Not everything here has to be a commentary about threats to press freedom.

The World Press Photo awards were announced Friday in Amsterdam. The winners are stunning and disturbing. And each tells a story.

Winners Gallery. (Once you see the disturbing photo of the year, you will agree it is a winner.)

Journalists in India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka have freedoms few in the region can enjoy. And at the same time, the threats to their lives is ever-present.

Mustafa Qadri reports in the Sunday Guardian (In south Asia, independent journalism is a real risk) that journalists are heavily restricted from independently reporting India’s continued crackdown on Kashmiri independence protests. And that journalists in Pakistan face greater threats. Earlier this month journalist and activist Abdul Hameed Hayatan was found dead in Balochistan after being kidnapped in October.

In September Umar Cheema was kidnapped by what appeared to be a police patrol while driving home in Islamabad.

“They stripped me naked and tortured me,” he recalled. Tied upside down, Cheema was badly beaten and had his eyebrows, moustache and hair shaved in a six-hour ordeal after which he was thrown on to a highway some 125 kilometres from his home in Islamabad.

Cheema realised his captors were in part of Pakistan’s secretive intelligence agencies. His transgression — in their eyes — was not the usual issue of military atrocities but rather its incompetence in prosecuting persons accused of killing army personnel.

Cheema had earlier faced the wrath of the army when he wrote about two commandos who were court-martialed because they suggested negotiating during a hostage situation in 2007.

Few think anything will get done even as the situation for journalists’ safety worsens.

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists no one has been prosecuted for murdering a journalist in Pakistan except in the Daniel Pearl case. Civilian authorities set up a judicial commission to investigate Cheema’s abduction, but it appears to be languishing and there have been no significant investigations of army authorities.

Seems the American public is not the only ones being screwed by the banks.

Earlier this month Bank of America closed the accounts of the embassy and consulates of Angola in the United States. The accounts were closed Nov. 9 after the bank warned the Angolans of the decision with an unsigned letter. The bank gave no explanation for its action.

The most likely reason: Banks are calculating that the effort spent making sure government accounts are not being abused for money laundering purposes is too complicated and costly to justify keeping the accounts.

And it looks as if Angola is not the only one being hit. As many as 37 embassies in Washington could soon face similar action. Seventeen of those embassies are from African countries.

So why is this an important story? Why is it important to journalists and journalism organizations?

One simple word: Retaliation!

Already the Angolan government is showing its displeasure with the bank action by refusing to accept the credentials of the U.S. ambassador-designate to Angola. (The Angolan government says the U.S. government needs to do more to force the banks to accept their accounts.)

On the horizon, the governments could cancel permission of U.S. banks to operate in their countries. They could also freeze or cancel the local banking accounts of companies such as Exxon Mobil and Chevron. This latter option is already being discussed in Angola.

The few U.S. news outlets that have international correspondents and bureaus, could find their overseas accounts frozen. This would lead to an inability to pay stringers, local staff, interpreters and — in general — local expenses.

In a larger view, a tidal wave of account closings could make it impossible to conduct simple business across borders. It could bring further economic woes to a global economy just now coming out of the 2008 crash.

Looking at who has carried the story, it seems that after the Wall Street Journal reported it, picked up the Reuters‘ feed, all the local Fox TV stations carried it — at least on their websites. Then Reuters picked it up. But as of early morning on Sunday, I was hard pressed to find many major news organizations in the States carrying the story.

The USC Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism is now accepting applications for the Knight Luce Fellowship for Reporting on Global Religion.

The stipend is $5,000 – $25,000 to allow American journalists to report and write stories illuminating how religion crosses geographic, temporal and ideological borders.

From the USC Annenberg site:

Applicants should consider what these dynamics reveal about personal identity, political power, the search for meaning, the nature of conflict and the construction of community. Their stories can explore how religion, religious institutions and religious people (1) effect change in on-the-ground social, political, and economic conditions; (2) circulate ideas and ideologies among home and diaspora communities; and (3) promote or inhibit religious and political coexistence and cooperation. Stories must be reported outside the U.S., although they may include an American context for contrast or comparison.

Successful applicants are required to do at least three stories for multiple delivery platforms: print, radio, TV, online. All work is to be completed within six months of getting the award and must be finished by December 31, 2011.

Several fellows will be invited to spend three days in residence at the University of Southern California once all the projects are done. Those invited to USC will conduct master classes for journalism students, present their work in seminars, and deliver public lectures for the USC community.

The Anneberg office stresses that this is a program for working journalists, not journalism students or journalism educators.

Fortunately for many of us, freelancers or self-employed journalists individuals who regularly publish, post and/or broadcast online, in print or over the airwaves are eligible. Applications must include either a letter of recommendation from an editor/manager of an organization that regularly posts, publishes or broadcasts the applicants work or by an experienced journalist who can speak to the applicants work in convincing detail.

No advanced degree or specialized training in religion is required.

Click HERE to contact the USC Annenberg office for more information.

As part of a series of classes and seminars on how to break into foreign affairs work, the Foreign Policy Association is holding a seminar in New York City the evening of Nov. 8 on how to become a foreign correspondent.

From the notice:

In this course you will learn:

• Practical steps to launching your career as a foreign correspondent
• How to pitch stories to publications that cover global issues
• The difference between staff, stringers and freelance reporters
• What skill set will help you gather, create and publish global content from abroad

All in all it sounds like a good course for a journalist looking to break out of his/her current job or who is looking for work.

Cost: $60 for FPA members. $65 for non-members.

The session will be held at the Victor Borge Hall – Scandinavia House (58 Park Avenue)

More information

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

The Committee to Protect Journalists announced this week that freelancer Oscar Sanchez Madan was released after serving three years in a Cuban jail for “social dangerousness.”

What the charges really mean is that Madan reported on social problems and corruption in Cuba. You know, real journalism.

See the CPJ statement here.

By now we’ve all seen the dramatic pictures of the Apache gunship attack of the journalists in Iraq.

The film got into the wild thanks to Wikileaks. The non-profit organization has its server in Sweden and its registration in the United States. It depends on whistle blowers and other anonymous sources to get information out.

Foreign Policy ran a piece today (Apr. 7) discussing Wikileaks and 21st century journalism.

Is This the Future of Journalism?

Given the cut backs in editorial staff in news organizations, maybe Wikileaks is the future of journalism. But what does that say about the state of journalism — especially in the United States — if news organizations have to contract out the work their own reporters should be doing.

In his Foreign Policy entry, Jonathan Stray takes a quick look at the issues involved.

At its best, the rise of Wikileaks represents the type of accountability journalism made famous in the 1970s by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward of Watergate fame, and practiced today by Jane Mayer of the New Yorker and Eric Lichtblau and James Risen of the New York Times — and Seymour Hersh in both eras.

But, as Stray later points out, Wikileaks is not a news organization as we know it. It does not owe allegiance to the public but rather to a political agenda.

Wikileaks, however, makes no bones about its desire to advance a political message, promising sources that their material will be used for “maximal political impact.”

on their own web page, Wikileaks makes it clear it is not an impartial gatherer of facts.

The Sunshine Press (WikiLeaks) is an non-profit organization funded by human rights campaigners, investigative journalists, technologists and the general public.

When the Washington Post ran the Watergate stories, it was not the policy of the paper to bring down the Nixon Administration but rather to shed light on government actions.

Major news organizations and journalism groups — including the Society of Professional Journalists – offer moral, legal and financial support to Wikileaks.

I am not upset that Wikileaks exist. I am upset that news organizations have failed readers/viewers/listeners so much that they have to depend on out sourcing news gathering. Without some sort of active participation in the process, how can editors or news directors trust the reliability of the information?

But, I guess we will just have to keep going. We are where we are.

From a friend who has been there and done that…

Colleagues:

What a difference a character makes, and the AP is to blame (I just checked). My own daily newspaper, despite my tip-off yesterday, incorrectly spelled the name of the newly inaugurated Chilean president as Sebastian “Pinera.” It is “Piñera.” So newspapers all over the English-speaking will be getting it wrong because the AP international desk in New York won’t take the time to figure out how to use a tilde. I’m sure the AP burerau chief in Santiago knows how to spell it.

So what? So, the “n” and the “ñ” are two separate characters in the Spanish alphabet. I taught my daily newspaper, Baton Rouge’s The Advocate, a few years back how to write the tilde on a Mac so its headlines and text would correctly say El Niño instead of El Nino.

Recipe stories should say jalapeño, not jalapeno.

Failure to use the correct character can have disastrous consequences. A few years back, the staff of the San Francisco Examiner, I believe it was, decided to be cute with the New Year’s Day edition and impress people with their Spanish. So its headline said, “Feliz Ano Nuevo” instead of “Feliz Año Nuevo.”

So what? So, “Feliz Ano Nuevo” means “Happy New Anus.”

That’s all for today, colleagues. Hasta manana. Oops! I mean, hasta mañana.

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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