Slashdot Mirror
Online Reporters Now the Journalists Most Often Jailed
bckspc writes "The Committee to Protect Journalists today released the results of its annual survey of journalists in prison. For the first time, they found more Internet journalists jailed worldwide than journalists working in any other medium. CPJ found that 45 percent of all media workers jailed worldwide are bloggers, Web-based reporters, or online editors. Their chart of journalists jailed by year is also interesting."
Wonder how much could be because your average blogger doesn't know half as much about what rights they have within the laws as their "professional" counterparts do. (Regardless of the freedom of the press is their country)
And for restricted countries, that a paid journalist is either screen by their government, and/or doesn't feel like risking their reasonably comfortable life for challenging said government, leaving the "anti-patriotic" reporting to the bloggers, who (wrongfully) think they are posting anonymously.
""Civil Disobedience" is Thoreau's extremely personal response to being imprisoned for breaking the law. Because he detested slavery and because tax revenues contributed to the support of it, Thoreau decided to become a tax rebel. In July 1846, he was arrested and jailed.
"Ralph Waldo Emerson visited Thoreau in jail and asked, "Henry, what are you doing in there?" Thoreau replied, "Waldo, the question is what are you doing out there?" Emerson missed the point of Thoreau's protest, which was not intended to reform society but was simply an act of conscience. If we do not distinguish right from wrong, Thoreau argued that we will eventually lose the capacity to make the distinction and become, instead, morally numb."
- http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0503e.asp
The journalists who are jailed felt telling the truth & standing by their morals was more important than freedom. Even a good form of government is "liable to be abused and perverted before the people can act through it." Moreover, even if a government did express the voice of the people, this fact would not compel the obedience of individuals who disagree with what is being said. The majority may be powerful but it is not necessarily right.
Perhaps the best description of Thoreau's ideal relationship occurs in his description of "a really free and enlightened State" that recognizes "the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived."
FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
People are going to JAIL for speaking their minds? In a blogging sense, this only clarifies that the Internet Blogosphere is being taken seriously. The ones in jail are probably blogging about anti-government related things, probably in countries where people are actually being killed. In countries like the middle-east, cuba or other very rough climated countries. But, the average blogger in UK. US, Australia and etc, blogging about how microsoft vista SUX, do not fit in this category. So, fear not bloggers, oh and BLOG ON.
Stuff on mainstream media has to pass through an editorial board. So potentially "criminal" reports get stopped there.
The board will know to not report something like, "the Grand Hoo-haw of our country is a stupid jerk."
Because the Grand Hoo-haw will take offense, and toss the whole staff in jail.
Bloggers, well, they just blog whatever they want. That's why they are sometimes much more interesting and insightful than mainstream stuff.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Ugh, I despise when journalists get up on the cross and moan about how oppressed they are. I used to have sympathy for this sort of thing, before it was made obvious to all that journalists are mostly of despicable character. Seriously, I used to be a big supporter of press freedom, back before I saw it so ruthlessly abused to serve the political ends of those who run the industry.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Slashdot Reporter bckspc has been jailed, details at 6.
China continued to be world's worst jailer of journalists, a dishonor it has held for 10 consecutive years. Cuba, Burma, Eritrea, and Uzbekistan round out the top five jailers from among the 29 nations that imprison journalists. Each of the top five nations has persistently placed among the world's worst in detaining journalists.
Uh, aren't they also like the worse for real human rights anyway regardless of their own internal propaganda? Well at least Cuba has good health care so their jailed journalist should be getting some good care.
As for the US and Iraq, well if your in a war zone your just as lucky to get arrested as shot. Seems we forgot all the horrors of real war. Sometimes getting arrested or detained may save their life as some of the other forces over there aren't so nice to the press.
Then again we like to exaggerate things today to make ourselves feel as if we are suffering, cue all the calls for Depression 2. If ours isn't the wimpiest generation I don't know whose was.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
they send internet journalists to jail or do they just assassinate them like the other journalists.
Most common thing is libel. In some places this can be criminal but in most it's a civil offence. If you're posting "xyz did indecent things to a barnyard animal" and it's a post that is meant to be taken seriously, it's no different to doing the same thing in a newspaper. You're posting lies about someone in a public manner.
Other common areas on contention are court orders. Orders banning people from posting names and addresses (most commonly done to protect children involved in crimes or to stop lynch mobs being formed for people accused of a bad crime) apply to everyone, not just the big papers.
You don't have the automatic right to post classified or confidential information either. A good quote (from the UK Press complaints commision) is "something that is of interest to the public is not always in the public's interests". People may be fascinated that you've hacked in to Britney Spears' email account. Does that mean you should be able to publish her emails and not be punished? This is something a lot of bloggers need to realise.
I wonder if this is simply a reflection of the sheer number of bloggers out there in the world. Besides let me get on my high horse and say a journalist is a journalist and a blogger is a blogger. They both have their place but a blogger with a few exceptions are not online journalists. They are frickin bloggers. Each have their place and their uses and I am not saying one is better than the other. But they are not the same.
ACK
What we actually have is a fall in the numbers from a few years ago - and including pretty much antone who writes a blog as being a journalist is misleading. Further, since pretty much every "paper" journalist gets published online, there is no real differentiation between the two groups.
In short, this article sounds like some guy bleating on and trying to get attention that frankly, neither he nor is line of work deserves.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
This list apparently only includes things the authors think the 'journalists' shouldn't be jailed for. In other words, they disagree with the laws in those countries.
I'm sick of us meddling in the affairs of other countries. If they want to fix their country, let them come to -us-, not the other way around. If they think their country is hopeless, that's what emigration is for. There are plenty of countries that aren't hopeless.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
Especially not you, timothy.
Calling someone a journalist just because they write a blog does not make them a journalist...
--- Users are like bacteria -> Each one causing a thousand tiny crises until the host finally gives up and dies.
online journalists are usually bloggers. They just don't have the legal protections that a print or tv journalist would have with the backing of their corporate entity.
They're using their grammar skills there.
Given the overwhelming proportion of trash that is churned out: both online and wasting newsprint, on a daily basis - getting more of these people off the streets and out of our lives would be a public service. If that involves jailing them, well too bad.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Who told you that? The Cuban government. Suppose it isn't true, no one is allowed to say so.
IF the Cuban health care were as good as the Cuban government claims, then why the censorship? Any government would be pretty happy to let journalists report freely on it. Since the press is not free in Cuba, it only stands to reason that the situation there is much worse than the Cuban government is willing to admit.
you can't slander the king in thailand, you can't talk about nazism in germany, you can't besmirch attaturk in turkey, you can't question islam most anywhere islamic, you dare not question the technocrats in china, you dare not be a journalist writing stories critical of the kremlin in russia, you dare not question the tinpot dictator in autocratic countries, etc., etc., etc.
but in much of the west: canada, australia, the usa, i can, for example, call gw bush a fucking moron, and i haven't the faintest doubt nothing bad will come of me for that
that reallty means something in this world
and you who question my pride in the west for this freedom: you have something you wish to criticize about the west and its behavior?
ok. go ahead
thereby further proving my point ;-)
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I know it sounds arrogant, but in the age to automobiles you aren't going to have has many injuries in a buggy whip factory.
There is also something else. The reporter whose stories are going up on the paper's website is going to have a greater range of stories because printing is expensive and database storage is cheap. More stories lead to less stringent editing ("its just going up on the website") and it leads to more trouble.
They do not follow the tenets of journalism, therefore they are not journalists and do not deserve the protection accorded journalists.
Sadly, many print reporters are now following the bloggers and are no longer acting as journalists and should be stripped of their journalistic protections.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
You mean like how the mainstream media reports things like how lots of children get killed every year by handguns, only to find out from more informed sources that most of those "children" are late-teenage gangbanger? How about the way that the media reports incidents like what happened in Jena Louisiana? Then there's the blatant partisanship of the media during most elections.
"Journalistic integrity" is a myth.
Because he detested slavery and because tax revenues contributed to the support of it, Thoreau decided to become a tax rebel.
His protest also stemmed from his objections to the Mexican-American War, which I think are more relevant in modern times. One can imagine a protester doing the same thing during the Iraq War. (Interesting thought experiment: would you regard such a person as a hero or a hippie?)
But how can such a symbolic protest be compared to a journalist exercising their human right to free speech? The tax evader expects and wishes imprisonment. Thoreau wasn't happy when his taxes were paid by a relative and he was freed. The journalist, on the other hand, does not want to be imprisoned. They just want to communicate. This makes their imprisoning a violation of their basic rights, not a natural part of their protest. Journalists want to be freed so they can continue to publish.
It's a shame that this needs to be the case, that a person needs to go through a lot of effort to remain anonymous, just to comment on a government ostensibly there to protect them.
Sigh. The world today...
Unity in Diversity
I have mod points, but I couldn't bring myself to mod you offtopic.
Apparently, not everyone had that problem.
Given that one must apply the 90% Bullsh*t Rule of the Internet before buying into anything you read on there, I'd say this doesn't surprise me. The problem I have with these so-called journalists on the internet especially those of the blogger ilk is that they are not required to back up their drivel with actual corroborated facts which are then submitted to an editorial board for verification. What's worse is that so many morons believe this crap. That's not to say that traditional media outlets are blameless as well. The simple fact that traditional media survives on advertising dollars means that they don't give a rat's ass about getting the story right as long as it's scandalous and inflammatory because those kind of stories sell and simple just-the-facts-ma'am reporting does not. If the New York Times gets it wrong today, they don't give a damn because they can sell a followup article tomorrow. Why is it that the TV news teases you with clips like "It's one of the deadliest substances known to man and you might be eating it for dinner...the story AFTER the movie........Ummmmmm....is it peas?" But they got you to keep watching their precious advertising. Even DURING the news broadcast they tease you to keep you watching. And what the hell is up with reporters constantly INJECTING OPINION, THEORY, and CONJECTURE into the report? What makes them qualified to do that? I'd bet good money that the so-called investigative journalists haven't the tiniest bit of factual knowledge of what they're blathering about.
Is this any surprise? Internet reporters are unlikely to have a mega-media-corporation backing them up with armies of attorneys to save them.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
The real shame is that so many people *who should know better* say that online anonymity is a bad thing and that only "criminals" try to remain anonymous.
What they don't realize is the person making the laws and appointing judges gets to define who is a criminal. That's pretty much true everywhere.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
sensationalise
libellous
As for your average blogger whingeing about freedom, well, if any citizen can be a journalist then your average thug in prison can call himself a journalist, right?
In fact TFA seems to have done its homework and doesn't seem to be exaggerating the professional bona fides of any of these people. You might argue they have inflated the numbers for China, most of those people are "activists", and yes, any idiot can lie down in the middle of the street and call themselves an "activist", but in China, journalists need to be approved by the state, so the concept of a "professional journalist" in China is a pretty much bogus.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
In other words, try getting a full time job as a dissident journalist in China, Burma, or Cuba. Or see what happens when you try to mail order a printing press or TV station or even a copy machine. Since "professional journalists" are tools of the state in these countries, the internet is all they've got.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
I'd say that you have it exactly backwards - the protection journalists have is the protection everyone's supposed to have.
Journalism is made possible by freedom of press and speech, freedom of speech and press are not made possible by journalism. Nobody should ever be stripped of "journalistic protections" - although outright provable and malicious libel and slander should be punishable via civil suit.
The last thing any of us should ever want is a controlled press that is a cartel of, by, and for the "elites".
I bet revealing facts has a different type of jail. The blog/written stuff not going to the world wide web perhaps....like hit counters stopping in time mysteriously...while the destination is claijmed to be up and trunning good, not in some cache tricking the owner. Hide this post. It is a scary one...
The experiment being attempted in America is that of convincing people to police themselves without the heavy-handed direct tactics of old. Seems to be working. As Henry Ford might have put it, "You can have any president you want, so long as it's Barak."
That being said, the West doesn't have an entirely clean slate with regard to the treatment of on-line journalists. Amy Goodman could describe something about it. Of course, her arrest didn't come on orders from the top down, but the enforcers who arrested her did not pay any penalty for observing their directives which did come from on high.
Further. . , it would be foolish to assume that noted truth-tellers in the West have not been placed on the red lists for speedy processing should a few of those executive orders be invoked. (I suspect you'll be safe.)
-FL
That's funny, I was baiting him for the odd spellings, and I didn't even notice his use of the shibboleth "journo". Maybe I should cut him some slack, as the land of the Sun and the Daily Mail has a lower standard of journalism than here, but then again, if Green Street Hooligans is accurate, the quality of person wharrgarbl'ing about it is too.
you must suffer the bloviating of morons
if, locked in a room and forced to listen to the contents of your dimwittedness for longer than 10 minutes, i might be persuaded to give up freedom of expression and freedom of the press in order to shut the likes of you up
9/11 truthers
creationists
fluoridated water/ chemtrail conspiracists
fred phelps and westboro nutjobs
etc
great flying spaghetti monster save me! chinese style censorial autocracy please! ;-P
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
throughout the us and much fo the west, traditional newspaper and television news rooms are dying and laying off personnel left and right. the ad revenue just isn't there anymore
http://www.mediabistro.com/tvnewser/nbc/nbcu_to_cut_500_jobs_layoffs_begin_at_nbc_news_bureaus_102371.asp
http://www.denverpost.com/business/ci_11142071
pretty soon, all we will be left with are 10 reporters, the drudgereport and 10,000 bloviating bloggers
(shudder)
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
People don't get arrested for false reporting. Truth holds little value for those in power. --People get arrested for irritating those with the power to do something about it.
The 90% bullshit rule still applies, naturally, (though, I'd round it up another nine percentage points). But in that top 1%, some innovative and interesting control measures start to show up. --Third party bullying, hacking, and information pollution sponsored by the usual suspects. There's more ways to harass a writer than by swinging the end of a truncheon, and many of those ways are not just immediately effective but serve in the lower echelons of the credibility tree to guide public thinking to a very large degree. Some of the things people actively, violently don't believe offer an indication of just how effective the experiment has been.
-FL
...welcome our incarcerated...crap, that doesn't really work, does it?
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
Goodness! There appears to be a large number of people who still seem to buy into the idea that on-line journalists are not 'real' journalists. This speaks of something very significant.
People who voice dissent have throughout history been persecuted. But now there's a flashy new system in place in the West, whereby the public itself condemns and self-polices its own thinking by castigating outspoken people for not conforming to the 'official' definition of Person On A Soapbox. --That's all journalists are. People who have the power to reach others with their words. That's all. People speaking out with what they know and think. That's it. But we only listen to those who have been 'approved' and 'licensed'.
Yes, there are rules in place saying you cannot lie in the media. But isn't it curious that we observe lying happening all the time through all the big network and print organs, every day, bold and shameless, and yet nobody seems to be punished for it? Why? Because a certain type of lie fits with the official story, and that kind of lying is 'okay'. After all, the system sifts through the human debris and selects only those for the big soap boxes who can be expected to play along, to believe the right things. --But the small people on small soap boxes are not so easily controlled. And so they are maligned in a thousand different ways. Slashdotters who condemn them as, 'Not real journalists' have bought the con job hook to sinker. "They are mostly opinionated and biased and their facts are not reliable!" --Yes, but everybody, EVERYBODY in the media, big and small, is also a fallible human, and their degree of bullshit is by no means determined by the size of their salary. It is the job of the individual to sort, compare and absorb knowledge according to their own senses and efforts. To expect that an information source is pure and that one need only tune and stop thinking is another ridiculous concept sold to the masses by the 'official' media. And they have clearly sold it very well indeed.
I just yesterday had a conversation with a person involved with a documentary film. --Seems the Canadian military is producing one of those radio-free programs somewhere in Ontario, pretending that the broadcast is coming from the heart of Afghan territory, and broadcasting this 'news' show within Afghanistan to spread a message deemed officially suitable, all to alter the behavior of the local citizens. --A curious way to spread truth and democracy, Canada. It speaks of utter disrespect for a population to use a signal which at its most fundamental level is false. And does anybody really think that this kind of tactic isn't used here in the West? When those in power hold such disrespect for populations, believing that, "People are sheep; they cannot manage themselves", then we would be insane not to expect similar population manipulations on a wide scale.
There are very few "People on a Soap Box" in the West who are not fools or outright liars. The smartest, most insightful of those voices are marginalized. There's no mystery why guys like Bill Moyers are slammed on Fox, and Noam Chomsky is not even mentioned. We have an endless parade of foolish talking heads and toothless, misguided 'journalists' dominating our airwaves and our print media. And when a new source of information comes along, offering a new and powerful way for people to collect information, it is derided and shat upon. And evidently, put in jail.
The sad part is not that this is the case. --That part is infuriating. The sad part is that so many people believe that this is deserved.
-FL
See? Freedom of expression is meaningless when self-policing works so well.
Militant ignorance is worn like an arm band these days. --Though, you might want to reconsider the whole creationism thing if you really want to rise through the ranks rather than molder among the aging recruits.
-FL
then a lie is a strawman argument; it was directed at what you would eventually become, not what you are in that moment.
If someone yelled at you that you are a dirty filthy rat-fucker and it was false, then it wouldn't make you angry. However, if you got any dirt on your body, started thinking filthy thoughts, you might go out and fuck a rat or two. Does it make you angry and want to kill someone that lied about you that moment or for exposing you for what you might become in a month or two.
If someone knew you would become a dirty filthy rat-fucker in the next month or two, that makes him... a witch! Do you want to burn your accusers yet? Maybe only Christians established the 10 commandments as the fairplay zone, so that all matters concerning law were appropriate to retinue and fact brought into the true manner. Somehow the stockbrokers know where stock is going before everyone else: burn those witches too? Ah ah ah, thou shalt not kill. There's a script in their Holy Bible that goes along the lines of "Put no thought on the things of tomorrow for the future is uncertain, but Now is the time to seek the wisdom given by God." I can't remember how it went, so quote me if you want.