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."

Comments

knowing their rights

[TBoon]

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.

Re:knowing their rights

[HungryHobo]

Anonimity isn't a myth, you just need to know what to do.
People need to know how to cover their asses when they feel the urge to complain about their governments.

Re:knowing their rights

[davester666]

It could also be because it's less likely for a 'real' newspaper, with lawyers on-call, to be standing behind the blogger. Hell, there's more of a time lag for somebody to notice that a blog isn't getting updated than there would be for a reporter that stops checking in.

And yes, for more totalitarian states, if you part of the 'real' press [tv, print], your organization generally keeps you toeing the line, as it's not just your neck if you step over it. If you're a blogger, it's more of a proofread/publish it yourself, and then get a reaction. If the reaction is for the police to show up at your door, it's too late...

Henry David Thoreau & Ghandi

[theaveng]

""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."

Re:Henry David Thoreau & Ghandi

[ErikZ]

Thoreau didn't have a wife and kids. His job was living in Ralph Waldo Emerson's house.

It's easy to make a stand when you're taking no risks and no one depends on you.

Is this for REAL?

[nulled]

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.

Re:Is this for REAL?

[Captain Splendid]

RIGHT ON

I think I've got a HARD ON

And I'm gonna ROCK ON

Keep on coming on COME ON

On and on and on and on til the BREAK OF DAWN

I'm done.

Re:Is this for REAL?

[RobertinXinyang]

"The ones in jail are probably blogging about anti-government related things"

Not always. I was threatened with jail for writing a book review (it really was a crappy book). The charge was "interfering with a trade good." The rational was that a book is an item offered for sale, thus a trade good. Writing a poor review of it had the potential of negatively impacting sales, thus interference.

As I am sure you can guess (by the fact that I am here to post this) I pulled the book review and all mention of it and the author from my blog.

So, it is not just anti-government things. In this case the book was a very poor workbook that intended to teach English though watching movies written by a total crank.

Re:Is this for REAL?

[moose_hp]

You could have posted that as a slashdot entry (with copy of the emails and scans of the legal documents) or something like that for a very cool Streisand effect... before going to jail >.>;

Lack of an editorial board.

[PolygamousRanchKid]

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.

Re:Lack of an editorial board.

[abigsmurf]

It also results in insane amounts of slander and libel. Rumours get posted as fact, fact checking is non-existant (is your average joe blogger really likely to have contacts who would be able to officially deny or confirm something?).

Reading blogs is often like reading a trashy tabloid, only they're even more comfortable posting outright lies.

Blogs can make a good starting point for finding info on something but overall they generally only post stuff that doesn't appear in papers or news channels because they lack the quality control or journalistic integrity of news organisations.

Re:Lack of an editorial board.

[HungryHobo]

News stations/traditional media: give you one angle, theirs, decided by what's going to get them sued and what's going to sell most copies. What's "true" is a minor concern if it could get them sued.

Bloggers: Give you every angle, largely ignoring what could get them sued, getting most hits could be considered to be like selling most copies but since there's rarely significant money involved this has a very small effect. "true" amounts to whatever the blogger opinion is.

Are we lumping board in with bloggers?
I have gotten sick of reading my national newspapers because I got sick of seeing so many stories (a week after I'd seen them online) where half the important facts of the situation were left out entirely and you could see the reporter had decided that X was guilty or that Y had happened and only presented that half of it in the story.

Example:
A story a few years ago about a woman who's twins had died because she refused to have a Csection. The (respectable) national newspaper presented the story as a "look how selfish this woman was, she killed her children becuase she was afraid of blemishing her body with a scar, she should have been forced to have a Csection!(for the children)" I should mention that this newspaper tends to push the view of women as incubators whenever abortion issues pop up.

Of course I'd read the story online before that and had run into the little fact that this woman already had kids, at least one of whom had been born by Csection and so she already had csection scars. The newspapers didn't feel that this fact was important yet it completely tore apart their whole story.

But sure those evil bloggers with their lies! they just want to put "real jornalists" out of a job!

With message boards when someone does that another person will jump in with the second half and call bullshit(normally). When newspapers present exactly half the story people treat it as gospel. "I read it in the newspaper!"

Blogs and message boards are a hundred times better to get your information from than all but the very very best traditional news media.

If you only ever read one blog your going to get worse information than from reading one newspaper, on the other hand if you read a few message boards you're likely to get much much much better info than you'll get from the same stories presented in a few normal newspapers.

Lies by omission are still lies and I'd prefer to be told the whole truth along with a pile of falsities than be told only the half of the truth which supports some hacks beliefs or agenda.

Re:Lack of an editorial board.

[abigsmurf]

The trouble is, they don't say things 'as they are' they say things that fit in with their view. At least with with newspapers, the fact they'll get sued means they have to reign in their viewpoints. With bloggers they don't have to (or at least don't feel the need to).

They'll twist any story to meet their means any if they need to add cridibility to their viewpoint, 10 minutes on google will find you a view by someone who is incredibly qualified that will match the point you're trying to make. No matter how stupid.

The US election and the primaries brought out the very worst in the blogosphere. Take the whole Ron Paul fad. A commodity backed economy cannot and does not work in a global economy (evidenced by the fact that not a single country does it and the last attempts to create one failed). However suddenly everyone on the blogosphere who went crazy after Ron Paul went into overdrive. They found books that backed him, they found economists they'd never heard of before and built them up to be incredibly famous, powerful people who are never wrong.

Bloggers are after their scoop. They'll scan speeches for out of context quotes, twist around statistics, post slight glimmers of rumours as major exclusives. All so they can get Dugg or Reddit or whatever.

I wonder if in Russia...

[elthicko]

they send internet journalists to jail or do they just assassinate them like the other journalists.

Bloggers have their heads in the sand

[abigsmurf]

A lot of bloggers are being jailed I imagine for basically thinking the laws that journalists have to follow don't apply to them yet, when they get arrested they demand the protection journalists get.

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.

muddled and meaningless

[petes_PoV]

So, worldwide there are 125 "journalists" in jail. Personally, I'd expect the number of people from any job (I nearly said "profession" - ha ha) who are in jail - across the entire planet to be much, much higher than this. Even if it's for non-job related reasons.

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.

Re:muddled and meaningless

[Dutch Gun]

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.

You're correct in that the number of people "unjustly jailed or persecuted" would be a more meaningful number to most people, and perhaps would be somewhat fairer. My guess is that the relative percentages would remain approximately the same.

But the reason journalism - or even blogging, if you don't consider them equivalent - is important to protect is because it's inextricably linked to the concept of free speech, which most people acknowledge as a prerequisite for a free and just society. Few other professions - or jobs, if you prefer - have that significance.

I don't think you necessarily have to put journalists (I liked them better when they called themselves reporters) on a pedestal in order to acknowledge the importance of the concept their job represents.

Bloggers are not all journalists

[Arimus]

Calling someone a journalist just because they write a blog does not make them a journalist...

simply explained

[DragonTHC]

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.

Re:Getting up on the cross again, I see

[pzs]

Are you using the fact that some journalists are arse-holes to justify curtailing freedom of speech? That's mental.

The principle of press-freedom is separate from how that freedom is used in individual cases. That freedom is an absolutely vital component of a healthy democracy, because it means that corrupt or self-serving officials always have the fear that what they do will be uncovered and made public.

Yes, some journalists are whiny bitches. However, we must fight with all our might to protect their freedom to make a fuss.

Re:yebbut - this isn't what most journo's do

[theaveng]

Yeah because "You libeled me," is a really good reason to deprive a writer of his/her freedom.

Not.

Re:yebbut - this isn't what most journo's do

[terrahertz]

You seem to miss the point that no matter how disposable yellow journalism might be, the types of stories that get journalists arrested are the ones that you and I, regular people, typically need to hear about in order to be informed participants in modern society. Do you really think China is jailing its journalists for "shrill bloat"?

How do YOU know?

[mangu]

Well at least Cuba has good health care so their jailed journalist should be getting some good care.

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.

proud of the west

[circletimessquare]

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 ;-)

More than just bloggers and "new media" types.

[Steauengeglase]

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.

Re:Most bloggers are not journalists.

[ErikZ]

I just tried looking them up "tenets of journalism" in Google, and they're not listed anywhere I could find.

So either there aren't any, or they're so obscure that not even GOOGLE knows what they are.

Re:yebbut - this isn't what most journo's do

[sorak]

I had a similar thought, but we're not talking about WorldNetDaily or Matt Drudge...

(From TFA)

China continued to be world's worst jailer of journalists, a dishonor it has held for 10 consecutive years.

The article goes on to mention other countries, such as Cuba. So, in the most oppressive nations on Earth, people saying illegal things do it on the internet, instead of television or radio...

It doesn't seem very surprising when put in that context...

Re:yebbut - this isn't what most journo's do

[jafiwam]

Do us all a favor o graciously arrogant one, and share with us your omnipresent definition of a journalist, be sure to highlight in particular the part that clearly carves out a blogger as not being a journalist.

Oh, and fuck off too.

Re:Getting up on the cross again, I see

[pzs]

You're right that it's annoying when these guys whinge. However, it's not too hard to just ignore it. All I'm saying is that the alternative to letting them whinge is a good deal worse.

sadly true

[a302b]

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...

90% Bullshiat Rule of the Internet

[RogueWarrior65]

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.

Re:yebbut - this isn't what most journo's do

[Hognoxious]

China is jailing bloggers, not journalists.

That's because they've already executed the journalists.

No, the real shame

[tkrotchko]

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.