4 Jul 2016 | Magazine, mobile, Volume 45.02 Summer 2016 Extras
In the summer 2016 issue of Index on Censorship magazine, Spiegel Online’s managing editor Matthias Streitz and Privacy International technologist Richard Tynan go head to head to debate the rise of ad-blockers.
Many publishers have voiced concern that this software – which allows users to block online adverts from their screens – is damaging their revenue streams.
“If you consume our content, you must allow us some means of monetisation,” said Streitz. While Tynan argued that online adverts pose a security risk and ad-blockers allow users to “retain control over who the communicate with, and [minimise] the amount of data companies collect on users’ online patterns”.
Streitz and Tynan explore all the pros and cons at great length in the latest issue, which you can order here, but in the meantime Index on Censorship would like your thoughts on the power of adblockers.
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30 Jun 2016 | Africa, Kenya, Magazine, mobile, Volume 45.02 Summer 2016 Extras
“Yassin Juma is an extraordinary journalist, who has taken great personal risks to get the story of what is happening in the war that is being waged in Somalia against Al-Shabaab,” writer Ismail Einashe told Index on Censorship.
But Juma is now in hiding.
Einashe interviewed the Kenyan investigative journalist for the latest issue of Index on Censorship magazine, which is themed on the risks of reporting worldwide.
Juma was arrested in January for posting information on social media about a recent attack on the Kenyan Defence Force by the Al-Shabaab militant group. Juma revealed that, according to a credible source within the KDF, 103 soldiers had been killed in an attack on the Kenyan army base in El Adde, Somalia.
The journalist was later arrested and faced charges of “misuse of a telecommunication gadget”. After being grilled by police and detained for two days, he was released without charge but has since gone into hiding, fearing that his reporting is angering the authorities.
Listen to Einashe explaining the significance of this case on the Soundcloud above. The full article, written by Einashe, is in the latest issue of Index on Censorship magazine.
Print copies of the magazine are available here, or you can take out a digital subscription via Exact Editions. Copies are also available at the BFI, the Serpentine Gallery, MagCulture, (London), News from Nowhere (Liverpool), Home (Manchester) and on Amazon. Each magazine sale helps Index on Censorship continue its fight for free expression worldwide.
12 Apr 2016 | Events
Join us at Leeds’s Carriageworks Theatre for a discussion about how journalism and fiction can have an impact on our society.
Does fiction have a stronger impact than journalism? Why, or why not? Which of the two reaches more people?
This event, part of Leeds Big Bookend Festival, will be a debate led by journalists and fiction writers, who will compare the roles played by fiction and journalism and explore whether plays, poetry and short stories can reach more people and spread awareness more than news reports.
Panelists are: Yvette Huddleston (Chair), a freelance journalist and author specializing in the arts and based in Yorkshire; Rachael Jolley, editor of Index on Censorship magazine; Anthony Clavane, journalist, author and playwright of Leeds Lads; Chris Bond, author and assistant features editor at the Yorkshire Post and Yorkshire Evening Post.
The event marks the 3rd year of Index’s participation in Leeds’s Big Bookend Festival through the Index on Censorship Big Debate. In previous years, our debates have evolved around the link between religious freedom and freedom of speech, and the role of propaganda and governments withholding truth in wartime.
The event is free, but booking is essential.
When: Tuesday 14 June 2016, 6:30 PM
Where: Carriageworks Theatre, Leeds (map)
Tickets: Free, but booking required through Eventbrite.
24 Feb 2016 | Magazine, Religion and Culture
I am of the firm belief that even those who do not have faith in a personal and providential divinity can still experience forms of religious feeling and hence a sense of the sacred, of limits, questioning and expectation; of a communion with something that surpasses us.What you ask is what there is that is binding, compelling and irrevocable in this form of ethics.
I would like to put some distance between myself and the subject. Certain ethical problems have become much clearer to me by reflecting on some semantic problems – don’t worry if people say this discourse is difficult; we are perhaps encouraged into easy thinking by the ‘revelations’ of the mass media, which are, by definition, predictable. Let people learn to ‘think difficult’ because neither the mystery nor the evidence are easy to deal with.
My problem was whether there were ‘semantic universals’, or basic concepts common to all humanity that can be expressed in all languages. Not so obvious a problem once you realise that many cultures do not recognise notions that seem obvious to us: for example, that certain properties belong to certain substances (as when we say ‘the apple is red’) or concepts of identity (a=a). I became convinced that there certainly are concepts common to all cultures, and that they all refer to the position of our body in space.
The article is available for free until the end of March. To read it in full, click here.
