Journalism

Under the light of the killing of members of the WikiLeaks staff and the death threats Julian Assange has received in the last months, taken seriously by the British authorities, the website Committee to Protect Journalists dot Org published today (01-04-2011) an interactive tool that shows the 44 Journalists Killed in 2010 after Confirmed Motive. Below, extracts from a short article in The Wall Street Journal on the topic:

The Committee to Protect Journalists, or CPJ, which defends media workers around the world, tracks and investigates the circumstances surrounding the deaths of journalists, and it created an interactive infographic showing where, how and why most were killed last year. Thirteen of the 44, or 30%, were corruption beat reporters. Other top beats of journalists killed included politics, war, culture and crime. Some of the beats overlapped, however, causing the aggregated percentages to go far over 100%.

Joe Lieberman, Senator, DHS Committee Chair, Terms of Service Policeman

Monday afternoon I spoke with Leslie Phillips, Press Secretary for Senator Joseph Liebermans' DHS (Department of Homeland Security) Oversight Committee. Ms. Phillips was crisp, professional, and on message, as one might expect.  I would like to Thank her for taking the time to engage my questions, and her patience in the face of my persistent questioning. She generously gave me 15 minutes of her time at a moment when she was headed for a meeting, and I appreciate it.

I had been trying to reach Leslie since Friday...

A Seminar on  Document Forensics and Empirical Journalism
Julian Assange

"WikiLeaks revelations clearer outside the United States": Andrew Oxford looks at how US media reporting of the WikiLeaks Iraq War Logs has been strikingly different from the rest of the world.

"When five news organizations - including Der Spiegel and Al Jazeera — were granted access to WikiLeaks’ Iraq War Logs before they were published online on October 22, only The Times avoided drawing the same conclusions as its colleagues abroad. The Guardian’s coverage featured headlines such as “Secret Files Show How U.S. Ignored Torture” and “How Friendly Fire Became Routine,” while Le Monde was no less dramatic. Der Spiegel, the German news weekly, published a lengthy editorial titled, “Dumb War: Taking Stock of the Iraq Invasion,” which concluded that the WikiLeaks documents confirm that the war was a failure.

Meanwhile, The Times’ front-page headline assured us “Detainees Fared Worse in Iraqi Hands.” Other American newspapers seemed similarly unimpressed by WikiLeaks’ latest publication of nearly 400,000 classified military documents. The Washington Post printed an editorial declaring that the Iraq War Logs offered no new insights."

Read the full article at In These Times

I have been mostly rolling my eyes at all the talk lately about ‘hacktivism’ and ‘hackers’ as a distinct culture. Even though I remember thinking that programming was the only job I could ever have in business, and the feeling of belonging to a very exclusive club with our own secrets and jokes, I know a lot of engineers, physicists, physicians, etc., who feel the same. But watching the current clash between computer geeks and journalists has caused me to wonder; is there really a completely different core philosophy here? And what will be the result of this clash?

Julian Assange, David Aaronovitch, and Jonathan Dimbleby debated this topic in London today. I wasn’t there, and there was no live feed, so this is all based on comments tweeted by the audience, mostly City students. In retrospect, this may have been the interesting part, since the speakers seem to have just recycled old topics. This time we get an insight into what the audience thought. So here are what the predominant tweets said, and my opinions as answers.

Read more ...

After reading the horribly written NY Times advance review of ‘Obama’s Wars’, I have been wondering what the point is. When the NY Times comes out with their ‘official view’ articles, the ones full of spin, choppy quotes, and third party innuendo, the ones which allow no reader comments, there is always a point. What is it we are being set up to accept this time?

Read more ...

Many people around the world are calling for us to fight for freedom of the press. I don’t think so. Freedom of speech, freedom of information, and accountability of the press would be what I am looking for.

Read more ...