The future of Al-Jazeera, according to Philip Seib

I had missed this story, branded as one the best "webbased articles" on the Foreign Affairs website. Written by professor Philip Seib, one of the leading analysts of global media and journalism, it explains the evolution of the Arab mediasphere through the changes at Al-Jazeera, the famous and at times controversial Qatar-based broadcaster that revolutionized Arab and global news coverage in the last decade.
In a nutshell Philip Seib shows how Al Jazeera is a victim of its own success by triggering the creation of other pan-Arab news channels but also of local news channels that now compete for public attention.
The rise of the Internet in the Arab world as well as of social media is also changing the media landscape and reducing the time devoted to TV watching.
Al Jazeera however will remain "a significant player in Arab journalism and politics for many years to come", Philip Seib concludes. "It will continue to merit careful scrutiny by governments that want to understand the region".

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/print/68219

Best Books of 2011: the choice of Foreign Affairs

Foreign Affairs, the magazine published by the New-York based Council on Foreign Relations has just published its lists of the "best books of 2011", reviewed by leading academics and classified according to regions (Europe, Asia, etc) and themes (military, economy, etc.)
The selections are of course subjective but quite a few refer to issues close to the "mandate" of this blog. Among these "human rights" books, Bloodlands (on the Nazi and Stalinist massacres in Central Europe between 1930 and 1945), Europe and Genocide or A Predictable Tragedy (on Robert Mugabe and the collapse of Zimbabwe).
Bonne lecture!

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/features/collections/best-international-relations-books-of-2011?cid=nlc-this_week_on_foreignaffairs_co-122911-best_international_relations_b_3-122911

43 journalists killed in 2011, Committee to Protect Journalists

2011 has been again a bad year for the press. 43 journalists have been killed around the world in direct relation to their work, with Pakistan infamously topping with 7 deaths.
This tallly by the Committee to Protect Journalists, reminds us that journalists pay a heavy price to inform the public, in particular on conflicts and issues that have a strong human rights angle, like wars or street "crowd control" operations where civilians are often directly targeted or victims of "collateral damage", but also in countries, like Mexico, affected by wholesale corruption or narco-criminilaty.
The fight against impunity remains one of the major objectives of the CPJ and other press freedom organizations. State authorities have to send a strong message that crimes will not go unpunished. If not journalists' murderers will keep their license to kill and intimidate the press.
The safety of journalists, it should be emphasized, is not a corporatist concern. It affects the capacity of all to have access everywhere in the world to crucial information on issues of public interest. 

http://www.cpj.org/reports/2011/12/journalists-killed-political-unrest-proves-deadly.php

The potential and pitfalls of "drone journalism"

Drones are being used to "neutralize" targets in the new wars of Afghanistan or the Near East. But these unmanned small flying machines are also being used to gather video and cover news stories, like street demonstrations and police repression.
Drones were used for instance in Moscow to report on protests against the recent elections.
There are however some problems in th use of drones. Strict regulations are in place in many countries to control the use of flying objects and there could be heavy human and legal consequences if a drone used bya news organization would fall down on someone "donw under".
These two articles consider these issues and also provide great examples of drone journalism in action.

 http://ijnet.org/stories/five-things-you-need-know-about-drone-journalism
http://www.bbc.co.uk/journalism/blog/2011/12/spy-planes-the-news-industrys.shtml

Social media and Arab revolts: how to make the most of technology

Social media have been -to some extent, some will correct - at the centre of the Arab spring but also at the center of the world attention to these events. Mohamed al Abdallah reports on a conference organized by Victoria University that describes new original ways of using new technologies to communicate, inform and organize.
http://ijnet.org/blog/how-arab-spring-moved-citizen-journalists-use-more-maps-html5-video-instead-text

Russia: know who are for human rights and press freedom

The protests against Putin and last week's elections have produced great examples of journalism. Not only on how to interpret what has come as a surprise to many observers but also to know who is who in this democratic movement.
Among these media jewels, I have selected
In Foreign Policy, the anti-Putin brigade, a photo essay on the "new" Russian dissidents as well as Tanya Lokshina's (Human Rights Watch's senior Russia researcher) sharp analysis of the recent events.
At Human Rights Watch, a photo essay on Russia's voice of discontent
In The New Yorker a photo essay on Russian activists and video interviews by Human Rights Watch: http://www.newyorker.com/online/2011/12/19/111219_slideshow_russia#slide=1

OSCE: A new guidebook on the safety of journalists

The Vienna-based Organization for security and cooperation in Europe has just published a new guidebook on journalists' safety, meant for its member states. It has been written by William Horsley, international director of the Centre for freedom of the media at Sheffield University and the representative of the Association of European Journalists at the Council of Europe and other intergovernmental organizations.
This document should be an urgent read for quite a few OSCE countries, among them Azebaidjan, Turkey or Russia, where journalists are regularly harassed!
http://www.osce.org/fom/85777

Jean-François Julliard stands down as Reporters Without Borders secretary-general

Jean-François Julliard stands down as secretary-general announces of RSF (Reporters without borders) on 31 January. The organization’s board of governors is currently looking for a replacement. Olivier Basille, Reporters Without Borders’ representative in Brussels, will be acting head of the organization until a successor is appointed.

Reporters Without Borders president Dominique Gerbaud said: “The staff and board of governors thank Jean-François for helping to consolidate our position as one of the world’s leading press freedom organizations. His dedication and skills have clearly been major factors in Reporters Without Borders’ success during these past three years.”

Julliard said: “I am leaving Reporters Without Borders at a time when it is in good shape. I have been pleased with what we have achieved recently. The development of our cyber-censorship unit and our repositioning as a press freedom NGO in both France and Europe have been important changes for our organization.

“We have just opened a bureau in Tunisia for the first time and we are soon going to reinforce our activities in Libya. I hope that this development at the international level will continue. Reporters Without Borders will have more exciting challenges to face.”

After studying cinema, broadcasting and journalism, Julliard joined Reporters Without Borders as head of its Africa desk in 1998. He became head of research in 2004 and was appointed secretary-general in 2008. He was reelected for another five-year term as secretary-general in December 2010.

Julliard will take over as director-general of Greenpeace France on 1 February

Cairo 678: Celebrate human rights and fight sexual harassment with the OHCHR

With some delay and with my excuses please read this presentation of Celebrate Human Rights organized by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights on the occasion of Human Rights Day 2011.
The Brussels office of the OHCHR (led by the Czech Republics former commissioner for human rights Jan Jarab) offered a wonderful event on December 9 with a debate on women's and travellers' rights held at the Bozar, a prestigious centre of fine arts in the heart ot the Belgian capital.
The debate moderated by Human Rights Watch Brussels spokesperson Reed Brody was preceded by an excellent film on sexual harassment against women: Cairo 678 by Egyptian director Mohamed Diab. Engy Ghozlan, a member of the Cairo-based Sexual Harassment NGO Task Force and a blogger at Harassmap, was also part of the panel as well as Candy Sheridan, Co-chair of the UK-Gypsy Council for Education, Culture, Welfare and Human Rights.

http://www.ohchr.org/fr/newsevents/pages/media.aspx

No-disconnect: the European Commission's strategy to defend on-line democracy and human rights

The EC Digital Agenda Commissioner, Neelie Kroes has announced on Monday the launch of a new strategy, called "No-Disconnect", aimed at helping human rights activists around the world to protect their Internet freedom.
This initiative follows another move adopted a few days ago by the European Parliament under the guidance of Dutch liberal MEP Marietje Schaakje to create an Internet freedom Fund.
A former German defence minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg has been invited by the Dutch liberal European Commissioner to assist with this work.
The purpose of the "No-Disconnect" project is to help activists protect their privacy and security, training them, monitoring the level of surveillance and potential repression against online activists and foster cooperation among all stakeholders.
The project is also focused on the question of the sale of surveillance technology by European companies to authoritarian regimes.
According to Catherine Ashton, the "EU foreign minister": "Human rights policy is not just an add-on. It is a silver thread which runs through everything we do. The right to communicate freely is a key part of basic human rights".

The laureates of the EU Lorenzo Natali Prize 2011

17 winners from all around the world were awarded the Lorenzo Natali Prize for outstanding journalistic work covering issues of development, human rights and democracy during the award ceremony in Brussels tonight. They have been chosen from more than 1300 participants.
The top winner is a Danish TV journalist Tom Heinemann who has authored a documentary debunking the myth of micro-credit.
The subjects covered by other Lorenzo Natali Prize 2011 winners are corrective rape and the double life of homosexuals in Africa, India’s sex ratios, trafficking of children, witchcraft, female genital mutilation, slavery, etc.
The Prize is in its 20th year. Through this Prize, the European Commission aims to reward journalists reporting in often challenging circumstances, celebrating the ways in which journalism can be a seed of positive change, the inspiration for development, and the engine for democracy and human rights.


The list of laureates
http://lorenzonataliprize.eu/category/winners/
The official site of the Lorenzo Natali Prize 
http://lorenzonataliprize.eu/
An article on the Prize:
http://enpi-info.eu/eastportal/news/latest/27404/Media-for-democracy,-development-and-human-rights:-Lorenzo-Natali-Prize-rewards-17-outstanding-journalists

RSF/Le Monde award their press freedom prize 2011

With the support of TV5MONDE, Reporters Without Borders and Le Monde have awarded the 2011 Press Freedom Prize to two symbols of courage, Syrian newspaper cartoonist Ali Ferzat and the Burmese newspaper Weekly Eleven News .
http://en.rsf.org/reporters-without-borders-le-monde-08-12-2011,41523.html.

CPJ's 2011 prison list : 179 journalists behind bars

The 2011 edition of the Committee to Protect Journalists' prison list draws a dark picture: the number of journalists imprisoned worldwide shot up more than 20 percent to its highest level -179- since 1996.
Iran has become the world's top jailer of journalists (42), before Eritrea, China, Burma, Vietnam, Syria, Turkey, Ethipoia and Israel/Occupied territories..
Jailing journalists does not only silence the voices of those that are directly targeted. It also creates a general atmosphere of intimidation and self-censorship, affecting the capacity of all citizens to be informed about issues of public interest.
Most journalists have been imprisoned on anti-state charges such as "treason", "subversion" or "acting against national interests". In China, the state has repressed particularly journalists covering marginalized or persecuted ethnic or religious minorities while in Turkey the pressure has been focused on journalists writing on Kurdish or national security issues.
Freelance journalists are especially vulnerable since they do not have the legal backing of media institutions. Nearly half of the jailed journalists worked mostly for online media.
Despite this sombre assessment the CPJ however also highlights in this report that at least 65 imprisoned journalists were released worldwide thanks to sustained advocacy campaigns. Cuba, for instance, released all jailed journalists (even though some are detained on a short-term basis as a form of harassment).
Some governments however are adamant in keeping journalists in prison despite international protests. In Eritrea under the repressive rule of President Isaias Afewerki, 28 journalists are in jail, most of them for decades.

http://www.cpj.org/reports/2011/12/journalist-imprisonments-jump-worldwide-and-iran-i.php

Meet hacktivists of Telecomix

Authoritarian states woud like to "clean" the Internet from opponents, dissenters and free minds. Yesterday for instance Russia and a few other states opposed the adoption of a Declaration of freedom in cyberspace at a meeting of the OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) held in Vilnius (Lithuania).
Some "hactivists" however fight from the other side and devote their resources to derail these attempts at blocking the Internet or at using cyberspace to spy on pro-democracy activists.
Shyamantha Asokan presents in this Washington Post article the work of Telecomix, which has been very active in defending access to Internet in Arab countries. The helped activists in Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, Bahrain and Syria. They even discovered that the Syrian regme was using U.S. techonology (Blue Coat Systems) to block certain sites.
Welcome into the kingdom of pro-democracy hactivists.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/the-hacktivists-of-telecomix-lend-a-hand-to-the-arab-spring/2011/12/05/gIQAAosraO_story.html?wpisrc=nl_headlines

The launch of the Journalism Foundation in London

A new foundation, called the Journalism Foundation, has just been launched in London with a view to develop and sustain free and fair journalism across the world.
Supported by Alexander and Evegeny Lebedev (chairman of the London dailies The Independent and the Evening Standard) and directed by renowned journalist Simon Kelner, the Foundation means to boost quality journalism in the public interest.
Among its first two projects: running a course of journalism - developed with City University- for reporters in Tunisia and a supporting a grassroots website in the British town of Stoke-on-Trent.
To know more about it and in particular about the political and intellectual rationale behind the initiative (an interesting analysis of the state of the media is published on its website), go to to www.thejournalismfoundation.com

Tunisian media: the need for a democratic reform

Last week I was in Tunis at the invitation of INRIC (Instance nationale pour la réforme de l’information et de la communication), an institute led by Kamel Labidi, a leading Tunisian journalist who went into exile in the mid-90s, in Cairo and Washington, where he worked as a senior advisor for the Committee to Protect Journalists.

During a day-long hearing we discussed the state of journalism and the needs of reform of the media sector in Tunisia, covering a wide area from the constitutional and legal environment to journalism training and professional practises.

Many press freedom groups, schools of journalism, international democracy institutes, intergovernmental organizations like the World Bank, governments and individual experts are present in Tunisia where they work on specific aspects of the media reform programme. The country is seen indeed as a laboratory of press freedom for the whole region and as a test of the potential of the Arab Spring to really turn into a "liberal" experiment.

Big questions are raised in the process: how to clear the media space from directors and editors that served for years as spokespersons of the Ben Ali regime without starting a witch-hunt that might affect freedom of expression; how to confront the concerns raised by the powerful electoral showing (40%) and the potential illiberalism of the islamist party Ennahda; how to adapt the two local schools of journalism to the new times, etc.

To have an idea of the challenges facing the Tunisian media, I refer you to the report published last June by the International Freedom of Expression Exchange-TunisiaMonitoring Group, a coalition of 21 groups dedicated to the promotion of press freedom in this new democratic country.

http://www.wan-ifra.org/articles/2011/06/14/scars-of-oppression-run-deep-in-the-tunisian-media 

The European Parliament votes to fund Internet freedom and help online human rights defenders

Liberal Dutch MEP Marietje Schaake, a leading voice for press freedom and freedom of expression at the European Parliament, has convinced her colleagues to approve her proposal to include internet freedom as a key objective in the EU's foreign and international trade policy.
It is a major breakthrough in the struggle to make sure that Internet be really a "liberation technology" and not a new sophisticated tool in the hands of repressive governments.
According to its sponsors (see Internet Freedom Fund) this fund which will be part of the European Commission's "democracy and human rights operator" (the European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights) will help "train and empower bloggers, online journalists and human rights defenders to circumvent censorship and evade cyber attacks often carried out by their own governments".
Indeed in a number of cases the evidence has emerged that European as well as US companies have provided authoritarian governments with the technology to track down, harass and arrest opponents or dissidents. For instance Iranian Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Shirin Ebadi has denounced in this context the role of Nokia-Siemens in Tehran and met with the companies so that they change their policies.Other organizations like the Global Network Initiative (of which CPJ and Human Rights Watch are partners) have also tried to work in this field with companies like Microsoft or Yahoo.

http://internetfreedomfund.tumblr.com/post/13589482745/eu-frees-up-millions-for-human-rights-and-icts

Unreported World: a human rights-focused programme on Channel 4

Human rights reporting is often at the heart of breaking news, as demonstrated by the current Syrian drama. However it also means an assignment on so-called "neglected crises" or "forgotten peoples".
Uncovering and publicizing issues that do not show up on the world news radar screen is an essential commitment of human rights journalism: because all human lives are equal, be they trapped in the cycles of breaking news or kept in the silence zone of the international media. Because also these so-called forgotten crises can become tomorrow the next big ones, engulfing masses of people into tragic events, from mass atrocities to famine.
Some NGOs, like MSF (Médecins sans frontières/Doctors without Borders) or Global Witness, have devoted part of their information efforts in highlighting "unreported crises". An organization like Human Rights Watch regularly publishes groundbreaking reports on issues that are completely marginalized by the "normal" news system.
A few media have become specialized in digging up these stories and they should be commended for their efforts. Among them Unreported World by the British Channel 4 (C4). Their December 2, 2011 covers the terrible working conditions of Miskito divers (an Central American indigenous community) that are fishing in Honduras to the benefit of local business bosses and multinational companies.
Watch their programme and again you'll discover how our culinary choices can have an impact thousands miles away from our kitchen or restaurant table. A great lesson in "glocal journalism" and in global human rights awareness.
http://www.channel4.com/programmes/unreported-world

If you think of similar journalistic projects, please send them to me.