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Twenty-eight Leading Press Organizations Sign an Open Letter to U.S. Law Enforcement To Stop Attacks on Journalists

A meeting at the National Press Club photograph courtesy of Terissa Schor from Washington, DC under CC BY 2.0

“The nation’s leading journalism and press freedom organizations today called on law enforcement, mayors and governors across the country to halt the unprecedented assault against journalists in the field covering the protests for social justice.” National Press Club

On Monday an open letter to law enforcement officials nationwide was signed by twenty-eight press freedom organizations calling on police officers to cease their attacks on journalists providing coverage of the nation’s recent protests.

The signatories include:

PEN America reports that in addition to indiscriminate use by the police of pepper spray, rubber bullets, tear gas, and riot gear against unarmed civilians at protests, the targeted arrests of and attacks on journalists covering these events marks a potentially devastating departure from the American tradition at a critical national moment.

“These violent attacks against the working press are an affront to our Constitutional values, namely the First Amendment and the protections it provides to the free press,” said PEN America’s Washington director Thomas O. Melia. “By trying to silence journalists, law enforcement officers are seeking apparently to prevent reporters from fulfilling their invaluable mission of informing the public, holding our leaders accountable, and providing vital information to citizens across the country. As an organization whose mission focuses on fostering dialogue across differences and amplifying lesser-heard voices, we at PEN America thank the National Press Club for leading on this timely letter reminding our nation’s police that their duty remains the protection of all law-abiding citizens, including journalists. In order for reporters to effectively bear witness to this movement at a decisive moment for our nation, these assaults must immediately cease.” 

This post is courtesy of the National Press Club and PEN America.

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Critical Minds, Critical Times: UNESCO World Press Freedom Day

Critical Minds for Critical Times: The media’s role in advancing peaceful, just and inclusive societies is the theme of UNESCO’s main celebration of this year’s World Press Freedom Day, May 3rd. The event will take place in Jakarta, Indonesia, from May 1-4.

The program of the four-day conference has been designed to raise awareness of the importance of free and fact based journalism in promoting peace and justice, and supporting the efficiency, accountability and inclusiveness of institutions, in line with the Sixteenth United Nations Sustainable Development Goal. The event is organized with the Government of Indonesia and the Indonesian Press Council.

“SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOAL 16:Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels.” United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Division of Sustainable Development MORE

The May 3 celebration will be opened by Jusuf Kalla, Vice President of the Republic of Indonesia, and Irina Bokova, Director-General of UNESCO. It will feature a plenary session on Quality journalism: a public good for just, peaceful and inclusive societies and six parallel sessions on subjects spanning media and information as a bulwark against hate speech, inclusiveness and gender equality, and violent extremism. A specific session will be dedicated to Press Freedom in Southeast Asia.

In the evening of May 3 Ms Bokova will award the 2017 UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize to Dawit Isaak, the imprisoned Eritrean-born journalist who will be represented by his daughter, Bethelem Isaak, during a ceremony that will be hosted by Joko Widodo, the President of Indonesia.

“Dawit Isaak (born 28 October 1964) is a Swedish-Eritrean playwright, journalist and writer, who has been held in prison in Eritrea since 2001 without trial and is considered a traitor by the Eritrean government. Amnesty International considers him a prisoner of conscience and has called for his immediate and unconditional release. For years, he was the only Swedish citizen held as a prisoner of conscience. He is now joined by the Swedish citizen and publicist Gui Minhai who was abducted by Chinese agents from Thailand in October 2015 and has been held prisoner in China since that time.” Wikipedia MORE

Dawit Isaak story, Free Dawit

The morning of May 4 will be dedicated to a second plenary session entitled Spotlight on investigative journalism: Perspectives from Southeast Asia and beyond. It will be followed by six parallel sessions on subjects including the impact of fake news on journalism, journalists’ safety and internet universality.

Artistic freedom, a principle enshrined in UNESCO’s Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions, will be the focus of three sessions on May 2 and 4.

Notable speakers to address the conference will include José Ramos-Horta, Former President of Timor-Leste and 1996 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Richard Gingras, Vice President of News at Google, and Oscar Cantu Murguia, editor of Norte, the Mexican newspaper that had to close down operations this month following the killing of one of its journalists.

The main concerns and principles expressed during the four-day conference will be reflected in a declaration, the Jakarta Declaration, that participants are expected to adopt at the close of the event.

Also in Jakarta on May 3 and 4, Hong Kong Baptist University will host a conference about academic research into issues pertaining to the safety of journalists with participants from many countries.

Some thirty partners are contributing to World Press Freedom Day 2017 in Jakarta with events that will feature training sessions, workshops and roundtable discussions and are expected to draw more than 1,200 participants.

Approximately eighty other Press Freedom events are being organized around the world this year and leading news organizations including Al Jazeera, El Pais and Rappler will host dedicated blogs and feature special content for World Press Freedom Day. An awareness-campaign has been launched with the Cartooning for Peace Network( link is external) to raise visibility on the importance of freedom of expression through a series of press cartoons.

– except where indicated, post is courtesy of UNESCO

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Nothing “so called” about the world’s journalists: seventy-eight died in 2016 to bring us accurate reports and important information

"Len Ganeway" by Derek Wernher (in Brookgreen Gardens, South Carolina) Statue by Derek Wernher
Man reading a newspaper by Derek Wernher (in Brookgreen Gardens, South Carolina) Statue by Derek Wernher

There are some institutions that are necessary to support healthy democracies … public libraries, good public education, freedom to assemble, free speech …. and a free press that is allowed to carry-out its moral mission with impunity. While our occupational cousins – professional journalists – are coming under attack from certain quarters, there are dedicated journalists who brave dangerous territory, horrible work and living conditions, and long stays away from family and friends to bring us important information, correct and timely reports. Many end up with PTSD. They are often physically wounded, maimed or killed in torn and sometimes out-of-the-way-places that politicians and oligarchs wouldn’t fly over much less dare to set foot to ground.

The Committee to Protect Journalists [CPJ] reports today that in 2016 seventy-eight journalists (representing a diversity of counties, races, genders and religions) died to bring us accurate news reports. CPJ investigates the death of each journalist to confirm the motive. It reports that among the seventy-eight killings the motives for forty-eight are confirmed. Among the seventy-eight are also two media workers and twenty-eight journalists for whom the motive is unconfirmed. The deaths have been by murder, crossfire, or  while covering dangerous assignments. Beats covered in 2016 were:

4% Business
19% Corruption
17% Crime
13% Culture
17% Human Rights
38% Politics
4% Sports
75% War

According to the CPJ the numbers are rounded up and the percentage is over 100% because many covered more than one beat. The chart belongs to the CPJ and is protected under Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license.

Journalists at work in Montreal circa 1940s
Journalists at work in Montreal circa 1940s

I would also submit at this time that discussions of fake v true news are too simple and among other things they don’t often acknowledge the reader’s responsibility for careful selection, analyses, sharing and wide reading. Anyone who clicks on “click bait” for example, those links that start with “you wouldn’t believe what happened next” or ” he was walking down the street and …”  are accessing sites for sales and marketing not news outlets. On Facebook these are rife on the roll to the right of the screen. Shared posts on Facebook or Twitter or other social media like blogs should not be our primary sources of news information.  Conspiracy theories, satire, comedy “news” media and news aggregates (v. original stories) are not reliable resources nor are news sources that are partisan and consistently confirm our biases, whatever they may be.

Among the more balanced and accurate news outlets are: AP and Reuters news agencies, The Christian Science Monitor, The New York Times, The Washington Post print news, and the BBC and NPR for broadcast media.

If we want our news outlets to hire the very best journalists and to fund in-depth research and reporting, we must use them, pay for them or donate to them as appropriate. I’m pleased to see that so many people are now subscribing to the New York Times in an effort to help keep this, the premier American newspaper, afloat.  The New York Times was founded in 1851. It has been in continuous publication since then and is widely considered to be “the newspaper of record” for the United States of America.

The video below is of Christiane Amanpour’s 2016 Burton Benjamin Memorial Award Acceptance Speech. She addresses the responsibilities of journalism and journalists in the context of a post-truth post-values era.It’s about fifteen minutes. There’s good substance here, much to chew on.  If you are reading this feature from an email subscription, you’ll have to link through to the site to view the video.

Photo licensing: Reading the newspaper header photograph is under CC BY-SA 2.0 license; Canadian journalists by Conrad Poirier from Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec, reference number P48,S1,P23104 Public domain

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