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« May 2009 | Main | July 2009 »
Should Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and other Internet giants help reinforce China’s Information Dam?
China's Xinhua official news agency to launch English-language version.
Huge surge of magazine sales predicted as a result of Michael Jackson’s death.
Crackdown on media raises number of imprisoned journalists in Iran to 33, a world record.
Brigham Young University lifts its 3-year-old ban on YouTube.
TV journalist shot and wounded in the Ecuadorian city of Esmeraldas.
Michael Jackson's death cripples Internet.
China, Cuba, Burma and other authoritarian regimes censor news from Iran.
China's most prominent dissident formally arrested after more than six months in detention.
Brazilian daily forced to shut down because of US$306,000 defamation fine.
Bolivian TV channel denounces harassment on reporter after informing about crime situation.
Iran's Green Revolution has brought down much more than the cozy sense of security of the country's clerics.
It has established Internet social services, such as Twitter and YouTube, as more timely and reliable news services than traditional media giants, such as CNN International.
While the streets of Tehran were ablaze with the most violent protest since the Islamic Revolution 30 years ago, CNN was airing a show about exotic motorcycles.
Then, news junkies, turned to the Internet.
"Thanks to the internet, dedicated news-watchers knew what they were missing. Twitter and YouTube carried a stream of reports, pictures and film from Iran’s streets. The internet also facilitated media criticism. Twitter hosted an extraordinary outburst of fury against CNN and other news organisations. A typical post: “Iran went to hell. Media went to bed.”
Press freedom forces around the world are welcoming two historic decisions, one in Brazil and another in Mexico, which could have profound repercussions in the entire region.
Brazil's Supreme Court has abolished a regulation that forces any one wishing to practice journalism to hold a university degree, an arbitrary requirement that has been repeatedly rejected by the inter-American justice system.
The Brazilian magistrates ruled the regulation to be unconstitutional and "a direct interference in freedom of expression."
On the other hand, the Supreme Court of Mexico ruled that a state law that specifically protected public officials from public scrutiny, especially that of the press, also to be unconstitutional.
The statute was an insult law from the state of Guanajuato that was used to sentence a newspaper editor to three years in prison for libeling a former mayor.
The magistrates agreed with the opinions and jurisprudence of the inter-American justice system and ruled that "the rights to reputation and privacy of public officials are in general less extensive and enduring when freedom of expression is involved, due to the importance of the capability that the news media and public opinion in general need to exhaustively scrutinize the activities of government employees and officials."
This extraordinary double whammy of good news for press freedom in Latin America is most welcomed by this page and press freedom fighters around the world.
The Coordinating Committee of Press Freedom Organizations, an international alliance of the world's most prominent press freedom groups, issued a letter to UNESCO urging the UN cultural organization to remain vigilant and "to continue to act effectively in its function as a defender and champion of freedom of expression worldwide."
The letter, addressed to the Chairman of UNESCO's Executive Board, Ambassador Olabiyi Babalola Joseph Yaï, focuses on recommending a set of standards for the selection of the organization's next director general.
Here is the full text of the letter:
Ambassador Olabiyi Babalola Joseph Yaï
Permanent Delegate of Benin to UNESCO
and Chairman, Executive Board of UNESCO
Permanent Delegation of Benin to UNESCO
Maison de l'UNESCO, _Bureau M4.04 _
1, rue Miollis _75732 PARIS Cedex15
Fax: 01.43.06.15.55
E-mail: dl.permanente-benin@unesco.org
15 June 2009
Your Excellency,
This letter is to inform you that the member groups of the Coordinating Committee of Press Freedom Organizations meeting recently in Paris expressed their concern that UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, should continue to act effectively in its function as a defender and champion of freedom of expression worldwide.
The Coordinating Committee members expressed their deep appreciation for the vital contributions of the outgoing UNESCO Director General Koichiro Matsuura to consolidating UNESCO as a force for freedom of expression and to furthering free speech and press freedom values, in line with the UNESCO Constitution's mandate to foster “the free flow of information by word and image.”
The Coordinating Committee members therefore call upon UNESCO member-states to reaffirm their commitments to the defense and promotion of freedom of expression and press freedom as core criteria in considering the choice of the next Director General.
It is critical that UNESCO member governments should seek commitments from candidates to head the Organization's Secretariat to:
—Continue to make furtherance of freedom of expression and press freedom central to the Programme of UNESCO's Communication & Information Sector;
—Continue to support the fostering of independent news media as the leading criterion in the choice of UNESCO media aid projects in post-conflict zones and elsewhere and continue to support UNESCO's Intergovernmental Program for the Development of Communication, using the same priority criterion;
—Continue to name independent journalists widely respected by their colleagues as members of the Jury for UNESCO's annual World Press Freedom Prize and continue to honor the independent Jury's choices of Prize laureates;
—Continue to spotlight and speak out publicly against assassinations of news media personnel and to undertake effective diplomatic measures against serious incidents or policies that obstruct the work of the news media.
The member groups of the Coordinating Committee look forward to continuing their cooperation with the new Director General and the Secretariat staff in the cause of freedom of expression and free and independent journalism, nationally, regionally and globally.
The Coordinating Committee accordingly calls upon UNESCO's member states to reaffirm that a commitment in practice to uphold the values of freedom of expression and press freedom embodied in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights -
“Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information through any media and regardless of frontiers” -
should be uppermost in the policies of the next Director General of UNESCO. The image and legitimacy of UNESCO depend upon this.
We respectfully request that you communicate this letter to the members of UNESCO's Executive Board.
Sincerely,
Joel Simon, Executive Director, Committee to Protect Journalists, New York City
Hector Oscar Amengual, Director General, International Association of Broadcasting,
Montevideo, Uruguay
Julio Munoz, Executive Director, Inter American Press Institute, Miami
David Dadge, Director, International Press Institute, Vienna
Timothy Balding, Chief Executive Officer, World Association of Newspapers, Paris
Mark Bench, Executive Director, World Press Freedom Committee, Washington DC
cc: Koichiro Matsuura, Director General, UNESCO
When you hear the BBC's world editor saying something like this: “The days when regimes can control the flow of information are over,” you know you are living in interesting times.
That's what Jon Williams told The New York Times on Tuesday when one of the world's most trusted news websites informed that its Persian-language TV channel was receiving five videos a minute from regular Iranian citizens trying to break their regime's news block-out.
You almost can see the Iranian censors going mad trying to stick their fingers into a news dam that has been leaking like a World War I submarine amid the unbearable pressure of hundreds of thousands of defiant pro-reform demonstrators who have proven to be as apt to resisting the regime's electoral shenanigans as to beating the censors at the game of Internet whack-a-mole.
If the pen was mightier than the sword, the Internet is wearing a mighty bullet-proof vest in this Iranian revolution. And the US is helping it to be even harder to penetrate.
On Monday afternoon, a 27-year-old State Department official, Jared Cohen, e-mailed the social-networking site Twitter with an unusual request: delay scheduled maintenance of its global network, which would have cut off service while Iranians were using Twitter to swap information and inform the outside world about the mushrooming protests around Tehran.
The request, made to a Twitter co-founder, Jack Dorsey, is yet another new-media milestone: the recognition by the United States government that an Internet blogging service that did not exist four years ago has the potential to change history in an ancient Islamic country.
“This was just a call to say: ‘It appears Twitter is playing an important role at a crucial time in Iran. Could you keep it going?’ ” said P.J. Crowley, the assistant secretary of state for public affairs.
Twitter complied with the request, saying in a blog post on Monday that it put off the upgrade until late Tuesday afternoon — 1:30 a.m. Wednesday in Tehran — because its partners recognized “the role Twitter is currently playing as an important communication tool in Iran.” The network was working normally again by Tuesday evening.
The State Department said its request did not amount to meddling. Mr. Cohen, they noted, did not contact Twitter until three days after the vote was held and well after the protests had begun.
The move is part of the Obama administration's new approach that freedom of expression does play a powerful role in bringing democracy to despotic regimes.
The episode demonstrates the extent to which the administration views social networking as a new arrow in its diplomatic quiver. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton talks regularly about the power of e-diplomacy, particularly in places where the mass media are repressed.
Mr. Cohen, a Stanford University graduate who is the youngest member of the State Department’s policy planning staff, has been working with Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and other services to harness their reach for diplomatic initiatives in Iraq and elsewhere.
And we applaud these efforts. Not long ago, Twitter sounded just like another chirping in today's information jungle. Little did we know it would end up roaring in the ears of censors the world over.
The Iranian opposition is not impressed with the regime's lukewarm platitudes to investigate alleged election fraud and for the second day in a row have taken their anger out to the streets.
Again the streets of Tehran saw massive demonstrations rejecting the election outcome and demanding a fair investigation of the vote count.
The Iranian regime is trying to contain a growing wave of
outrage over the results of the election. (EPA photo)
Meantime, the regime is working as hard as it can to contain the worldwide outrage by stepping up its crack-down on foreign media and on Internet social services, which have served opposition forces so effectively in their defiance of the regime.
As the political tumult grew, the Iranian government instituted tough restrictions on foreign journalists, formally shutting down their ability to report on the unrest on the streets. Press credentials of journalists temporarily in the country to cover the election were revoked; journalists stationed in Iran were required to get explicit permission to report beyond the confines of their offices.
Reporters Without Borders said that security services had moved into some newspaper offices to censor content and that four pro-reform newspapers have been closed or prevented from criticizing the official election results.
The result was a dearth of initial photographs and video of Tuesday’s enormous opposition protest, which began on Valiasr Street, a major thoroughfare, and headed north. The tens of thousands of marchers — perhaps more — gathered without the help of text messaging or cell phone service, relying on word of mouth and internet social media platforms such as Twitter.
A senior cleric, Grand Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri, used the Internet to issue a public letter supporting the peaceful demonstrations and excoriating the government for “declaring results that no one in their right mind can believe.”
Ayatollah Montazeri, a relative liberal who has often criticized hard-liners, is one of a growing number of influential clerics questioning the election results.
Also, the Committee to Protect Journalists, quoting the Associated Press, is condemning the fact that Iranian authorities are keeping foreign journalists from leaving their offices to witness the popular uprising against the results of the election.
The Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, which accredits foreign media working in Iran, ordered foreign journalists and Iranians working with foreign media not to cover the demonstrations, The Associated Press reported.
"Since Friday, Iranian authorities have actively attempted to prevent media from covering news throughout the country," said CPJ Middle East and North Africa Program Coordinator Mohamed Abdel Dayem. "We call on the authorities to immediately stop these acts and guarantee that foreign journalists, who were invited in by the government to cover the election, have unfettered access to the news."
In the past five days, Iranian authorities have increased control over the flow of information by clamping down on media and harassing journalists, according to news reports.
OpenNet Initiative--a research project on Internet censorship conducted jointly by Harvard, Toronto, Oxford, and Cambridge universities--reported yesterday that YouTube, Twitter, DailyMotion and Facebook, along with several Web sites aligned with opposition candidates, have been blocked in Iran in recent days.
Hours before polls opened on Friday, SMS, or short message service, was disrupted in Iran, according to local news accounts. Mobile phone service was shut down in Tehran on Saturday, although the service was restored on Sunday. SMS remains inoperable in Tehran, according to OpenNet Initiative.
News groups such as Reuters, AP, BBC, CBS, and Bloomberg, reported that their journalists in Iran have been ordered not to cover protests in Tehran. Press cards have been declared invalid, the BBC reported.
Two words, proxy servers.
In scenes reminiscent of the Tiananmen uprising in China 20 years ago, pro-opposition protesters staged a demonstration that stretched out for five miles in Teheran, according to reports, demanding an investigation over alleged fraud in the country's general election. The country's election authorities have declared President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the winner in a landslide victory.
Up to two million people participated in the march, which went on mostly peacefully until the end, when clashes between followers of opposition candidate Mir Hossain Moussavi, many of them clad in green, and President Ahmadinejad left at least one person dead and several injured.
One of the several pro-Mousavi demonstrators who were shot
during the massive rally protesting the election results (EPA photo)
Meantime, the Canadian News Wire, quoting reports from Reporters without Borders (RSF), informs that the Ahmadinejad government has intensified its crackdown on independent journalists and "all sorts of media."
"Journalists are still being arrested and more censorship measures have been adopted as President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's allies try to suppress media coverage of fraud allegations," CNW said, adding that official censorship has also intensified on the Internet.
The authorities have also launched a broad offensive against the Internet, controlling and blocking all news websites likely to challenge Ahmadinejad's announced victory. Ten or so pro-opposition websites have been censored.
They include www.entekhab.ir/ (inaccessible since 11 June), www.ayandenews.com/ (inaccessible since 12 June), teribon.com/, the pro-reform sites khordadeno.com/, aftabnews.ir/index.php and ghalamesabz.com/, norooznews.ir (the news website of the pro-Mousavi Islamic Participation Party) and www.ghalamsima.com/ (which also supports the Mousavi campaign). And the women's rights website www.we-change.org/ has been blocked for the 20th time.
The international websites YouTube and Facebook are hard to access. The mobile phone network is being jammed. The service of the leading mobile phone operator, which is state controlled, has been suspended since 10 p.m. on 13 June. The SMS messaging network has been cut since the morning of 12 June, preventing use of Twitter.
CNW also reports that the Iranian government has intensified its censorship of foreign media as well, in an effort to silence all those who are questioning Ahmadinejad's victory.
The blockage of the foreign media has been stepped up. In addition to the blocking of the BBC's website, the Farsi-language satellite broadcasts of the VOA and BBC - which are very popular in Iran - have been partially jammed. The BBC reported that their Farsi broadcasts have been the target of significant jamming "coming from Iran" since 1245 GM on 12 June, and that the jamming has been getting steadily worse.
The authorities yesterday ordered the Tehran bureau of the Arab satellite TV news station Al-Arabiya closed for a week after it broadcast video of the first demonstration following the announcement of Ahmadinejad's reelection.
Foreign journalists have been prevented from covering the demonstrations, some have been notified that their visas will not be renewed, and some have been the victims of police violence. A member of a TV crew working for the Italian station RAI and a Reuters reporter were beaten by police in the capital. A BBC TV crew was threatened by police at one point, but demonstrators chased the police away. The correspondents of the German TV stations ARD and ZDF were forbidden to leave their hotel on 13 June.
Two Dutch TV journalists working for Nederland 2 were arrested and expelled. Reporter Yolanda Alvarez of the Spanish television station TVE was deported together with her crew today.
Also quoting RSF, CNW says several journalists have been arrested after the election results were announced on Friday night. At least five of them remain under custody.
On an election day that saw a fiercely divided country and both sides claiming victory, the Iranian government blocked out several means of communications, including text messaging, a crucial campaign resource for the opposition.
The Associated Press reports that Internet connections slowed down significantly during the day and that some pro-opposition websites were blocked.
President Ahmadinejad after casting his vote (EPA photo)
According to the Interior Ministry, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was way ahead in the initial tallies, with a 66-to-31 advantage over the opposition candidate, Mir Hossein Mousavi.
Opposition candidate Mousavi after casting his (EPA photo)
Both candidates are claiming victory, but Mousavi, who was supposed to benefit from the huge turn-out of voters throughout the country, is charging there has been widespread voter fraud, calling himself "definitely the winner."
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