With Canadian soldiers dying in Afghanistan, with Canadian money funding projects, what obligations does Canada — and do Canadian journalists — have to prevent abuse of authority by the government we help prop up? This story reveals the travesty that is Afghanistan’s “democracy.” How can a country claim to be democratic when it uses its…
A story in the New York Times looks at how disobedience by numerous reporters, who covered the Chinese earthquake against direct orders, challenged — and broke down — China’s censorship system. An excerpt: The earthquake has tested this country in many ways, including a death toll that has steadily climbed into the tens of thousands…
Bell Canada can continue to slow down certain types of Internet traffic flowing on the wholesale networks it provides to smaller Canadian Internet service providers after federal regulators denied a request for interim relief from the Canadian Association of Internet Providers, reported the Globe and Mail. The association had filed a complaint calling on the…
Al-Jazeera has appointed Tony Burman, editor-in-chief of CBC News, as managing director of its English-language channel, reported the Guardian newspaper. The story said Burman’s arrival “follows a period of turmoil at the channel during which a number of journalists left amid claims of a revolt over working conditions,” and signals a drive to increase Al-Jazeera’s…
Gunmen dragged freelance journalist Sirwa Abdel Wahab from a taxi and fatally shot her in the head on May 4 in Mosul, Iraq, reported CBC, Agence France-Presse, Reuters, etc. “Her death brings to 212 the number of journalists and media assistants killed in Iraq since the start of the war in March 2003,” said…
Vancouver Sun reporter Kim Bolan writes on World Press Freedom Day about her first-hand knowledge of death threats to journalists in Canada: “I was still startled two months ago to find a photo of myself posted on a Facebook page that had been started a few days earlier to attack me. A bullet hole had…
“How do (China’s) communist sentinels of cyberspace manage to control the information flow so precisely?” asks der Spiegel — and answers its own question, in depth. An excerpt from How China Leads the World in Web Censorship: “Surveillance computers form the backbone of the Chinese security system, monitoring the bulk of online communication round the…
Anne Kothawala, President and CEO of the Canadian Newspaper Association, has some thoughts about freedom of expression in Canada and the world, published in the Globe and Mail to mark World Press Freedom Day on May 3. Canada’s “democracy is an anomaly in a planet hostile to basic freedoms. If we don’t…
For World Press Freedom Day on May 3, Reporters Without Borders has issued its new list of the “predators of press freedom.” They are, says RSF, “men and women who directly attack journalists or order others to. Most are top-level politicians (including presidents, prime ministers and kings) but they also include militia chiefs, leaders of…
Dean Starkman writes of the mayhem at the once-respected Wall Street Journal caused by the resignation of its editor and the ineffectiveness of a committee set up to protect the institution: “At a certain point, tragedy turns into farce, and we are getting awfully close to clown-car territory at The Wall Street Journal.” Starkman, who…