This story got some coverage a couple of weeks ago, but it just came to my attention, so I wanted to pass it along.

There’s an effort in Iceland to create a so-called haven for journalists by strengthening the country’s free speech laws and bolstering legal protections for reporters.

It’s called the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative. According to its website, the proposal’s goal “is to task the government with finding ways to strengthen freedom of expression around world and in Iceland, as well as providing strong protections for sources and whistleblowers.”

The initiative is partly a response to Iceland’s recent economic disaster. Some blame the collapse on a lack of rigorous coverage of the country’s banking and economic sector.

The New York Times and The China Post (Taiwan) recently published reports about the effort.

The Times Online reports today that the BBC will be closing two radio station and shut down half of its website. It will also cut back on importing popular American programs.

Unlike the U.S. media outlets, however, the BBC is cutting entertainment programs. Nothing in the Times story indicates that news gathering will be affected.

Yes, I know this is hardly a fair comparison. The BBC is after all a state-run entity. But then again so is VOA. And it always seems that it is the news gathering section of VOA that gets put under the knife in favor of more entertainment programs.

BBC signals an end to era of expansion

The big news from ABC is that 300-400 people are being let go in the news division. But so far I have not heard anything about the revolutionary mini-bureaus ABC set up about three years ago.

Back in 2007 ABC News struck a blow for increased foreign coverage. They became the only U.S. organization — other than NPR — that actually INCREASED its overseas presence.  The organization created 1-person bureaus around the world. The move was bold and took advantage of evolving technology to increase international reporting.

The second graf of the January 2008 AJR piece on the move told the whole story:

“We are fixers, shooters, reporters, producers and bureau chiefs,” says ABC correspondent Dana Hughes from her home office in Nairobi, Kenya. She and her colleagues in these one-reporter bureaus will record, edit and transmit their own audio and video reports from Nairobi; Jakarta, Indonesia; Mumbai and New Delhi, India; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Seoul, South Korea; and Dubai, United Arab Emirates, as well as from neighboring countries. Their new assignments come at a time of ever-dwindling resources for foreign news and mark the network’s largest overseas expansion in 20 years.

The whole idea, David Westin, ABC News president told The Hollywood Reporter, is that technology makes it possible to have a bureau without a large staff or office space.

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The stories of the devastation in Haiti pulls at everyone’s heartstrings — well most people’s.

And many want to know what they can do to help. As Presidents Bush and Clinton said over and over: “Send money.”

Money makes the most sense 99.9 percent of the time when natural disasters strike. The money raised can be used to purchase LOCAL products that fit the LOCAL needs and provide income for LOCAL people. (Notice how I got the media bean counter mantra in there?)

Matthew Collin wrote an informative piece last week for Foreign Policy magazine on this very issue.

How Not to Help Haiti

Sending your old, useless stuff to a disaster zone is exactly that: useless — and a disaster.

I know there have been a number of stories on the national level about this exact issue. But too many local stories have been about church or civic groups gathering blankets, shoes, medicine, toys, etc as a way to help.

Perhaps, if the local media ran more stories about what the real needs are, there would be fewer episodes of wasted time and money on relief packages that are inappropriate and often useless.

First posted at Journalism, Journalists and the World

This morning Fareed Zakaria at GPS on CNN raised an interesting issue previously talked about in this place and at Foreign Policy.

There is a resolution moving through Congress – already passed by the House — that would make the United States government arbiter of “fair” reporting.

The resolution – HR 2278 — states:

It shall be the policy of the United States to–

(1) designate as Specially Designated Global Terrorists satellite providers that knowingly and willingly contract with entities designated as Specially Designated Global Terrorists under Executive Order 13224, to broadcast their channels, or to consider implementing other punitive measures against satellite providers that transmit al-Aqsa TV, al-Manar TV, al-Rafidayn TV, or any other terrorist owned and operated station;

(2) consider state-sponsorship of anti-American incitement to violence when determining the level of assistance to, and frequency and nature of relations with, all states; and

(3) urge all governments and private investors who own shares in satellite companies or otherwise influence decisions about satellite transmissions to oppose transmissions of telecasts by al-Aqsa TV, al-Manar TV, al-Rafidayn TV, or any other Specially Designated Global Terrorist owned and operated stations that openly incite their audiences to commit acts of terrorism or violence against the United States and its citizens.

Zakaria notes on his web page and on-air commentary:

A bill that passed the House with only three dissenting votes might set the stage for a crackdown on anti-american media, deeming them “Specially Designated Global Terrorist” groups. Given a “crisis of governance,” Fareed questions whether this is the best use of Congress’s time and wonders at a world in which the US Congress is against free speech while Arab countries are for it.

Marc Lynch made a similar point a month ago:

A meeting of Arab Information Ministers at the Arab League in Cairo yesterday rejected a Congressional resolution calling for sanctions against Arab satellite television stations which allegedly incite terrorism or promote anti-Americanism. It would be pretty pathetic that the Arab League — the Arab League!! — is taking a stronger position in favor of media freedoms than the U.S. Congress. But don’t worry — leading Arab states still seem quite keen to find their own Arab ways to repress and control the media.

I join with Lynch in saying I have no doubt that the Arab countries are keen on keeping their media in line and therefore, I have no great love for those governments.

But for the U.S. Congress to advocate the U.S. government engage in censorship is outrageous.

In this commentary today, Zakaria noted that the issue is getting more international coverage than U.S. domestic. In fact, a quick Google search shows that ONLY the the Library of Congress, the international press and a few Arab-American organizations have anything to say about it.

The Washington Post has it on it calendar but no story.

Granted the resolution still has to pass through the Senate. Hopefully the Senate Foreign Affairs committee will kill the bill and make a stand against censorship. But when has an American politician ever earned points standing up against a motion that sounds anti-terrorist?

The move is bad. As Zakaria pointed out, CNN could end up on the list whenever it does its job of interviewing people in the Arab world.

Originally published at Journalism, Journalists and the World.

The National Schools Press Conference in the Philippines will begin Monday, February 22, in Tagum City on the island of Mindanao.

Student journalists from around the nation will compete in various forms of journalistic coverage. The Philippine Online Chronicles has some information on the event.

Many parents, however, had decided not to allow their children to attend this year’s event because of recent violence in the area. Some parents even asked the government to move the conference to another area, but the Department of Education obviously made no change.

Click here to see my original post on this issue.

Radio Free Asia broadcaster Sok Serey, along with three other men, were acquitted this week on charges of disinformation.

Radio Free Asia released a statement on the matter. Organization president Libby Liu called the charges “baseless” and expressed hope that “this ruling will reverse the growing pattern of using Cambodia’s legal system to suppress free speech and freedom of the press.”

The release also provides a brief background of the case.

It has been about a month-and-a-half since I last posted an update on Hang Chakra. He is publisher of Cambodia’s opposition newspaper Khmer Machas Srok.

Hang Chakra has been in prison since his June ’09 conviction on disinformation charges. The Phnom Penh Post apparently hasn’t published an updated story on his situation since early January.

However, I was able to find an update on KI-Media, a blog that describes itself as “dedicated to publishing sensitive information about Cambodia.”

In this blog post dated Saturday, February 20, there’s a short, embedded video about the case.

The video references Reporters Without Borders. You can see that organization’s June ’09 report on this case by clicking here.

One of the most important things good journalists can provide to any story is context.

There has been a lot of ink and electrons spent talking about the Baptist missionaries who were arrested in Haiti and the subsequent release of 10 of those held.

Amarillo.com is doing a two-part series on one of the released missionaries. (‘Next thing you know, they put us all in jail’: Allen tells of Haiti trip)

At first I was happy that a local paper picked up a local angle to a much larger story. But as I read the piece — more of just a Q&A instead of a real article — I was disappointed.)

Nothing in the introduction talks about the local and international laws involved in the case.

Nothing in the introduction talks about the hostility that exists between Haiti and the Dominican Republic. (Despite it being mentioned by the subject of the article.)

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SPJ Region 7 director Holly Edgell talked with Yves Colon about his work in Haiti.

Yves Colon, MA ’90, Serves Haitian Radio Audience Recovering from Recent Earthquake

Excerpt

HE: Recently the Society of Professional Journalists admonished journalists on the ground in Haiti to “cover the story, don’t become part of it.” What are your own thoughts about what is crossing the line into becoming part of the story and helping or advocating for the people you are covering? Have you found yourself straddling this line or even crossing it? If so, please describe.

YC: No, I don’t have that problem because I know exactly what I’m here for. I’m here to help get information to people who need the information to survive. As a Haitian American I feel part of the story, but as journalist, I am not part of the story. I try to get our reporters, who are all Haitian, to be fair, but to keep thinking about their audience, which is made of internally displaced people, or IDPs. We write about the help that’s coming from all over the world without bias.