The Committee to Protect Journalists has a fine-sounding name, but, like the even more scurrilous CIA-linked Reporters Without Borders (who trade on the respected name of Doctors Without Borders to ply their anti-communist agenda), their priorities have rather strong biases. On June 26, Palestinian journalist Mohammed Omer, a frequent guest reporter on KPFA's Flashpoints and Pacifica's Democracy Now!, was returning from receiving a prestigious journalism prize in Britain, when he was attacked, abused, and tortured by Israeli border agents as he attempted to re-enter Gaza. The attack received limited press coverage (Reuters), but has been largely ignored in the West.

Sami Al Hajj, 37 years old, father of a young son, Sudanese national, al-Jazeera photojournalist, having been illegally imprisoned at the Guantanamo prison camp for over five years, was released by US authorities on Thursday, May 1.

"Aside from the fact that Guantanamo Bay is a legal and humanitarian scandal, the Americans seem to be holding Al-Hajj simply because they have it in for Al-Jazeera. How else can you explain the fact that he has been held for four years without being charged while other journalists have been cleared and released in no time at all ?" (Reporters Without Borders, May 2007.)

Just how far will the Bush regime go to control all media exposure in Iraq?

While it’s true that most of the stories are from a couple years ago, there’s also a growing share of journalists finding themselves on the wrong side of the [U.S.] law in Iraq during the latter years of this immoral occupation. The fact that most of the American people don’t know to what extent this outlaw regime goes everyday to keep the press coverage of the Iraq occupation pleasantly homogenized for us consumers back home, is troubling.

Let me put it this way, almost every journalist in Iraq now or since the 2003 invasion, operates exclusively in the Green Zone. There was a span of a year or two when journalists donned flack jackets and called up Blackwater to escort them. But now the only time they venture outside the gates is when they're leaving the country. For the most part, almost all of the news footage shown back here in the states is shot by contracted Iraqis who are either brave or desperate enough to risk taking the job.

Latvia.  Ghana.  Greece.  Taiwan.  Chile.  Uruguay.  Cape Verde.  South Africa.

These are a few of the 47 countries ranked above the United States in Press Freedom by made public by Reporters Without Borders (aka Reporters sans frontiers, RSF) this week.

RSF had the following commentary:

There were slightly fewer press freedom violations in the United States (48th) and blogger Josh Wolf was freed after 224 days in prison. But the detention of Al-Jazeera’s Sudanese cameraman, Sami Al-Haj, since 13 June 2002 at the military base of Guantanamo and the murder of Chauncey Bailey in Oakland in August mean the United States is still unable to join the lead group.

The international threat to bloggers, and more, below the fold:

The Jerusalem Post reports in today's editions

Top Palestinian journalist seeks asylum in Norway

Upon reading that I said to myself, "um-hm, Hamas is showing its true colors.  Those Islamists must have been making death threats again.  After all, they're the ones who throw people off buildings."

Details on the flip...

Shades of Allende attempting to shut down CIA backed El Mercurio, Reporters sans frontières is going to bring up the case of RCTV to all those willing to listen to their point of view, aside from their fanatical obssesion with the case of a TV station going cable/satellite and internet only, there are also financial incentives to do so.

There’s been a whole slew of stories coming out of Iraq in the past four-years about American troops conducting armed raids and unprovoked attacks on various independent media outlets. If even half of them are true -- from television stations to satellite radio stations to internet websites -- reporters seem to be faced with the threat of violence from all sides.

The latest story comes from Baghdad; an armed raid purportedly conducted by American soldiers on the Baghdad offices of the Iraqi Syndicate of Journalists The unprovoked raid was condemned as "... outrageous and inexcusable" by the International Federation of Journalists.

More below:

I don't have much to say on this, just posting for further visability.

Last month in Reporter's Without Borders annual ranking of press freedom, the United States dropped nine places to number 53, in line with such countries as Botswana, Croatia, and Tonga.

This story brought to you by the letters ABC.

With all the talk about press freedom coupled with this or that Amendment to a constitution only you an I have respect for, we now learn that the position of the United States have fallen to... 53 amongst the nations of the world - according to Reporters without Borders http://www.rsf.org/... . We share the position with Tonga and Botswana!  

The Fifth Annual Reporters Without Borders Worldwide Press Freedom Index is out and it doesn't look good for the United States. In a field of 168 countries, the U.S. finishes 53rd, sandwiched between the Dominican Republic and Uruguay. The embarrassment of such a poor ranking is exacerbated by the fact that we dropped nine points since last year to reach this nadir. The reasons for this slippage are summarized in the report:

"Relations between the media and the Bush administration sharply deteriorated after the president used the pretext of 'national security' to regard as suspicious any journalist who questioned his 'war on terrorism.'"

Cross-posted at...
News Corpse, The Internet's Chronicle Of Media Decay.

We are also behind Chile, Dominican Republic, Israel, Cape Verde, Namibia, and many other countries.

According to Reporters without Borders, we are tied for 53rd place with Croatia, Tonga, and Botswana.

http://www.rsf.org/...

Reporters Without Borders recently released it's 5th annual report ranking the nations of this world as to freedom of the press.  The survey asks questions about direct attacks on journalists and the media as well as other indirect sources of pressure against the free press.  

Bosnia is ranked 19th.  We're tied with Botswana, Croatia and Tonga for crying out loud.

In 2002, the US was ranked 17th in this report.  This year, we're ranked 53rd.  Fifty-third?  How did we slip so far down this scale at such a rapid pace?  It's a safe bet this wasn't by accident.  

We watched V for Vendetta last night for the first time and it was a serious eye-opener.  Sort of like the first time I read the Handmaid's Tale.  I saw way too many parallels between what I was reading / watching, and our world today.

Am I the only one who thinks we should be alarmed by this drastic fall from grace where our free press is concerned?

Make the jump...

Related to yesterday's torturers' out-of-jail-free bill, of course, also yesterday on the BBC website:

He is known to the Americans as Enemy Combatant Prisoner 345, Camp Four, Guantanamo Bay.

His employers - the Arab TV station Al Jazeera - call him Sami al-Hajj, a cameraman who was picked up on the Pakistan-Afghan border almost five years ago.

And his young son Muhammad, who is just six years old, hardly knows him at all. ...

Reporters Without Borders has just released its Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-dissidents. It's mostly a how-to manual for setting up a blog, along with some tips for anonymity. But this group really understands the need for promoting citizen media:

"Bloggers are often the only real journalists in countries where the mainstream media is censored or under pressure. Only they provide independent news, at the risk of displeasing the government and sometimes courting arrest."



Cross-posted at...
   

This site, and others like it on both the left and the right, have expended hundreds of thousands of words over the years trashing traditional media, often rightly so. I think part of this criticism stems from what we citizen activists believe journalism should be - a bedrock of democracy, informing, analyzing, investigating, giving us the facts and the truth laid bare so we can make informed choices as voters and citizens.  

When it falls short of this mission, we feel cheated, often with a vehemence as pronounced as that of a misled lover. And there truly is something of a romantic flavor between readers and journalists: the best of both love words, love facts, love information and analysis, love the notion of "comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable," to paraphrase H.L. Mencken. The best readers and reporters also share what I think of as an irreverent yet disarmingly hopeful, no-bullshit, prove-it-to-me attitude that reflects a foundation of either cynical idealism or idealistic cynicism (I can't make up my mind).

At least four of the current and past front pagers here were at one point in their lives working journalists, and I suspect many of the diarists are either current or past reporters themselves. Part of the bitter betrayal expressed on this blog stems from a first-hand knowledge that reporting can be done better, more fully and deeply, and surely more courageously than it has been done under the Bush administration. In these times when so few reporters take career risks at all, worrying about getting a lousy reassignment, offending a source or being shunted out to a hinterland bureau, it's easy to lose sight of those writers and outlets that have shown consistent courage and dignity in the face of ordinary manipulation and not-so-ordinary horror and death.

I'm thinking tonight about Jill Carroll and the Christian Science Monitor.

Carroll, as I'm sure most of you know, was a freelance journalist for the Monitor kidnapped by an Iraqi terrorist group in January on her way to an interview. Her driver was thrown out of the car at gunpoint, her translator was killed and Carroll has been held hostage, seen only on videotape, as demands were made and deadlines were passed.

Last month, the Monitor undertook a creative campaign to free Carroll, scripting and filming public service announcements in Arabic (with the cooperation of CNN), with the message: "Kidnapped American journalist Jill Carroll loves Iraq, and now she needs your help. It is time for Jill Carroll to come home safely." These PSA's are being broadcast now throughout Iraq.

From the Monitor:

The 60- and 90-second spots include quotations from Iraqis speaking of how they consider Carroll to be an innocent sister or daughter, and asking for her captors to see her in the same way and release her. They also include a quotation from an earlier public statement by Jill's mother, Mary Beth Carroll.

The longer spot includes an emotional segment from a press conference of Sunni leader Adnan al-Dulaimi, whom Carroll was supposed to interview on Jan. 7, calling for her release. She was kidnapped near his office.

Touchingly, and in the "finally, good news out of Iraq" category, the Monitor relates;

Iraqi television stations have agreed to run the messages free of charge, in the spirit of a public-service announcement for a captive colleague.

The Monitor is keeping a "Jill Carroll Update" page here, and the PSA can be viewed here.

With the release last week of the three Christian Peacemaker Team hostages, there seems to be more promise for Carroll's survival; indeed, her family expressed "new hope" about the young reporter's fate. Reporters Without Borders last week marked the third anniversary of the Iraq war with the unveiling of portraits of Carroll and two other kidnapped journalists in Paris, the launch of an international awareness campaign about the risks run by journalists in Iraq and the announcement of a support fund for the families of journalists working for newspapers "with very limited resources."

Additionally, Reporters Without Borders released a "survey about the 86 journalists killed in Irak since March 2003 - who they were, how they died, and who fired the shots that killed them." Please, take a few minutes and read it.

These 86 people are not Chris Matthews or Fox News bobbleheads or even one of our favorites, like Keith Olbermann or Jon Stewart. These are people who went to the battleground of a chaotic and war-torn country, and they died trying to bring us the truth.

They were - in the best sense of the word - journalists.

There are few, if any, non-military professions that expose its practitioners to the measure of risk that journalism does. Yet some independent journalists answer the call with the hopes of providing a vital public service in a dangerous world.

Too frequently these reporters are targeted by combatants and pay a heavy price for their service. There is presently a journalist being held in Iraq whose fate is unknown and dire. This reporter's captors are determined and are known for acts of brutality. The reporter's family is being kept in the dark and the government is helpless.

Cross-posted on...

The Washington Post reports that the US dropped more than 20 points on Reporters Without Borders' annual World Press Freedom Index. While I'm not surprised that our freedom of the press has taken quite a few knocks as of late, I am surprised as to the specific reason--Judith Miller's imprisonment. If I were doing the rankings, I would be less concerned with war propagandist martyr-of-the-year Miller and much more concerned about the ultra-secretive Bush administration and its sustained assault on press freedom.

Originally posted on Troubled Times.