudan is suppressing journalists and rights activists by intimidation, surveillance and data harvesting, according to a new report from the UN commission on human rights in South Sudan, which warned that the clampdown on freedoms could hamper the country’s ability to conduct credible elections in 2024...

New UN report cites media censorship, restriction on civic activities in South Sudan (Radio Tamazuj)

As South Sudan plans to hold elections in December 2024, its government must cease unlawful media censorship, end intolerable restrictions on civic and political activities, and halt attacks on journalists and human rights defenders, the UN Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan said in a new report today. “Independent media and a vibrant civil society represent critical voices in developing accountable governance, and the democratic processes required to enable peace and ensure human rights,” said Yasmin Sooka, Chair of the Commission. “Surprisingly the Government instead treats journalists and civil society members who voice critique as enemies of the ruling political party, reflecting its extreme intolerance of all forms of public scrutiny and critical views. This does not bode well for democratic prospects”...

Marina Ovsyannikova: Anti-war Russian journalist sentenced in absentia (BBC)

Moscow's court has sentenced journalist Marina Ovsyannikova, who protested live on air against Russia's invasion of Ukraine, to 8.5 years in jail. The 45-year-old, who was tried in absentia, was found guilty of "spreading knowingly false information" about the Russian armed forces. She fled Russia with her daughter last year after escaping from house arrest. She describes the charges as "absurd"...

Shelling on south Lebanon border kills one journalist and injures six (Guardian)

A group of international journalists covering clashes on the border in south Lebanon have been hit by shelling, with one killed and six injured. The Associated Press and Al Jazeera said the weapon was an Israeli shell...

BBC journalists held at gunpoint by Israeli police (BBC)

BBC journalists covering the attack on Israel were assaulted and held at gunpoint after they were stopped by police in the Israeli city of Tel Aviv. Muhannad Tutunji, Haitham Abudiab and their BBC Arabic team were driving to a hotel when their car was intercepted. They were dragged from the vehicle - marked "TV" in red tape - searched and pushed against a wall. A BBC spokesperson said journalists "must be able to report on the conflict in Israel-Gaza freely". Mr Tutunji and Mr Abudiab said they identified themselves as BBC journalists and showed police their press ID cards. While attempting to film the incident, Mr Tutunji said his phone was thrown on the ground and he was struck on the neck...

Sudan Bukra and CPJ call for investigation into the death of journalist Halima Idris (Radio Dabanga)

Online news outlet Sudan Bukra and the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) urge the Sudanese authorities to investigate and hold to account those responsible for killing journalist Halima Idris. The reporter for Sudan Bukra was killed by members of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in an Omdurman street on Tuesday. Idris was run over by an RSF vehicle “while reporting for the media channel on Tuesday afternoon,” Sudan Bukra said on its website on Wednesday...

At least 21 journalists killed since Hamas-Israel war began, says press freedom group (Guardian)

At least 21 journalists have been killed since the outbreak of the Hamas-Israel war, the majority in Israel’s attacks on Gaza, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. The CPJ reported that, as of this Thursday, 17 Palestinian, three Israeli, and one Lebanese journalist had died since Hamas militants attacked Israel on 7 October, followed by the ongoing bombardments of Gaza by Israel. “CPJ emphasises that journalists are civilians doing important work during times of crisis and must not be targeted by warring parties”... Eight other journalists have been reported injured in the conflict, the CBJ reported, while three journalists were reported missing or detained. “CPJ is also investigating numerous unconfirmed reports of other journalists being killed, missing, detained, hurt or threatened, and of damage to media offices and journalists’ homes,” the organisation said. Journalists from beyond the area have been unable to enter Gaza since the Hamas massacres...

Russian-American journalist detained in Russia for violating foreign agents law (Guardian)

Alsu Kurmasheva reportedly detained due to Radio Free Europe coverage of Russia’s military mobilisation for Ukraine invasion...

In the Shadow of Violence: The Pressing Needs of Sudanese Journalists (MiCT)

More than six months after the conflict in Sudan started in April 2023, the impact on the country continues to be devastating, underscoring the urgent need for support. As we empathise with the untold numbers of civilians who have borne the brunt of the conflict, our respect for the country’s journalists, who remain committed to their profession during these turbulent times, knows no bounds...

Photographer shot dead in fifth journalist killing in Mexico in 2023 (Guardian)

A photographer for a newspaper in the notoriously violent Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez was found shot dead in the driver’s seat of a car, prosecutors said, in the fifth killing of a journalist in the country so far in 2023...

‘Nothing prepares you to cover a war at home’: The vital mission to report on Sudan’s conflict (CNN)

I have reported on conflicts around the world for over two decades, but nothing prepares you to cover a war at home. To see familiar places occupied and demolished. To fully plunge the depth of your helplessness. Yet my team and I set out to do just that this summer, working on a documentary about Sudan’s conflict and the hidden hands ultimately responsible for the atrocities that have come to define this war. Two separate voices fought for space in my head. One voice – the journalist – asked questions, took down notes and talked through testimony. I worked with my team to tackle the enormity of the logistical and editorial challenges that comes with filming an investigative documentary in a country ravaged by war. The second voice, which I tamped down while working, was closer to a babble, looping round and round in my head, reminding me that I could never truly run away from the fact that this was home, this was personal...

Israeli strike kills three journalists near Lebanon border

An Israeli bombardment of southern Lebanon has killed three journalists, according to Lebanese media, as hostilities grow along Israel’s northern border... Lebanese channel Al Mayadeen TV said two of its staff were among the victims. The third person killed was said to be a local journalist and “contributor” to the channel. “Correspondent Farah Omar and cameraman Rabih Me’mari were killed by an Israeli attack,” Al Mayadeen said in a statement. “It was a direct attack, it was not by chance”...

Azerbaijan arrests two journalists investigating political corruption

Two journalists have been arrested in Azerbaijan, according to their lawyers, after their media outlet recently published a series of reports looking into the wealth of high-ranking government officials and the family of President Ilham Aliyev. Sevinj Vagifgyzy, the editor in chief of privately owned Abzas Media, was arrested and her home was searched on Tuesday, her lawyer and Abzas Media said. A day earlier, police also arrested Ulvi Hasanli, the director of the same media outlet, on charges of “smuggling foreign currency”...

Both from Al Jazeera

Kidnappers free two of three journalists taken in Mexico, group says (Guardian)

Two of three journalists recently kidnapped in southern Mexico have been freed unharmed, the journalists’ international free-speech group Article 19 said in a statement on Saturday. Silvia Arce and Alberto Sánchez, who lead the digital RedSiete platform, were released during the early hours of the morning, the organisation said. Both journalists were kidnapped on Wednesday by armed men who entered the outlet’s central Taxco offices, according to testimonies collected by Article 19. Pedro Cardenas, a member of the press group, told Reuters the release was confirmed by people close to the journalists, but he declined to give further details. Journalist Marco Toledo, director of the weekly Espectador de Taxco, remains kidnapped along with his son, while his wife was released, according to the organisation...

Free speech groups criticise German ban on Russian journalists’ book (BBC)

A Russian businessman has successfully taken legal action to ban a book in Germany about the Kremlin and its spy agencies, in a case that freedom of speech groups have described as an alarming attack on public interest reporting... Index on Censorship said in a statement that it felt “intimidatory tactics” were being used to silence critics of the Russian regime living abroad. Its statement was backed by 15 other freedom of expression groups including PEN International and Article 19 Europe...

The Israel-Hamas war is deadly for journalists. Lives are being lost, and truth (Guardian)

The numbers alone are dreadful. Journalists are being killed in the Israel-Hamas war at the rate of more than one every day since 7 October – at least 53 so far, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, or CPJ. This has been the deadliest period for journalists in the 30 years since the New York-based organization began keeping these dire statistics. But, of course, it’s not all about the numbers. There’s also the reality that the loss of journalists translates into less information. And that lies and propaganda love a void. And, of course, there are the people themselves. Each with a life, a career, a family, hopes and a mission – now cut short...

Trump "Truth Social" re MSNBC (28 Nov 2023):
https://twitter.com/MeidasTouch/status/1729868786344575258/photo/1

Five Mexican journalists shot and injured in one day as violence deepens (Guardian)

Four photojournalists shot in Guerrero state and reporter in Michoacán, where battles between cartels and local gangs rage...

German court hands Gambian death squad driver life sentence
DW | 11/30/2023

Bai Lowe, who was linked to the killing of AFP journalist Deyda Hydara {58, gunned down in his car on the outskirts of the Gambian capital Banju}, was convicted of crimes against humanity stemming from assassinations committed between 2003 and 2006.

...driver for the so-called "Junglers" military unit...the Junglers unit was "used by the then-president of The Gambia to carry out illegal killing orders, among other things" with the aim of "intimidating the Gambian population and suppressing the opposition."...

https://www.dw.com/en/german-court-hands-gambian-death-squad-driver-life-sentenc...

Fears raised after Hong Kong journalist fails to return from China trip (Guardian)

Friends and colleagues of a Hong Kong journalist have raised concerns after she failed to return from a defence and security forum in Beijing a month ago. Minnie Chan, a reporter for the South China Morning Post, has not been in contact since she went to the Xiangshan Forum, Japan’s Kyodo News reported on Thursday. Chan filed several stories from the forum, the most recent of which was published on 2 November. Kyodo News reported that her friends, whom it did not name, were concerned she was under investigation...

"oft well done"

John Harwood @JohnJHarwood | 2:33 PM · Dec 6, 2023:
journalist. public speaker. ex- WSJ/NYT/NBC/CNN/"Speakeasy" podcast. co-author Pennsylvania Avenue...

those of us in the press serve the country best by explaining that US economic conditions, for all their flaws and needed changes, are very strong by the standards of recent US history and peer countries now

discussing poll responses just creates self-fulfilling feedback loop.

Quote
Tom Nichols @RadioFreeTom | 12:12 PM · Dec 6, 2023
Staff writer at @TheAtlantic.

We have transitioned to a time where reality simply doesn’t matter anymore

Screen grab, CNN ( https://twitter.com/RadioFreeTom/status/1732447876381376820/photo/1 )
__________________________________

Interesting listens:

On the Media (Podcast Directory)
From NJPR

The Peabody Award-winning On the Media podcast is your guide to examining how the media sausage is made. Host Brooke Gladstone examines threats to free speech and government transparency, cast a skeptical eye on media coverage of the week's big stories and unravel hidden political narratives in everything we read, watch and hear.

https://www.npr.org/podcasts/452538775/on-the-media

Reuters journalist Issam Abdallah ‘killed by Israeli tank shell’ (Guardian)

Israeli tank shells fired in quick succession killed a Reuters journalist and injured six others as they filmed in Lebanon on 13 October, investigations by their employers have found. Human rights groups called for a war crimes investigation into the attacks, after conducting their own independent investigations and reaching the same conclusion. Issam Abdallah, a 37-year-old video journalist, was killed instantly by a first shell, the reports published on Thursday found. It also seriously injured the AFP photographer Christina Assi, 28, who had a leg amputated and is still in hospital. A second weapon firing less than a minute later injured others in the group, who were travelling and working together, and destroyed a vehicle used by Al Jazeera journalists...

RSF turned media premises into detention facilities: Sudanese Journalists Union (Sudan Tribune)

The Sudanese Journalists Syndicate has denounced the Rapid Support Forces (RSF)’s use of the buildings of the Sudan Broadcasting Corporation (SBC) as detention centres and the subsequent sale of SBC equipment in Omdurman markets. In a statement, the syndicate affirmed that witnesses who were detained at the SBC facilities in Omdurman confirmed the RSF’s utilization of these structures as makeshift prisons...

And a few sentences hidden away in a broader article by BBC on the Israel-Palestine confict:

One of the detained men, Diaa al-Kahlout - who has not been released yet, according to a colleague - is a correspondent for The New Arab, or Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, a London-based pan-Arab outlet. Some of those later released told al-Kahlout's family that the journalist had been transferred to Zikim military base in Israel, according to Lamis Andoni of The New Arab...

Mohamed Amin Was A Famous Kenyan Photojournalist – There’s Much More To His Work Than Images Of Tragedy (Citizen Digital)

Kenyan photojournalist Mohamed Amin (1943-1996) rose to fame for documenting the 1984 famine in neighbouring Ethiopia with powerful images of the tragedy. He also captured the Ethiopian people’s suffering during the brutal reign of Mengistu Haile Mariam. These images, broadcast by the BBC, shocked the global public and had a significant international impact. They mobilised governments, individuals and institutions. This even led to Live Aid – the famous 1985 benefit concert to raise funds for victims of the famine. As a result, some sources refer to Amin as “the man who moved the world”, reducing his visual work to this tragedy. As a lecturer and researcher in journalism, and a photographer and scholar completing a PhD on Amin, we recently published a paper on Amin’s vast earlier body of work. We wanted to highlight that Amin had already undertaken intense and prestigious work in Africa, Asia and the Middle East before these photos of tragedy. His visual collection, spanning from 1956 to 1996, comprises over 8,000 hours of video and approximately 3.5 million photographs...

Mohamed Amin died in November 1996 aboard the hijacked Ethiopian Airways airliner which crashed in the Comoros. I have a copy of his excellent Railway Across the Equator, published ten years earlier.

Father of Al Jazeera journalist killed in Israeli air strike on Gaza (Al Jazeera)

The 65-year-old father of Al Jazeera journalist Anas al-Sharif is killed in an Israeli air strike on the family home...

The UK Situation.
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2023/12/attacking-journalists-as-terrori...

Samer Abudaqa: Al Jazeera cameraman killed in Gaza drone strike (BBC)

The funeral has been held of an Al Jazeera cameraman who was killed by an Israeli drone strike on Gaza. Samer Abudaqa was wounded in the strike on a school in Khan Younis on Friday along with his colleague, Wael Al-Dahdouh. Al Jazeera said Abudaqa bled to death because a heavy bombardment prevented paramedics from reaching him. The Qatar-based network said it had referred the case to the International Criminal Court (ICC)...

"There was a vigil for Palestinian journalists on the steps of the New York Public Library last night."
article by Dan Sheehan, Literary Hub

CW: displays tweets actively linked to Twitter/X
https://lithub.com/category/the-hub/

Excerpt:

Israel’s war on Gaza has been one of the deadliest conflicts for journalists and media workers in modern history, with almost as many killed in the besieged enclave in seventy days as were killed worldwide in 2022. Compounding the severity of these numbers is the fact that Israel has been widely and credibly accused of targeting journalists and their families, accusations which call to mind the killing of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in the West Bank in 2022, as well as a sobering Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) report, published in May, which showed that the majority of the 20 journalists killed by the Israeli military in the past 22 years had press insignia visible on their bodies and their vehicles at the time of their deaths.

Listed at the bottom of article are the names of 66 Palestinian journalists and media workers who have been killed, along with family members in some cases.

Israeli military accused of targeting journalists and their families in Gaza (Guardian)

The Committee to Protect Journalists has accused the Israeli military of targeting journalists and their families in Gaza amid the highest death toll of media workers in any recent conflict. The New York-based CPJ said at least 68 journalists and other media workers had been killed in Gaza, Israel and southern Lebanon since the Hamas cross-border attack on 7 October and subsequent Israeli assault. “More journalists have been killed in the first 10 weeks of the Israel-Gaza war than have ever been killed in a single country over an entire year,” it said...

Jamal Khashoggi: Wife of murdered journalist wins US political asylum (BBC)

The wife of Jamal Khashoggi, the journalist who was murdered at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, has been granted political asylum in the US. Mr Khashoggi died in October 2018, and US intelligence has said it believes Saudi Arabia was behind the killing. Hanan Elatr, Mr Khashoggi's wife, feared for her safety and came to the US in August 2020 to apply for asylum...

Catching up on the latest installment of the Belmarsh Tribunal regarding Assange.
Absolutely essential listening as speakers chronicle the closing of our societies, the rise of global fascism, and the necessity of resistance. The fate of Assange is the fate of a free press.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KggYiMgsnDU

ETA: If you feel like the walls have been closing in, you're goddamned right. If you don't, you haven't been paying attention -- or you've been paying attention to the wrong places.

John Pilger: Campaigning Australian journalist dies (BBC)

Campaigning Australian journalist and filmmaker John Pilger has died aged 84, his family has announced. A statement by his relatives on X said he died in London on Saturday... He was a vocal and sometimes controversial critic of Western foreign policy. He was also outspoken over the treatment of Indigenous Australians... He was best known for his work as a foreign correspondent, including reporting on the Vietnam War, Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, and from the United States during the turmoil of the 1960s and 1970s...

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2023/12/farewell-to-john-pilger/
"Simply the greatest documentary maker of all time, and a rock of support for the Assange family.
Goodbye, John. We shall all miss you greatly."

>116 davidgn: Democracy Now has something on Assange and defending press freedom today from the Belmarsh Tribunal.

This thread is continued in Journalism: a dangerous job, and oft well done (2024)

>117 lriley: Yes, I saw. It's a cropped-down re-edit of the one I posted. Good if one is pressed for time, I suppose.

>117 lriley: Yes, I saw. It's a cropped-down re-edit of the one I posted. Good if one is pressed for listening time, I suppose.