CNN is among the news organizations reporting a major development this week in a free press case in Ecuador.

A court suspended a hearing on a libel case brought by President Rafael Correa. He sued the newspaper El Universo for libel, and last July an Ecuadorian court ruled in Correa’s favor. He was awarded $40 million and some El Universo staffers were sentenced to three years in prison.

The publication is asking judges to overturn that ruling.

Correa has come under severe international criticism for restricting Ecuador’s media.

It was just a matter of time. Maybe now more people will pay attention to the damage done by the release of names and sources in the Wikileaks cables.

Ethiopian journalist forced to flee after being named in a WikiLeaks cable

Despite repeated warnings that the press freedom situation in Latin America is getting worse, little reporting on it seems to be the norm with U.S. media.

The latest report from the InterAmerican Press Association attention from AFP and El Universal in Caracas. That’s it.

Read fuller account here: Bad year for LatAm journalists, not that the US media cares

On May 31, Asia Times Bureau Chief Sayed Saleem Shahzad was found dead about 150 miles outside of Islamabad. His death occurred after he had written a story linking the Pakistani military with terrorists believed to have orchestrated a recent raid of a naval base. Journalists in the country cried out and are blaming the nation’s secret service for his murder.

This comes as no surprise as Pakistan is currently ranked as the sixth most murderous country for free press in the world according the Committee to Protect Journalists’ 2011 Impunity Index. In a post for the Center for Public Integrity’s iWatch News, ASU Hubert Humphrey Fellow Malik Siraj Akbar recounts his own frustrations with the free press horrors that are taking place in his homeland and the colleagues he has lost as a result.

[CORRECTION 6/09/11: The above word "recounts" has been corrected from "recants."]

“The authorities have not investigated or punished those responsible for these killings,” Siraj said. “Worse still, official pressure on media outlets has led to a complete blackout of the news concerning their deaths.”

In response to the increase in violence targeting journalists, SPJ President Hagit Limor and the International Journalism Committee mailed a letter to Pakistan Ambassador Husain Haggani last Friday, demanding an official investigation into the death of Shahzad. Additional copies of the letter were sent to Ambassador Haggani’s email account and the office of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

You can read the full letter as posted below.

2 June 2011

To:             Hon. Husain Haqqani
Pakistan Ambassador to
The United States

Dear Ambassador Haqqani,

This letter to you and your government is an official statement from The Society of Professional Journalists and its International Journalism Committee on the recent death of journalist Saleem Shahzad, and the growing list of journalists killed in Pakistan for their professional work.

SPJ has been monitoring the plight of journalists in Pakistan and now must strongly protest against the violence that has befallen reporters, allegedly from elements of your country’s military.

Mr. Shahzad’s death so soon after he produced a story that raised questions about the relationship between Pakistani military officers and terrorist groups is alarming and raises our concern about press freedoms in your country.

Last year, eight professional journalists met violent deaths in Pakistan, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, making your country the most dangerous place on the planet to be a professional reporter – ahead of Iraq, Mexico and Honduras. In many of the killings in Pakistan, fellow journalists and international human rights organizations have publicly expressed suspicion that the crimes were acts of reprisal by members of your nation’s intelligence service and the military.

The danger that journalists face in Pakistan is a stark reminder that democracy cannot evolve to the benefit of the people without a professional and independent media which is free of selective pressure from government and overt and perceived threats of violence.

The Society of Professional Journalists, the oldest and largest professional organization of its kind in the United States, insists that journalists adhere to a strict code of ethics and a high standard of professional practice. More and more we are sharing our standards of practice with journalists around the world who seek to improve the quality of their work. We counsel our international associates that a journalist’s freedom of expression is a right that must be treated with respect. We insist that the best way to preserve that right is to practice journalism within a framework of high professional and ethical standards. It is, however, impossible to ask for media responsibility in an environment where journalists face government repression and repeated acts of violence.

Therefore, SPJ demands that the Pakistani government immediately launch an official investigation into Mr. Shahzad’s murder and into the violence that has turned so many journalists into victims in your country. Only a transparent and thorough investigation of this murder and of the violence aimed at journalists can lift the significant veil of international concern that hovers over your government’s relationship with the media.

SPJ and its International Journalism Committee are ready to participate and cooperate with your government in such an investigation, and in discussions on the future of press freedoms and responsibilities in Pakistan.

I am also ready to provide more details of our concerns in a conversation.

Thank you for considering our petition.

Sincerely,

Hagit Limor
President
The Society of Professional Journalists

Kudos to an Australian news team that decided to confront members of the Chinese security forces who where shadowing the journalists.

Chinese “minders” filmed by news crew

Russia signs anti-bribery accord, but still shackles best method to fight corruption: free and independent media.

Russia, corruption and press freedom

The U.S. government announced it will set aside US$30 million to fight Internet censorship.

Michael Posner, assistant Secretary of State for human rights, is quoted in the Guardian that the projects will include “slingshot” technology that will identify censored material and throw it back on to the web for users to find.

“We’re responding with new tools. This is a cat-and-mouse game. We’re trying to stay one step ahead of the cat,” Posner said. Censored information would be redirected to email, blogs and other online sources, he said. He would not identify the recipients of funding for “reasons of security”.

See rest of story at: New Efforts Announced To Fight Internet Censorship

Last week was a busy one for identifying press freedom issues. Freedom House came out with its Map of Press Freedom and Reporters Without Borders released a list of top predators against free media.

Status of world press freedom

Freedom House released its annual Press Freedom survey this week as part of World Press Freedom Day.

And the news is not good. By the Freedom House figures, about 85 percent of the people in the world live in countries where the media are either “Partly Free” or “Not Free” from government interference.

Click here to see the rest of the story.

The top predators against free media

Reporters Without Borders has a great page that identifies the top predators in the world against free and independent media.

Thirty-eight heads of state and warlords sow terror among journalists

The list is the usual group of anti-freedom government types: Hu Jintao, Raul Castro and Kim Jong-il.

There are also the Arab country leaders who are fighting against the Arab Spring uprisings such as Muammar Gaddafi and King Hamad Ben Aissa Al Khalifa in Bahrain.

Iran is so dedicated to controlling the press that it has two identified predators: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Ali Khamenei.

Click here for rest of story.

Despite what most Americans think — and obviously some members of Congress as well —  non-military foreign affairs does not take up a quarter of the federal budget.

The core State Department budget for 2012– that part that pays for embassies and the salaries of diplomats WORLDWIDE — is $14.2 billion. That works out to about $46 per year for each person in the United States.

Once you add in non-military foreign aid — you know the stuff that allows other countries to grow enough so they can buy U.S. products and services — the entire non-military foreign affairs budget is $47 billion — $152 per person per year.

And yet what Americans think about the foreign affairs budget is way off.

According to a survey by Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) at the University of Maryland late last year the American people think the U.S. spends 25 percent on foreign affairs.

The public thinks 5 percent is the about the right amount.

The real number is ABOUT 1 PERCENT.

But it seems that even this small amount is too much for some.

• Florida Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), the chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, has made it clear her goal is to cut the State Department budget.
• In the last-minute deal to keep the government running, the State Department took a hit. Even a former Pentagon assistant secretary called the move a disaster. (The War on Soft Power)
• The Ryan Plan would cut the budget for international affairs and foreign assistance by 29 percent in 2012 and 44 percent by 2016. At the same time, the defense budget would be increased by 14 percent during the same time frame.

It seems that those who want to cut the civilian foreign affairs budget look at just the cash and not the human cost. (Think about the men and women in the military who would have to go into harms way once the diplomatic corps is gutted.)

There are damn few talking about how the small foreign affairs budget provides a large positive impact both for U.S. security and for U.S. jobs.

There is a disconnect between the day-to-day diplomatic and development work and the American people. The folks on Main Street get the idea of a strong military defending freedom and all, but they don’t see how diplomacy fits in.

And part of the blame for this disconnect is the inability of local news organizations to see how global issues affect local events.

The mantra of “Local! Local! Local!” has led the accountants at news organizations around the country to think that anything that touches on international news should be avoided. Such a view denies the every increasing connection between Main Street and the rest of the world.

A local paper or radio station can always find a church group that sends a mission to some country. The trick is to find economic and political connections.

For example, the state of Florida is highly dependent on tourism from Brazil. For every 82 visas issued in Brazil to visit the United States 1 job in Florida is created. The U.S. mission in Brazil (3 consulates and the embassy) issued 620,000 visas last year. (For the math impaired that is 7,500 jobs created in Florida as a DIRECT result of visas issued to Brazilians by U.S. diplomats. No diplomats. No visas.)

Miami NBC got the connection a while back with its story about how Brazil was the #1 trading partner with Florida.

It is not difficult to make the connections between the world and Main Street. Stories that make these links put international events into a local context. And with context comes a better understanding of the world.

The stories might also help dispel myths about  the U.S. foreign policy apparatus. If nothing else, the public would be educated as to the real cost and value of the civilian foreign service.

SPJ’s International Journalism Committee released the following statement on Wednesday, 4/20/11:

“The International Committee of the Society of Professional Journalists mourns the loss on Wednesday of two great photojournalists. Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros, both of New York, were accustomed to putting their lives on the line to help the world see the true, bloody realities of war. Yet their untimely deaths remind us of the real cost of violent conflict. We urge international authorities to pursue the truth behind this criminal attack and take steps to protect other journalists who are now risking their lives to spotlight a conflict that must not go unreported.  We send our deepest condolences to the Hetherington and Hondros families.”

Read Wednesday’s Associated Press report from Misrata, Libya.

First posted at Journalism, Journalists and the World.

Many thanks to Cory Doctorow at Boing Boing for pointing out this great CNN story about ”newspaper landlords” who rent the want-ads by the minute.

Is this the wave of the future of newspaper readers?