14 Jan 2013 | Uncategorized
On 10 January, three Pakistani media professionals were killed in a suicide bomb blast in Quetta. Imran Shaikh, Saif ur Rehman and Mohammad Iqbal were killed by the attacks against the Hazara Shia community whilst reporting on an explosion which had took place a few minutes earlier. Militant group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi are said to be responsible for the attacks, after a suicide bomber blew himself up, followed by his car detonating remotely. Police and emergency workers were also killed and three further media workers have been injured. Satellite vans for a number of TV networks have also been damaged.
A freelance journalist has been kept in custody in Somalia since Thursday (10 January), for interviewing a woman who alleged she was raped by Somalian authorities. Abdiaziz Abdinuur, who has reported for publications such as The Telegraph, is being held in Mogadishu after he was arrested for his January 6 interview, in which a woman claimed she was raped by several government soldiers in a camp for displaced women in December. No warrant for arrest was issued, and charges have yet to be made. Police arrested the alleged victim on Thursday, but have released her until further questioning.
Abdiaziz Abdinuur’s interviewee said she was raped by government soldiers
A Gambian journalist arrested on 7 January has been released on Bail. Abdoulie John, editor of news website Jollof News, was released from the National Intelligence Agency headquarters in Banjul on 10 January but must return today (14 January). Security agents screened his laptop, phone and emails in connection with his reporting for Jollof News, a banned website critical of the government in Gambia. John has allegedly been harassed by authorities since early December.
Turkey has attempted to censor John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, deeming it “immoral” for a reference made to brothels. A group of teachers in the western city of Izmir asked their ministry for sections of the book to be censored, which has been on the education ministry’s list of recommended literature for decades. A parent in Istanbul also complained that My Sweet Orange Tree by José Mauro de Vasconcelos was obscene, calling for the teacher who issued the book to be investigated. On 9 January, Education Minister Omer Celik denied the book would be censored, but critics remain sceptical.
The US porn industry is using the free speech defence to protect against new Californian law Measure B, which requires performers to wear condoms during scenes. On 11 January Vivid Entertainment, one of the biggest pornography producers in America, filed a lawsuit against Los Angeles County over the referendum passed in November 2012. Vivid claims the law violates their 1st amendment rights, preventing them from recreating historically accurate scenes – a swashbuckling adventure, for example. It is estimated that since 2004, 350,000 scenes have been shot without a condom, with not one case of HIV being transmitted by performers.
14 Jan 2013 | Uncategorized
Open data activist and developer Aaron Swartz was found dead Friday in his New York home. The 26-year-old activist, who tirelessly campaigned for net freedom, was facing federal charges for allegedly downloading 4.8 million academic articles from JSTOR on the MIT campus in 2011. Even though JSTOR decided not to bring charges against Swartz, federal prosecutors decided to pursue charges anyways. If found guilty, Swartz faced $1 million in fines and 35 years in prison.
Swartz, who suffered from depression, committed suicide and his loved ones alleged in a statement that his death was tied to stress caused by his legal woes:
Aaron’s death is not simply a personal tragedy. It is the product of a criminal justice system rife with intimidation and prosecutorial overreach. Decisions made by officials in the Massachusetts U.S. Attorney’s office and at MIT contributed to his death. The US Attorney’s office pursued an exceptionally harsh array of charges, carrying potentially over 30 years in prison, to punish an alleged crime that had no victims. Meanwhile, unlike JSTOR, MIT refused to stand up for Aaron and its own community’s most cherished principles.
The aggressive pursuit of Swartz by federal officials has drawn criticism over the severity of the charges, and questions over the types of laws used to pursue crimes committed online. Charges were brought against Swartz under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act — the same law used to bring charges against Bradley Manning.
US-based privacy expert Chris Soghoian told the Associated Press that the laws, as they are, don’t differentiate between “malicious crimes committed for profit” and “cases where hackers break into systems to prove their skillfulness or spread information that they think should be available to the public”.
Swartz was at the forefront of a fight for keeping the online world open, condemning the sticky tape of copyright and restrictions on information online. While at Mozilla Fest, I feel like I caught a glimpse of the kind of world that Swartz was working for — one that places the most value on sharing information, ideas, and knowledge freely. The director of MIT’s Media Lab, Joi Ito said the following during his speech at the conference:
You’re all political. Everything we’re doing today is gonna destroy businesses it’s going to take power away from those in power. You have to understand that what we’re doing we’re being very disruptive. It’s very scary for people. The problem is that those people who are afraid of us are trying to shut us down.
Sara Yasin is an Editorial Assistant at Index. She tweets from @missyasin
14 Jan 2013 | Uncategorized
There has been a hell of a lot written in the past week or so since the New Statesman published feminist writer Suzanne Moore’s article Seeing red: the power of female anger, and I really do not want to go over the details again. There’s more to be written on transgender issues by people with far better knowledge than I. Suffice to say, people got angry over a phrase in Moore’s piece, she was rather forcefully criticised, responded in kind, and gave up her Twitter account as the weight of group anger became too much. Then Julie Burchill further fanned the flames with a massively controversial article in the Observer.
What I want to briefly focus on here is the frankly disastrous response to the furore over Julie Burchill’s Observer article by International Development minister Lynne Featherstone. Weighing in to the twitter discussion on Sunday evening, Featherstone tweeted that Burchill should be sacked by the Observer, and subsequently implied agreement with another tweet suggesting that Observer editor John Mulholland should also be sacked.
Let’s leave aside for a moment the fact that Julie Burchill is not actually on staff at the Observer, and can’t be sacked, and examine just what’s happened here: a government minister in a modern democratic state has demanded that a journalist be punished for writing a contentious article. And then nodded along with the notion that a national newspaper editor be sacked for publishing a contentious article. An article that has not, as yet, been deemed illegal, or even in breach of the Press Complaints Commission code.
Featherstone has made a mockery of Britain and the EU’s declared commitment to promote free speech. Cast your mind back to the 2011 riots, when it was suggested that social networks be shut down to prevent people co-ordinating movements. The state media of regimes such as Iran and China gleefully reported this suggestion, using it both to mock the UK’s hypocrisy and to justify the censorship of their own people.
Now imagine the next time a newspaper such as China’s Southern Weekly steps out of line, and a senior Communist Party member calls for the head of a reporter or editor. Should a Foreign Office official even attempt to condemn such censorship, be in no doubt that the authorities in China will point to Featherstone’s intemperate tweet and say the UK is in no position to lecture.
There’s the international aspect. Now look at the domestic. Independent editor Chris Blackhurst has said he fears that politicians will use post-Leveson statute to “wreak their revenge” on the press. Speaking on Sky News, Blackhurst commented:
“Once a draft Bill goes into the Commons and the Lords and once they get their teeth into it they can add all sorts of amendments.
“That’s where the revenge will happen. That’s one reason why some of us are very keen that there should not be statute.
“It’s not just expenses, let’s not forget there are a lot of MPs, all sorts of shenanigans down the years, many of which we all know about and have been highlighted, and they can’t wait. They are sort of ‘bring it on’.”
Pro-statute campaigners such as Hugh Grant tell us that we should not be alarmed by the prospect of a new press law. But when, even before such a law is debated, a government minister thinks it’s OK to interfere with the press in this manner, why should we trust politicians with free speech?
11 Jan 2013 | Middle East and North Africa
Kaya Genç looks at how Turkey’s “first truly liberal newspaper” has shaken up the country’s media
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