First posted at the web site of the Washington, DC Society of Professional Journalists.

This may not be an issue that directly affects international coverage but the impact of this so-called debate reaches beyond the borders of the US of A. It is worthwhile looking at the logic behind the reasoning for the AP decision.

Associated Press editor Tom Kent sent out a memo late last week with new guidance on how — under AP Style — reporters should refer to the mosque proposed for lower Manhattan.

(You can read the memo here and Kent’s discussion of the memo on Facebook.)

Bottom line: It is NOT the “ground zero mosque” and the site under question has been used for prayers for some time already.

The site of the proposed Islamic center and mosque is not at ground zero, but two blocks away in a busy commercial area. We should continue to say it’s “near” ground zero, or two blocks away.

Kent added:

It may be useful in some stories to note that Muslim prayer services have been held since 2009 in the building that the new project will replace. The proposal is to create a new, larger Islamic community center that would include a mosque, a swimming pool, gym, auditorium and other facilities.

In his Facebook discussion, Kent said:

Incidentally, our note today represented no change in the way we’ve been writing about this case. The vast majority of our stories in recent weeks have referred to a mosque “near” ground zero, or “two blocks away.” But a few of our headlines have said “ground zero mosque,” and we felt that term wasn’t as specific as it could be.

So, can we move on and start using the correct term for the mosque, make sure we have the location correct and make sure the whole thing is put into context.

First posted at Journalism, Journalists and the World.

Cartoonists Matt Bors, Ted Rall and Steven Cloud are traveling unembedded in Afghanistan.

These cartoonists are sharp-witted and unconventional.

Following their exploits in Afghanistan should be interesting.

Here are their blog sites:

• Matt Bors
• Ted Rall
• Steven Cloud

First posted at Journalism, Journalists and the World.

Just catching up on some stuff.

One of my favorite annual surveys is the Economists’ Big Mac Index. (My other favorite is the Durex Global Sex Survey, although they are a couple of years late in doing their latest one.)

The Big Mac Index looks at whether a currency is over or under valued. Here is the Economist explanation:

The index is a lighthearted attempt to gauge how far currencies are from their fair value. It is based on the theory of purchasing-power parity (PPP), which argues that in the long run exchange rates should move to equalise the price of an identical basket of goods between two countries. Our basket consists of a single item, a Big Mac hamburger, produced in nearly 120 countries. The fair-value benchmark is the exchange rate that leaves burgers costing the same in America as elsewhere.

Burgernomics: The latest Big Mac index suggests the euro is still overvalued

What the survey showed is what I have been saying for a couple of years: In Brazil you spend a lot of money for mediocre food. Brazil is the third most expensive place in the world for a Big Mac.

While this is a “lighthearted attempt” at looking at a complicated issue — currency values — it is an easy to understand index that can help people understand the issue.

Using the Big Mac Index reporters can help explain why getting China to float its currency is important. Or how trade is affected by differences in currency values.

After all, the price of a Big Mac is something everyone in the States understands. Even journalists.

A look at the deafening silence in Pakistan over the Kabul War Diary WikiLeak issue.

Madiha Sattar, senior assistant editor for The Herald in Karachi, talks about how and why it took so long for ANYTHING to be said in Pakistan about the 90,000 page leak of U.S. government documents about the Afghan war.

Bottom line:

Pakistan simply has too much at home to worry about. Perceptions of the country in the West take a back seat when severe electricity shortages, spiraling food prices and devastating terrorist attacks confront us every day.

Read the full blog entry here: Pakistan’s non-reaction to Wikileaks

First posted at Journalism, Journalists and the World.

This really should not be a surprise to anyone. And I was expecting this. I just read documents more slowly than others.

Leaked files indicate U.S. pays Afghan media to run friendly stories

Buried among the 92,000 classified documents released Sunday by WikiLeaks is some intriguing evidence that the U.S. military in Afghanistan has adopted a PR strategy that got it into trouble in Iraq: paying local media outlets to run friendly stories.

Several reports from Army psychological operations units and provincial reconstruction teams (also known as PRTs, civilian-military hybrids tasked with rebuilding Afghanistan) show that local Afghan radio stations were under contract to air content produced by the United States. Other reports show U.S. military personnel apparently referring to Afghan reporters as “our journalists” and directing them in how to do their jobs.

Rest of Story

When will these guys learn? And just how much did AID know about the military PSYOP?

I know of good and solid journalism programs in Africa, Central Europe and the Caribbean that could not exist without financial help from AID. These are programs that seriously train independent journalists. (One recipient even asked for copies of the SPJ Code of Ethics to use as a blueprint for their own code.)

Then these PR people move in and muck up the whole thing. How are the Afghans supposed to learn what it means to have a media independent of government control or to be free from corruption when the U.S. government is in there paying off “journalists?”

For the uninitiated, the spoken Chinese language is divided into a number of dialects that are as distinctive as the differences between Cockney English and Deep South USA English.

Mandarin is the “official” language because it is the Chinese of Beijing.

Cantonese is the Chinese of southern China and the version more familiar to many Americans. (Bok Choy is Cantonese for white cabbage. The Mandarin version is Bai Cai.)

And I can speak from personal experience that the two dialects are so different as to be incomprehensible to each other. My Mandarin barely worked in Hong Kong.

Other dialects in Western China are as distinct but, because of limited exposure to the rest of the world, are not as well-known.

For a number of years now Beijing has been trying to force all parts of the country use Mandarin. And for just as long, the Cantonese speakers have been fighting those efforts.

Cantonese is the Chinese dialect of Guangzhou province and Hong Kong — the economic powerhouses of China.

People in those areas looking to do serious business in China learn Mandarin but as a second language. (Actually, more often as a third language. English is often the second language.)

So when a Guangzhou politician made an official proposal to force a major local television network to stop using Cantonese and switch to Mandarin, more than 1,000 people demonstrated against it.

Move to Limit Cantonese on Chinese TV Is Assailed

Police broke up the unauthorized demonstration peacefully.

And, in true Communist, control all information style, all mention any mention of the demonstration was removed from Chinese Internet forums on Monday. Only one national newspaper — one aimed at the foreign community — carried a report. The report did not so much cover the popular uprising as it indicated the discussion of language is a politically delicate matter.

And, as we know, anything that is a “politically delicate matter” will come under the direct control of the propaganda ministry. And that means in the hands of the “hardliners” who want more control over information and means of communication.

This is going to be another interesting issue to follow.

There has been a lot of coverage in the Caribbean about the arrest of alleged drug lord José Figueroa Agosto in Puerto Rico and his girlfriend Sobeida Felix Morel.

Figuero is wanted on more money laundering, drug and murder charges than can be enumerated here. (Suffice it to say his operations are said to have made the Colombians look like amateurs.)

Felix was wanted in the Dominican Republic on more charges than she was in the United States so when she was caught in Puerto Rico, the DR government asked for her to be extradited to the Dominican Republic for trial.

The U.S. government agreed.

On July 21 she arrived in Santo Domingo. The arrival was recorded by a lone newspaper reporter. And the picture was dramatic.

The photographer, Tomas Ventura, described for the readers of Diario Libre how he was in the right place at the right time and how he got the picture.

Taking Sobeida’s picture was not easy

The “how I got it” story is one that journalists in free societies around the world can relate to. We have all had our great moments.

And we all love to talk about them.

For now, let’s celebrate with Ventura his tenacity and skills.

Got this in an email from the Lorenzo Natali Journalism Prize:

The European Commission has officially launched the 18th edition of the Lorenzo Natali Prize !

You can apply on the website www.nataliprize2010.eu.

The Lorenzo Natali Prize concerns journalists working for media in one of the five following regions: Africa, Asia and Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean, Europe and the Arab World and the Middle East. It rewards journalists for their work defending democracy and the Human rights within the Developing World. For the first time in 2008, the Lorenzo Natali Prize also involves radio and television journalists.

Each applicant can deliver ONE journalistic work or ONE extract of a journalistic work printed or aired between July 1st 2009 and June 30th 2010.

The seventeen laureates of the Lorenzo Natali Prize will be guests of honour of the European Commission during a stay in Brussels. Each laureate will receive a trophy and a prize. Overall 60,000 euros of prize will reward the best works.

For further information  feel free to visit the website: www.nataliprize2010.eu

First posted at Journalism, Journalists and the World.

Sorry folks, got a little behind in my review of material from Freedom House. (And if you haven’t visited their web site, you should. FH has the infamous Index of Freedom and Freedom of the Press Index. Both are necessary readings for anyone interested in international affairs.)

Censorship without Borders

I’ll just take the introduction straight from the FH web site:

In conjunction with the release of Freedom of the Press 2010, Freedom House hosted a panel discussion in the Knight Studio at the Newseum. The panel, titled “Censorship Without Borders,” focused on new and innovative tactics used by non-democratic governments (and some democratic governments as well) to restrict freedom of expression, outside of their borders as well as within. Panelists included Bob Boorstin, Director of Corporate and Policy Communications at Google; Frank Smyth, Washington Representative of the Committee to Protect Journalists; Christopher Walker, Director of Studies at Freedom House; and Karin Karlekar, Managing Editor of Freedom of the Press. Below are a series of video excerpts from the panelists, covering a number of issues that have a cross-border impact on freedom of expression including violence against journalists, the use of libel laws to discourage the expression of opposing views and growing censorship on the internet.

Topics such as censorship in China, defamation, libel, violence against journalists and much more are covered in several different video snippets.

Well worth a visit.

China’s heel on the Internet

The ongoing blockage of Facebook and Twitter in China continues to be a problem for freedom of expression in that country. Now add to that shutdowns of Twitter-like sites.

[F]our major Twitter-like micro-blogging services providing only limited services due to “maintenance” or “testing” – often euphemisms for strengthening internal self-censorship systems following government pressure; restrictions on at least one Chinese micro-blogging platform being able to link to any overseas websites—including non political sites like Geico Insurance; and the shutdown of an estimated 60 plus blogs by prominent legal and political commentators.

China has one of the most sophisticated Internet blocking operations in the world. It reaches down into the ISP level to make sure “improper” information is not provided to the Chinese Internet community. The technology seems to be mostly home-grown.

Clearly, the Chinese development of Internet censorship requires a lot of people — there are a lot of ISPs in the country. But China has a lot of people. So Internet censorship can easily be seen as a full-employment program by the central government.

Compare how China does it with Iran — another country that is nervous about the Internet.

Thanks to technology — hardware and software – purchased from Western Europe, Iran blocks sites such as Twitter and Google at the point where the Internet connection enters the country.

Back to China, Freedom House says the censorship of the Internet is an issue the international community can no longer ignore.

“The Chinese Communist Party’s attempts to control the internet affect much more than just its own citizens,” said Robert Guerra, director of Freedom House’s internet freedom project. “In addition to its domestic censorship practices, a growing number of sophisticated technical attacks are originating in China against organizations and companies outside of its borders.”

And let us not forget that the European Community is also looking at Chinese Internet censorship as a barrier to free trade.

Least Free Places On The Earth

Freedom House put together a travelogue of the least free places. Foreign Policy magazine picked it up and posted it online with pictures and commentary.

A very interesting read.

And one of the key things about all these “wonderful” garden spots is the lack of free media. Phrases such as “the government controls all broadcast media and restricts independent print publications” or “a monopoly of political power” or “human rights defenders, and others continue to face harassment and arbitrary detention and torture” are common in each country.

Proof once again — as if any was needed — that political freedom and press freedom go hand in hand.