Online Reporters Now the Journalists Most Often Jailed 147
bckspc writes "The Committee to Protect Journalists today released the results of its annual survey of journalists in prison. For the first time, they found more Internet journalists jailed worldwide than journalists working in any other medium. CPJ found that 45 percent of all media workers jailed worldwide are bloggers, Web-based reporters, or online editors. Their chart of journalists jailed by year is also interesting."
knowing their rights (Score:5, Interesting)
Wonder how much could be because your average blogger doesn't know half as much about what rights they have within the laws as their "professional" counterparts do. (Regardless of the freedom of the press is their country)
And for restricted countries, that a paid journalist is either screen by their government, and/or doesn't feel like risking their reasonably comfortable life for challenging said government, leaving the "anti-patriotic" reporting to the bloggers, who (wrongfully) think they are posting anonymously.
Henry David Thoreau & Ghandi (Score:5, Interesting)
""Civil Disobedience" is Thoreau's extremely personal response to being imprisoned for breaking the law. Because he detested slavery and because tax revenues contributed to the support of it, Thoreau decided to become a tax rebel. In July 1846, he was arrested and jailed.
"Ralph Waldo Emerson visited Thoreau in jail and asked, "Henry, what are you doing in there?" Thoreau replied, "Waldo, the question is what are you doing out there?" Emerson missed the point of Thoreau's protest, which was not intended to reform society but was simply an act of conscience. If we do not distinguish right from wrong, Thoreau argued that we will eventually lose the capacity to make the distinction and become, instead, morally numb."
- http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0503e.asp [fff.org]
The journalists who are jailed felt telling the truth & standing by their morals was more important than freedom. Even a good form of government is "liable to be abused and perverted before the people can act through it." Moreover, even if a government did express the voice of the people, this fact would not compel the obedience of individuals who disagree with what is being said. The majority may be powerful but it is not necessarily right.
Perhaps the best description of Thoreau's ideal relationship occurs in his description of "a really free and enlightened State" that recognizes "the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived."
I wonder if in Russia... (Score:2, Interesting)
Bloggers have their heads in the sand (Score:4, Interesting)
Most common thing is libel. In some places this can be criminal but in most it's a civil offence. If you're posting "xyz did indecent things to a barnyard animal" and it's a post that is meant to be taken seriously, it's no different to doing the same thing in a newspaper. You're posting lies about someone in a public manner.
Other common areas on contention are court orders. Orders banning people from posting names and addresses (most commonly done to protect children involved in crimes or to stop lynch mobs being formed for people accused of a bad crime) apply to everyone, not just the big papers.
You don't have the automatic right to post classified or confidential information either. A good quote (from the UK Press complaints commision) is "something that is of interest to the public is not always in the public's interests". People may be fascinated that you've hacked in to Britney Spears' email account. Does that mean you should be able to publish her emails and not be punished? This is something a lot of bloggers need to realise.
yebbut - this isn't what most journo's do (Score:2, Interesting)
Given the overwhelming proportion of trash that is churned out: both online and wasting newsprint, on a daily basis - getting more of these people off the streets and out of our lives would be a public service. If that involves jailing them, well too bad.
How do YOU know? (Score:3, Interesting)
Who told you that? The Cuban government. Suppose it isn't true, no one is allowed to say so.
IF the Cuban health care were as good as the Cuban government claims, then why the censorship? Any government would be pretty happy to let journalists report freely on it. Since the press is not free in Cuba, it only stands to reason that the situation there is much worse than the Cuban government is willing to admit.
More than just bloggers and "new media" types. (Score:3, Interesting)
I know it sounds arrogant, but in the age to automobiles you aren't going to have has many injuries in a buggy whip factory.
There is also something else. The reporter whose stories are going up on the paper's website is going to have a greater range of stories because printing is expensive and database storage is cheap. More stories lead to less stringent editing ("its just going up on the website") and it leads to more trouble.
Re:Most bloggers are not journalists. (Score:3, Interesting)
I just tried looking them up "tenets of journalism" in Google, and they're not listed anywhere I could find.
So either there aren't any, or they're so obscure that not even GOOGLE knows what they are.
Re:Is this for REAL? (Score:2, Interesting)