Police arrest journalists covering Occupiers

When journalists go to work in the U.S., every day they know they might inadvertantly annoy or anger those who hold public office or employment. However, this is America- we hold expectations that journalists have the right to freely gather and distribute information to the general public. Lately, in the name of "protection", as New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg charactized it, journalists have been dealing with serious obstacles.

According to the First Amendment Center, on November 15 over a dozen journalists were arrested while covering the overnight raid of Occupy Wall Street's encampment, and many more were kept at a distance from the developing story. Julie Walker, a freelance radio journalist working for National Public Radio, was arrested for disorderly conduct while walking a few blocks north of Zucotti Park. She said the officer grabbed her arm twice, took her recorder and arrested her after she asked to know his name and badge number.

Why is the police force wasting time trying to block journalists from accessing an event of national interest? American foreign correspondents risk their lives travelling to many brutal dictatorships to cover protests, yet here in the American democracy journalists are arrested for their own "protection". City officials are protecting no one but themselves. It is a journalist's right to put themselves at risk for a story, and they are not in need of officials helicoptering over them. The American public deserves to know the story.

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Student Victory in Court of Appeals

Last Wednesday the Iowa Court of Appeals ruled that school districts can not discipline newspaper advisers for allowing students to run material in student publications that the administration does not approve of. According to the First Amendment Center, the Allamakee School District reprimanded adviser Ben Lange after students at Waukon High School published material in the school paper's April Fool's Day edition that the principal found offensive. Find the case, Lange vs. Diercks and Allamakee School District, here.

The case is being hailed among students and journalism instructors as an acknowledgement of student rights, feared by some to have been taken away in 1988 after the Supreme Court ruled in Hazelwood School District vs. Kulhmeier that administrations had the right to censor student publications.

What does this case really grant students? Admittedly, some of the content that Waukon High School's newspaper the Tribe-une can be considered in poor taste- for instance, the students included a derogatory name for a rival high school and a parody cartoon of a biology teacher caught running a meth lab. But the students involved in the scandal are going to learn a lot about the journalism world.

First, edit your content- just because you have the right to say it, doesn't mean you always should. Making sure you can stand by what you write without holding regrets is a valuable skill in journalism. Basically, if you're going to get in trouble for it, make sure it's good. But also, students do have rights. Critically assessing every situation, both in the classroom and out, is a good way to monitor when your rights are being violated. Students should want to know when boundaries are stepped on and how they can fight back.

Students, stand by your words. And if someone is getting punished for that, then there's a problem.

Photo credit/NCinDC,creativecommons.org

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The Dangers to Journalists

When Colombian native Jineth Bedoya Lima became a journalist, she'd never imagined it would lead to her biggest nightmare. At the age of 26, Bedoya was kidnapped, raped, and tortured while following through a story on Bogota's maximum-security prison La Modelo in May 2000. She was drugged and taken from the prison, and repeatedly raped by three different men. A taxi driver later found her hours away bound in a garbage dump near a road.
"We are sending a message to the press of Colombia," Bedoya recalled them saying.

Bedoya is not the only one to live with this. The U.S. and the rest of the world's eyes were snapped wide open when CBS correspondent Lara Logan was attacked last February at Cairo's Tahrir Square during celebrations after taking down the Egyptian dictatorship. And it's not just violence against women. Pakistani journalist Umar Cheema has publically disclosed that he was stripped naked by men wearing police uniforms and violated with a wooden pole in 2010.

Sexual violence against journalists is not just violence against one person- as if that isn't bad enough. When journalists are targeted, it is an attack on the freedom of the press and the ability of the journalists to do their job. Lauren Wolfe, blogging about it for The Atlantic, interviewed and quoted Logan after Bedoya's case was advanced to an international justice commission.
 "An attack in retribution for your reporting speaks directly to the First Amendment. It's terrifying in a different way. In her case, justice is critical because if you're allowed to attack journalists with impunity, there will be no free press, especially if the government is involved," Logan said.

Sexual violence against members of the news media is about more than personal suffering. It is meant to silence members of the press to keep them from bringing to light suspicious and criminal activity. The journalism industry must be more aware of the effect this pain brings on its staff and better prepare it for confrontation, both for the journalist's safety, and the industry's freedom of speech.

Photo credit/Chuck Coker, creativecommons.org

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Freedom to photograph

Picture: CreativeCommons.org

No one denies that it is important to discuss whether or not a college degree is worth all the money thrown in to it. In today's economy, times are hard, and people appreciate seeing some serious coverage over the issue to help them decide.

People don't seem to enjoy it when college students dress like, well, college students. The Kalamazoo Gazette learned this the hard way after running a front page photo of a woman speaking with a college employee. She was dressed normally, in a t-shirt and jeans, and the shoulder bag crossing her body partially covered up the words 'Kiss My Ass' on the front of her shirt. Partially, but people still noticed.

One reader wrote in to say that the photo "distracts from the integrity of the article". Joyce Pines, Kalamazoo Gazette public editor, noted to Jim Romenesko at Poynter.org that "this vulgarity is so commonly used in speech, online and in print nowadays that it pales in comparison to some of the more notable swear words....Perhaps the best that can be said for the whole situation is that all of us should stop and think about the images we’re projecting".

Are the readers right to be protesting? After all, it is the public newspaper. The phrase is not the most professional thing that should be said to consumers, and after it came out, it was made abundantly clear that readers did not appreciate this kind of language. However, what about the young woman? Doesn't she have the right to wear what she wants in public?

When protesters gather to demand change of the status quo, the majority of Americans will say that they have the right to their free speech, whether or not it is cluttered up with unseemly vocabulary. The Kalamazoo Gazette printed that photograph not because of what the shirt said, but because of what the photo contributed to their news story. It is unfortunate that the shirt slogan took away attention from the real issue at hand.

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Press Freedom: Still an Issue in Developing Countries

The people of Ecuador are being asked to vote in a referendum on whether the country should have a media regulator that journalists fear will inhibit of expression.

The referendum will take place on May 7, and the population will have to ask questions on a range of issues.

The Committee to Protect Journalists, based in New York is alarmed with one of the communication law. The Government wants to establish a law to create a council to regulate media content.

CPJ's executive director Joel Simon argues that the law "would open door to government censorship." On a letter sent to Ecuador's president, Rafael Correa, he adds:

"We urge you to immediately withdraw these questions and respect the guarantees on free expression that are enshrined in the Constitution and international treaties."

Ecuador is not the only country dealing with press freedom. In major developing countries this is an issue that government has to face.

Press freedom is the major key of democratic societies and therefore has to be protected. This is the first step to human rights and developing countries have to be aware of that.

Remember Thomas Jefferson's words: "Our liberty depends on the freedom of press, and that cannot be limited without being lost."

Hopefully, the Ecuador's Administration will drop the project after celebrating the press freedom day on May 3.

Photo credit: http://www.wilpf.org/ via http://www.creativecommons.org/

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The Importance of the First Amendment

"Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a governement, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter."

Thomas Jefferson's words still resonate today, more than 200 years later. Newspapers and media are vital for our society and they are protected by many laws.

The most important one, also a creation of Jefferson, is the first amendment of the Constitution.

It is the third article of the Bill of Rights which proclaims the five freedoms of the citizens of the United States of America.

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

In Democratic countries, those rights have to be respected and they are protected by the Constitution or the major law of the state.

Journalists take a great advantage out of this amendment. Freedom of press is, for Jefferson, the beginning of liberty.

"Our liberty depends on the freedom of press, and that cannot be limited without being lost."

The media play such a role in the political life revolutions and contemporary state blows always begin by making media headquarters. Sometimes referred as fourth power, the press is often only extension of powers already in place.

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Libya and Freedom of Press

While protests continue in Libya, journalists find themselves in the inability to perform their work.

Since the early events, Gadhafi's government had assured media that they will be able to report any event across the country. However, since a few days, journalists are banned from crossing certain areas of the country, especially sites of clashes with the rebels.

"The situation for crews in Libya is becoming increasingly precarious and there is a strong sense that antipathy towards foreign journalists is mounting," said the International News Safety Institute, a non-for-profit charity.

Many journalists are confined in their hotel and can not report freely. Some of them have been detained by security forces but all have been released since.

"A number of news crews who have given their minders the slip have been detained," INSA said. "Several journalists were detained trying to get in to Zawiyah, about 30 miles west of Tripoli. Some were held overnight."

Libya is not the first example of control of press. Freedom of press is always an issue in countries facing a dictatorship. It is still the case in North Korea, were people have no access to the Internet, no cell phones and can barely talk to each other.

Photo credit: flickr.com via Creativescommons.org

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