Emmanuel Jal is now a peace activist who joined a panel moderated by CJA president Rita Payne. Also on the panel were journalists who’ve covered conflict and worked with NGOs.

“The presentations put a human face to news stories, and I came away from the Rotary Peace Symposium in Bangkok with fundamental questions about how the media covers conflict and how it can do better,” Payne said.

The session at the Bangkok Symposium also looked at the issue of embedding journalists with the military, and the ethics of journalist subsidies by NGOs.

Read more at ETurboNews: http://www.eturbonews.com/29222/rotary-peace-symposium-conflict-and-role-media

The Economics of Killing: How the West fuels war and poverty in the developed world

Wednesday, April 25th 2012 at 6:30 – 8.00pm

By his own admission, Vijay Mehta chose a provocative title for his book The Economics of Killing in which he blames Western democracies for fuelling ‘war and poverty in the developed world’. His meticulous research bolsters his argument, and whether you agree or not, Mehta makes a charge that goes to the heart of modern strategic policy making.

What exactly is this institution known as the military-industrial complex? Is it a force for good, an umbrella of benevolent power that revived Europe after the Second World and has allowed East Asia to flourish. Or has it allowed a few to get very rich, while seeking out wars and exploitation in poorer parts of the world.

The issue is deep and important. In its lively, intelligent debate,  the CJA panel only brushed the surface bringing to light more issues on which many would like to know the answers.

www.humphreyhawksley.com

This was originally posted on the CJA-UK website here.

Read the event notice here.

Red notices issued by Interpol member states can lead to automatic arrest and detention. They are also open to misuse by states seeking to target opponents or intimidate journalists who criticize government, said Fair Trials spokesperson Alex Tinsley.

“The risk of arrest at airports and international borders limits their ability to report the truth properly, and the red notice itself can cause problems obtaining press accreditation,” Tinsley said about hurdles for journalists subject to a red notice.

“Thus, States can use Interpol’s red notice system to silence journalists who criticize them publicly, depriving citizens of impartial reporting and inhibiting democracy.”

Tinsley wants to hear from journalists who are or have been subject to a red notice, to discuss the effects and potentially make application to have the notice removed from Interpol’s files.

For more information see Fair Trials International website www.fairtrials.net and click on ‘Campaigns’, or contact Alex Tinsley at alex.tinsley@fairtrials.net

“CJA-Cameroon has been created to fill the vacuum by setting the stage for responsible Journalism and the courage to tell people what they do not want to hear –the truth, the bitter truth,” he said.

Part of that job is to expose the decay of democracy and fight against malpractices in Cameroon, said Chief Foanyi.

“Corruption is soaring by the day to an extent that it has become an incurable endemic cankerworm in our country.

“This is a challenge for Journalists with a sense of direction to stand up as one and fight these social and political vices plaguing our nation.

Press freedom is not easily achieved, noted Ibrahim Ndzesop, a Ministry of Foreign Affairs representative who also spoke at the WPFD events.  Even in countries where journalists exercise greater freedom of expression, he said media freedom is hard-won and jealously guarded. At the same time, Ndzesop said the public treats the media with suspicion. He urged journalists to be responsible and accountable.

In his address Foanyi said the nation’s leaders must exercise impartiality, focus and good governance that are benchmarks of democracy and development.

He vowed the CJA-Cameroon branch will “leave no stone unturned to wage an all-round war against shameless practices that give our country a very poor image abroad”.

That job is hampered, he said, by high-level gagging and intimidation of the media. Chief Foanyi pointed to threats, victimization and arrests, and the recent bombing of This Day newspaper headquarters in Nigeria.

“We condemn in very strong terms these attacks on journalists and call on perpetrators to down tools for world peace to reign,” Chief Foanyi said.

CJA-Cameroon branch wants governments to end harassment and intimidation of journalists, allow a free market place of ideas, and decriminalize Press Laws in Cameroon.

- with files by Scholar Maloke

In its annual free expression report card, CJFE says the “government is largely continuing its stonewalling tactics in hopes that journalists and other interested parties will simply give up and move on to something else.”

The “most openly brash act of control,” according to the CJFE report, is the policy of barring federally funded scientists from talking to the media, even when their research has already been published in peer-reviewed journals.

Read more at on the IFEX website at http://bit.ly/K6LhcI

When faced with a crisis, what makes the media resort to condescending, patronising, cliched and predictable coverage? Why do broadcasters fall into the trap of arriving too late and leaving too early?

These questions were raised at last week’s Commonwealth Broadcasting Association conference in Brisbane by Australian TV news reporter Yalda Hakim, who won plaudits for her coverage of the Libyan conflict from the Tunisian border for SBS world affairs programme Dateline.

“Although for audiences, issues dealing with refugees and internally displaced people in camps can be a turn off, we still have a responsibility to report and understand the source of the problems, even when they are no longer making headlines,” she said.

“It’s easy to zoom in on and show a close-up of a child eating their last bit of breadcrumb, or a stretched out hand reaching for aid, but to actually give them an identity and know why and how they came to be in that situation is a completely different story.”

As Hakim surmised after reporting on frantic scenes of migrant workers clambering for food, shelter and passage home, even the most well-meaning of journalists can be constrained in their attempt to reveal the wider context to a crisis by the perception that it is somewhat superfluous, or even distasteful, to get the fuller picture.

Yet this attitude that journalists should hold back because audiences are disinterested or disenchanted by disaster, undoubtedly held by some executives and editors, received a debunking at the CBA conference between 22 and 25 April.

The four-day event presided over by CBA Secretary-General Sally-Ann Wilson under the theme ‘Media Leadership in Crisis, Disaster and Emergency’, brought together senior managers, news editors and reporters from Canada, Jamaica, Ghana, Pakistan, Tonga, and beyond, with organisations such as the National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility, Unicef and Tourism Queensland.

Rather than ascribe to the theory of public disengagement with the news, speaker after speaker – from BBC Global News director Peter Horrocks to Samoa Quality Broadcasting Corporation managing director Faiesea Lei Sam-Matafeo – attested that when catastrophe strikes audiences in fact increasingly turn to broadcasters, through social media, the web and 24-hour news TV, as well traditional media such as radio and print.

In his keynote presentation, Hubert Lacroix, president of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (pictured), recounted how his network’s flagship news channel, CBC News, embraced Twitter to cover a devastating hurricane that hit Newfoundland, on the east coast of the country in September 2010.

“It was the worst day they had seen in the history of Newfoundland. Bridges, homes, cars, were destroyed,” said Lacroix. “Communities had to be evacuated by boat, the military was deployed. For us it was a big mess – and we didn’t have anyone close to the outlying areas where the damage was done.”

For CBC, a decision to trust the audience paid off handsomely. “Everyone in Newfoundland – from the military to local residents – started tweeting in,” he said of the response. “Our online website had 600,000 hits to the news page that day – which is about what we would get in a full week.”

Initiatives between international and local broadcasters to use platforms such as mobile phones and Facebook are also helping to tease out content from the public, according to Mike McClusky, chief executive of Radio Australia.

“Everywhere in every community this growth [of social media] is taking place,” added McClusky, who is also acting director of ABC International, which sponsored the conference. “It is almost a growth which is exponential.”

“It doesn’t matter if the community is from Australia, whether it’s from PNG [Papua New Guinea] or from the Cook Islands. The community is helping to tell the story and provide the information.”

But even a ‘turned-on’ audience offers up its own conundrums for the media, especially at times of disaster, concluded Lacroix. “In a situation where so much of our content is provided for by our audience, how do we maintain journalistic integrity?

“How do we make what differentiates us still the reference?”

“[Beyond] Twitter and Facebook friends, healthy societies are actually stitched together and enriched by fine crafted story-telling, by fearless and selfless investigative journalists, by publicly owned and publicly minded public service broadcasters,” he continued.

“If we are to bridge the cultural, the ethnic and the political gaps that divide us, if we are going to build cohesive, integrated and harmonious societies then the need for a dedicated space to congregate, to tell our stories, to share our common experiences, and to host independent political debate has never been greater.”

“There are few other vehicles available to this task, and none as well suited as public broadcasters.”

More information on the CBA Brisbane conference is available here: http://brisbane.cba.org.uk/

New Delhi, May 2 (IANS) Violence and censorship against mediapersons are a “threat” to democracy and also constrains their ability to operate freely, an international body of journalists said Wednesday.

The Commonwealth Journalists Association (CJA) also condemned state repression against media in countries like Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

“Without a free press and freedom of expression, governments can impose bad policy and abuse power with impunity,” said Rita Payne, president of CJA, underlining the consensus at a meet on ‘Thhreats to Democracy’.

Read in full at http://ians.in/index.php?param=news/483531

And: http://post.jagran.com/censorship-on-journalists-a-threat-to-democracy-cja-1335942598

“We know how difficult and challenging it is to practice journalism in Pakistan,” said International Press Institute director Alison McKenzie.

“For years, IPI has monitored the endless attacks against journalists and media houses.”

“We have reported on the horrific murders of brave journalists who dared to uncover facts and reveal information of immense public interest.”

McKenzie singled out the Rural Media Network of Pakistan, headed by CJA member Ehsan Ahmed Sehar, as an example of the courage of rural journalists in Pakistan.

“It is your courage that keeps Pakistan’s democracy alive; it is your courage that allows the world to know about the wrongdoings of powerful individuals in the country, and government’s failure to address them,” McKenzie said today.

“It shows us every day how important our efforts to protect press freedom inPakistanand around the globe are. It gives sense to the work we do.”

IPI has formed a Pakistan National Committee, which includes support from the Rural Media Network of Pakistan. McKenzie said the goal of the National Committee is to strengthen IPI’s work in South Asia and restore the fundamental rights of journalists in Pakistan.

Map World Press Freedom Day celebrations with Unesco at unesco-ci.org/foemap/

WORLD PRESS FREEDOM DAY, May 3, 2012

Violence and censorship are still daily threats for too many journalists, said the President of the Commonwealth Journalists Association in a statement to mark World Press Freedom Day on May 3. 

“The Commonwealth Journalists Association unanimously condemns instances of state repression against media reported out of Pakistan, Sri Lanka and some African member states of the Commonwealth,” said Rita Payne, underlining the consensus of a recent CJA conference on Threats to Democracy.

With some Commonwealth countries including India and Pakistan resisting a draft UN Action Plan on Safety of Journalists, the CJA warns that democracy itself is under threat due to constraints on the ability of journalists to operate.

Putting action to words, the CJA has endorsed the Table Mountain Declaration, aimed at abolishing criminal defamation and promoting a free press in Africa.

“Without a free press and freedom of expression, governments can impose bad policy and abuse power with impunity,” Payne said today.

“The result is diminished quality of life. Journalists in these circumstances are not the lucky ones of our profession, but they are among the bravest. We must salute and support them with our best weapon: well-chosen words and determination to stand up for the inalienable rights of journalists everywhere who face violence or persecution for their profession.

Worldwide statistics paint a grim picture of the way journalists are targeted and prevented from doing their job of reporting on government and society:

Monitoring agencies report 179 journalists were imprisoned world-wide last year, up from 145 the previous year.

Another 67 were killed 2011; 17 more so far this year. They were murdered, killed on dangerous assignments or died in crossfire.

Wars and the uprisings of the Arab Spring claimed many journalists in 2011. But even outside of conflict zones some of our Commonwealth colleagues face threatening conditions in their every day work.

Pakistan is rated among the most dangerous countries in the world for journalists. South Africa has enacted strict censorship measures that limit reporting of corruption and attempt to control the press. There are others with less-than-perfect performances, and judicial practices which need reform.

The CJA is active in bringing these issues to the world stage. Its efforts are global, with CJA branches in Pakistan, Sarawak, Uganda, Cameroon, India and Britain among those holding educational workshops and awareness-raising events to mark World Press Freedom Day.

“A free press and freedom of speech constitute the strongest pillars of a democracy,” Payne said.

“It is time for all Commonwealth countries to uphold the same values of a civil society. The onus here is on governments. Press freedom and freedom of speech must be protected and promoted.”

The vice president of the CJA’s India Branch is the new General Secretary of the Editor’s Guild of India.

Vijay Naik (pictured) was unanimously elected to the post. He is a senior journalist and is currently Consulting Editor of Sakal, the largest selling chain of newspapers in Marathi language.

Vijay has been on the Press Council of India, Lok Sabha Speaker’s Media Committee, and a number of other media-related organisations. An active CJA member during the last four years, Vijay wrote a highly informative piece on the rise of regional media inIndiafor the CJA Conference Souvenir.

The CJA looks forward to cooperative relationship with the Editors’ Guild of India.

Currently, the Guild has intervened as a party before the Supreme Court of India, where a bench is hearing arguments on various aspects of court reporting. The CJA India Branch is watching this case and will report on it as an issue of importance to media and media freedom — not just in India.