I just posted a large piece on my George Mason blog site about the latest Gallup survey about immigration and who goes where and why.

US attractive to younger less educated immigrants. What’s your neighborhood like?

And to be honest I really don’t want to repeat it all here. So just click on the hede above and take a look at what I posted at Mason.

Bottom line is that Canada is getting the older and better educated immigrants. And the competition for younger immigrants is no cake walk for the US either.

As I said but did not go into with the Mason blog, there are policy immplications here. I would think that some enterprising journalist in the DC area should be able to do several good stories about this issue. He/she just needs to follow up on the Gallup numbers, tie them in with Census data and conduct a few a interviews.

Oh, and convince an editor that there is much more here than just numbers and survey results. There is a local-global connection as well as policy issues that should keep even the most jaded DC wonk happy.

World Press Freedom Day is not something that has ever received a lot of attention in the United States. But that is slowly changing.

This year the organizers, the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers, are focusing on journalists in exile.

In a note to WAN members, global affairs director Timothy Balding explained why WAN was emphasizing exiled journalists this year.

World Press Freedom Day 3 May 2010 Journalists in Exile

Dear Colleague

Despite the existence of rights enshrined by national and international conventions, journalists continue to find themselves in frequent peril for simply doing their job, as they strive to report the truth in the passionate belief that reporting what they see is the foundation of a healthy democracy.

That’s why we’re dedicating our 2010 World Press Freedom Day campaign to Journalists in Exile.

We urge you to explore with your readers these issues by visiting www.worldpressfreedomday.org and downloading our free, ready-to-publish materials made available to you over the next few weeks.

Thousands of publishers worldwide will run press freedom stories, features and special supplements on 3 May. We hope you will join us.

The World Press Freedom Day site has some moving interviews with journalists forced into exile. And a contest for the best use of World Press Freedom Day material in a school newspaper.

World Press Freedom Day 2010 Competition

Deadline: May 10

Here are a couple editorial cartoons:

The Moldova Azi (Moldova) last week published a statement from the EU Heads of Mission in Chisinau that expressed concern about the treatment of imprisoned journalist Ernest Vardanian.

“The EU Heads of Mission recall that human rights, and in particular the freedom of expression, as well as fundamental rights of detainees should be respected,” it read.

The statement concluded with a reminder that “civil society must be able to work freely and without the fear of being subjected to arbitrary reprisal.”

Vardanian was arrested in early April, and according to an April 16th release from the Committee to Project Journalists, he was still being held without charges. He was arrested in the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic (PMR), a region that broke away from Moldova but isn’t recognized by other countries.

David Dadge, director of the International Press Institute, recently had a Letter to the Editor published in The Sofia Echo (Bulgaria).

In the letter, Dadge addressed the plight of Vedat Kursun, who is the former editor of the Kurdish daily Azadiya Welat in Turkey. He has been imprisoned for “two articles deemed to have spread propaganda for the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, PKK….” That organization is considered by many countries to be a terrorist organization.

However, Dadge considers that to be beside the point. He takes Turkey’s judicial system to task for apparently punishing journalists simply for practicing their profession by reporting on the activities of the PKK.

Dadge cites news reports that claim “Azadiya Welat has replaced its chief editor six times since 2006. All six editors have been either jailed or fled the country to escape prison.”

He says the imprisonment of Kursun and others “sends a signal to all Turkish journalists that they are at risk, if they anger the state.”

Initially posted at Journalism, Journalists and the World

Last week Google started releasing data about requests it received to take down material from its servers. (Who is asking Google to take down stuff and why)

In the first report, Brazil came out #1 in data and removal requests.

And the Brazilians are not happy with that title.

Brazil: Google data gives bad censorship rap

By Bradley Brooks

Rio de Janeiro

Brazilian prosecutors said Monday a new Google tool showing government requests for data on users of the Internet giant’s services or the removal of content is giving their country a bad rap.

Google Inc. released an online tool last week showing where it faces the most government pressure to remove material and turn over personal information about its users.

Brazil led the roughly 100 countries in which Google operates by making 291 requests to remove data and 3,663 requests for information on users during the last six months of 2009, the period analyzed.

Rest of story

When you look at the removal requests, 165 of the 291 requests are because of court orders. And, by and large, the Brazilian courts are trustworthy in enforcing enforce local laws.

And it is the local laws that may be causing Brazil’s high ranking in requests for Internet take downs.

Brazilian law punishes inciting discrimination or prejudice based on race, color, ethnicity or religion on the Internet with penalties up to five years in prison. No action has to be taken on the statements. The statements alone are sufficient grounds for prosecution.

Back in 2006 Brazil looking into Orkut communities to prosecute those associated with racism, homophobia and pedophilia. Judges handed down orders for Google to turn over its Orkut database or face fines of $23,000 a day.

In a case decided yesterday, Google was fined $8,500 by a Brazilian court after an Orkut user accuses a priest of pedophilia.

The judge said:

“By making space available on virtual networking sites, in which users can post any type of message without any checks beforehand, with offensive and injurious content, and, in many cases, of unknown origin, (Google) assumes the risk of causing damage” to other people.

Back to the latest complaint from the government.

Priscila Schreiner, a Sao Paulo-based federal prosecutor, said in the article, most of Brazil’s requests relate to child pornography and racism cases on the Internet.

But Google says it automatically removes these types of items and those pull-downs are not included in the numbers. They make that point in the FAQ section for the tool:

The statistics we report here do not include content removals that we regularly process every day across our products for violation of our content policies (for example, we do not permit hate speech in Blogger and other similar products) in response to user complaints. In many cases, those removals result in the takedown of material that violates local law, independent of any government demand or court order seeking such removal.

The local prosecutor wants Google to turn over how it compiled its statistics. She said it is important for the public to know that the Brazilian government is not attempting to censor speech.

Perhaps one of the reasons Google may get a large number of take-down requests from Brazil and India is because the Google social network Orkut is very big in those two countries.

Brazil represents 50 percent of all Orkut users in the world. And Google is learning from court case after court case that even anonymous Orkut postings can cause the company a lot of grief.

One of the real downsides to this tool is that it does not include requests to block items. Google says it is working on a separate tool to report on demands from governments to block items on the Google servers.

Once that happens, just watch how far down Brazil goes on the list.

It is interesting the Brazilian government is upset with its ranking in terms of removal requests when its own prosecutors and independent judiciary keep filing judicial orders to remove material or impose penalties for anonymous posting.

For now, we have a tool — albeit clearly in beta — to look at the raw number of requests by governments to take items off the Internet.

Anyone who has an interest in events in Asia has been following the running battle in Thailand between the “red shirts” and the government of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva.

The “red shirts” are holed up in an upscale shopping center in  Bangkok and are demanding the end of the current government. The protesters are from the rural areas and feel they have been excluded from the decision-making process. Weaker agricultural prices and higher costs for agricultural inputs have not helped the situation.

And caught in the middle, trying to report on the situation are the Thai media.

Reporters Without Borders issued a statement (Media beset by both violence and state of emergency) over the weekend calling on the Thai government to stop harassing the domestic and international media covering the situation. It also called on the government to end censorship of web sites favorable to the “red shirts.”

At last count, the government had shut down access to 2,500 websites and the number is growing.

The danger to the safety of journalists has gotten so severe that many are now wearing protective helmets provided by the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Thailand.

A Japanese cameraman was killed in a bomb blast over the weekend. Another was killed a couple of weeks ago by gun shot.

Reporters are regularly pelted with bottles and other debris tossed by the “red shirts.”

The protest leaders say the only way to guarantee the safety of the journalists is for them to wear green armbands that say “Dissolve Parliament.”

Journalists are refusing to do so.

Another factor has been injected into the already volatile situation: Tourists are entering the demonstration areas with their mobile phones and digital cameras hoping to be able to sell pictures to news outlets. These “citizen journalists” have little understanding of the dangers they face in what is now being described by seasoned journalists as a war zone.

Some additional reading on the situation

• FCCT Statement on the Press Situation in Thailand, 11 April 2010 – Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Thailand
• Analysis – Thailand’s ‘Red Shirt’ uprising echos bloody class wars of past – The Globe and Mail
• Grenade attacks in Bangkok, Chiang Mai – Bangkok Post
• Protesters block roads in provinces amid Thai deadlock – BBC

 

There is another kidnapping case (of many) of a child of American and Brazilian parents.

Brazil woman appealing order to give boy to US dad

This case like the Goldman case that was settled December 2009, is part kidnapping and part custody.

As the reporter, Tales Azzoni, points out, this is a kidnapping case under the Hague Convention.

During the Goldman case too many reports referred to it as a custody case, when the legal basis for all the arguments for the father were based on the Hague Convention.

I am glad to see that the AP got it right this time. Let’s hope other news organizations getting ready to do follow up stories on this new case also get it right.

The Korean Central News Agency, North Korea‘s official information provider, has lashed out at Japan’s “ultra rightwing conservative media [who] are busy with their false propaganda malignantly slandering the ideology and system in the DPRK.”

The DPRK (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea), or North Korea as most of us call it, uses this kind of language whenever journalists dare to cover what is actually happening in that country.

This article is available through the Korea News Service website, which is based in Tokyo.  (A note to readers in South Korea — you won’t be able to access these pages directly because the country’s National Security Law, which was approved several years ago, blocks access to major North Korean web sites.)

I suggest reading this article (and others) to get a sense of how the KCNA covers the news and the type of language it uses when responding to the country’s critics.

The Taipei Times earlier this month published a profile of what appears to be one of the most dangerous jobs in Somalia — being a reporter with Radio Mogadishu.

The article describes it as “the one and only relatively free radio station in south central Somalia where journalists can broadcast what they like — without worrying about being beheaded.”

That’s because the journalists who work there are under constant guard and rarely, if ever, venture away from the radio station.

Reporter Musa Osman “drew his finger across his throat and laughed a sharp, bitter laugh when asked what would happen if he went home.”

According to the report, Somalia is one of the world’s most dangerous countries in which to be a journalist, “with more than 20 journalists assassinated in the past four years.”

Hang Chakra, the Cambodian editor who was imprisoned in 2009 on charges of “disinformation,” was released last week after receiving a royal pardon.

Though the editor of the Khmer Machas Srok newspaper helped secure his release by promising officials that he would stop writing reports detailing government corruption, Hang Chakra made it clear this week that he would not back away from his journalistic duties.

“I will continue to … publish a newspaper criticising corrupt individual government officials in order to serve my readers and society,” he said. He was quoted in The Phnom Penh Post.

The newspaper also reported in another story this week that some Cambodian publishers believe that things became even more difficult for opposition publishers during Hang Chakra’s imprisonment, and “the stifling of pro-opposition media figures is [an] ongoing trend that is unlikely to be reversed in the near future.”

Publisher Hen Vipheak has been in a similar position. He was sentenced to one year in prison in 1995 for criticizing government officials.

“Hang Chakra’s case is an example – we always think, ‘Who is the next to go to jail?’” he said. “This is our risk in having such a newspaper.”

The newspaper reports that one of the reasons the Cambodian People’s Party can squeeze opposition publications is because the party has plenty of money while “the cost of newsprint and distribution is an obstacle for potential newspaper publishers.”