Never before have so many people been threatened or imprisoned for what the words they write on the internet.

As activists and ordinary citizens have increasingly made use of the internet to express their opinions and connect with others, many governments have also increased surveillance, filtering, legal actions and harassment. The harshest consequence for many has been the politically motivated arrest of bloggers and online writers for their online and/or offline activities, in some tragic cases even leading to death. Online journalists and bloggers now represent 45% of all media workers in prison worldwide.

Today, Global Voices Advocacy is launching a new website called Threatened Voices to help track suppression of free speech online. It features a world map and an interactive timeline that help visualize the story of threats and arrests against bloggers worldwide, and it is a central platform to gather information from the most dedicated organisations and activists, including Committee to Protect Bloggers, The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information, Reporters without Borders, Human Rights Watch, CyberLaw Blog, Amnesty International, Committee to Protect Journalists, Global Voices Advocacy.

What blogger, where?

Finding accurate information about arrested and threatened bloggers and online writers is difficult for several reasons.

First, the secrecy surrounding online censorship and repression makes it extra difficult to be accurate. Not a single week passes without stories of arrests of yet another online journalist or activist in countries like Egypt or Iran, but the details and reasons are often shrouded in mystery.

Second, there is still some confusion about the definition of a “blogger”. Professional journalists are increasingly migrating to online media and blogs in pursuit of more freedom, blurring the old lines of definition. And many so-called cyber-dissidents in China, Tunisia, Vietnam, or Iran, do not have personal blogs. Other times, bloggers are arrested for their offline activity, rather than for what they have published online.

This confusion has sometimes made it hard for online free speech advocates to come up with a good strategies and partnerships to defend bloggers and online activists, but it has never been more important to try.

Let's work together

At Global Voices we engage a community of authors, editors, and translators, who help keep us all informed of free speech and human rights abuses. With Threatened Voices we aim to open the process of reporting up even further to any person who has information.

We're calling on those whose friends, relatives, colleagues, or compatriots, have been threatened to help create and update the profiles of those missing or under arrest, so we can seek additional sources, verify, and link to online campaigns dedicated to freeing them.

In the process, we are hoping to learn more about when, where, and to what extent bloggers are being subjected to abuse in different countries, so we can share that information widely with journalists, researchers, and activists, and work towards creating an internet where everyone can exercise their right to speak freely, and where bloggers in prison are not forgotten.

Help spread the word. Tweet, blog and update your facebook status about Threatened Voices!

Global Voices Lingua is honored to announce today that German, Albanian and Macedonian have launched officially. A new chapter is turned.

Since the initiation of Lingua, we have gathered an enormous group of enthusiastic editors and volunteers to translate their passion into words. Because of their precious efforts, Global Voices is heard by more people in more languages around the world. Lingua has also reflected the variety and diversity of multilingual World Wide Web.

These translators (not machine translation!) has contributed their time and intelligence to fulfill the mission of Global Voices – to “shine light on places and people other media often ignore.” Their greate translations have also helped Global Voices reach new audience.

Now, Lingua has a dozen translation versions. Of course it is not enough! There are many other languages not covered by Lingua yet, and this is the way we are progressing. More languages are coming. Welcome to join us! If you are interested in getting involved, please visit Lingua page for further information and contacts.

[Video] Access Denied Map

The recent explosion in new information and communications technology and the proliferation of easy-to-use, often free, software and low-cost methods of self-publishing ranging blogging to multimedia-sharing web applications, have turned Internet users into prosumers, propelling them to a position of potential competition with the mainstream media. Even more importantly, it has transformed them into citizen watchdogs tackling sensitive human rights issues and often serving as an unofficial media outlet for dissenting voices.

The blurring of the lines between citizen and professional journalism has also resulted in the former's increasing ability to sustain the work of human rights defenders and NGO’s through first-hand reporting of breaking news exposing human rights violations, torture and harassment. The recent success of this army of citizen journalists and citizen watchdogs in Pakistan, Burma, Tunisia, Egypt and Morocco, have confirmed once again the enormous potential of user-generated content as an advocacy tool and as an alternative and independent source of news. The common characteristic of all these cases is that they have made efficient use of web 2.0 technologies in exposing abuses and injustice.

But despite the potential of web 2.0, in regions ridden with censorship and where the state holds the monopoly on information dissemination, open access to the Internet is often a tough goal to achieve considering the “authoritarian reflex” that is activated each time the repressive regimes feel threatened. Governments who already excel at muzzling the traditional media have been turning their efforts lately to the Internet, doing all they can to tighten their grip on this last refuge of communication. The rise of user-generated content is perceived as a threat by a growing number of countries who are seeking to block and control its dissemination by legal and technical means. Rarely does a week pass by without news about yet another major website being blocked by repressive states. Multimedia-sharing websites, social networking communities, mapping tools and popular web 2.0 websites are becoming a primary target of state censorship in more and more countries.

Over the last half-year, governments in China, Tunisia, Syria, Turkey, Burma, Thailand and Morocco have all cut off access to video-sharing websites. In the space of two months, between September 3rd and November 2nd, 2007, Tunisia has blocked access to two popular video-sharing websites, Dailymotion and Youtube, preventing Tunisian Internet users from both viewing and posting videos. Both websites remain blocked in Tunisia. Access to the Flickr photo-sharing site was recently restored in China, but it remains blocked in Iran and in the United Arab Emirates. Metacafe and Photobucket are also banned in few Middle Eastern countries such as Iran and the United Arab Emirates.

Blogging services are being targeted as well. Over the last three months, Turkey, Thailand and China have banned wordpress.com, while Blogspot is over-blocked in Syria and Pakistan and only recently restored in China. The Livejournal blogging service is blocked in Morocco and in Iran and it has been reported to be also blocked in China. Other popular services like Technorati, Blogrolling, Xanga, Movable Type, Typepad, Feedburner and Blogsome have been blocked on and off for the past couple of years in countries such as China and Iran.

Social networking websites like Orkut, Hi5, MySpace, Friendster, ZillR, Multiply, Facebook, Meetup, Digg and My Opera are banned or threatened in a number of countries. Even Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, have been blocked from time to time in China, in Tunisia and in Iran where the popular online retailer Amazon.com is reported to be blocked. Google Earth was blocked in Bahrain for a couple of days and remains inaccessible in Morocco.

Fortunately, against this substantial and highly restrictive filtering system targeting web 2.0 tools being deployed by various countries worldwide, is resistance from numerous anti-Internet filtering movements. In almost every country where state censorship prevails is a corresponding anti-censorship initiative led by citizens. And in addition to rallying to protest censorship, local activists are also continuously working on new ways of bypassing the blocks, advocating to keep the web open and interacting with each other across linguistic and cultural borders and barriers.

In order to shed light on the battle being waged between state censorship and anti-censorship groups, I’ve created the Access Denied Map, an interactive Google Maps mashup that provides information about the censorship efforts targeting various online social networking communities and web-based applications. Each marker on the map highlights the situation in a specific country that is barring access to major websites. Clicking on the marker opens an information window containing text, images or video describing the nature of censorship and the efforts to combat it.

The Map does not aim to index all kinds of web filtering, but rather to provide an overview of online censorship efforts related to the social web and major web 2.0 websites. This project will also track and explore the relationships between anti-censorship groups in different parts of the world who are collaborating to defend the right to access web 2.0 tools and websites.

The Access Denied Map will try to contextualize and situate that battle by focusing on two areas:

1. the crackdown on web 2.0 websites (e.g. video and photo-sharing sites like Youtube, Flickr, Dailymotion; blogging platforms such as Blogspot, Livejournal, Typepad and Wordpress; social networking websites such as Facebook, Orkut, MySpace, Wikipedia, VoIP services; etc.);
2. the amplifying of local campaigns defending the right to access web 2.0 tools and websites (circumvention techniques, online petitions and campaign.)

The Access Denied Map will lead interested readers to content that enables them to support anti-censorship movements and keeps readers abreast of the filtering situation in various parts of the world. It will also facilitate collaboration between activists, allowing them to find each other, share tactics and strategies and experiences.

The Map was created using data from the Open Net Initiative (ONI), Global Voices and the Global Voices Advocacy section. The Access Denied Map does not pretend to be exhaustive. Help expand and improve it by adding information about the filtering of web 2.0 applications either via the Advocacy Wiki site or by e-mail through the contact page.

Show your support by posting this badge on your blog!

You can simply grab the HTML code from here!

During the last six months, since the launch of Global Voices Advocacy, we have been trying to cover the increasingly serious threats to online speech occurring around the globe and the efforts to combat them. We’ve documented the arrest and detention of scores of bloggers and online authors and highlighted several anti-censorship campaigns, reports of Internet censorship, blocked blogs and websites. Our coverage so far has included stories on 25 nations, as well as exclusive interviews with activists and bloggers focused on free speech issues, in addition to an in-depth survey of online censorship cases that rarely receive media attention.

In conjunction with that mission of documenting threats on online free speech and providing a comprehensive overview of online and offline anti-censorship efforts, we are seeking to build a global network of bloggers and activists involved in online free speech and anti-censorship movements. The aim of this network is to raise awareness of online freedom of speech issues and to share tools and tactics with activists and bloggers facing similar situations in different parts of the globe. We have also been focused on building a solid infrastructure to support this network, comprising the following components:

The Guide: We recently published an updated version of the Technical Guide to Anonymous Blogging with WordPress and Tor. The Guide is the first of several planned manuals focused on the topics of circumventing internet filtering, secure pseudonymous blogging and effective advocacy through blogs that we are trying to promote as part of the Global Voices Advocacy project. The Anonymous Blogging with Wordpress and Tor guide outlines different methods of protecting one's online identity in order to avoid retaliation, especially under repressive regimes. The directions outlined in the Guide can considerably reduce the risks that a blogger's identity will be linked to his or her online writings through technical means.

A linkable, blogging-friendly, HTML version of the guide, illustrated with screen shots, is available here. We have also released the guide as a PDF file. Please link to it and download it and help disseminate this important information. Feel free as well to copy this HTML code and paste it in your blog.

With the collaboration of Tunisian activists from yezzi.org, we are now working on a French version of the guide that will soon be available for download. We are also collaborating with other activists in the field to provide Arabic, Chinese and Vietnamese versions. Please note that the Guide is released under a Creative Commons Attribution license, which means it can be translated freely into a variety of languages. If you believe that your community needs the Guide and that you can help with translating it or with finding volunteers who can do so, please let us know.

The Gallery: Thanks to the involvement of Citizen Lab's technical research director, Nart Villeneuve, we have launched the National Blockpages Gallery, a collection of screenshots of pages blocked by national filtering systems and Internet service providers. If you are in a country where web sites are being blocked, please send screenshots of the pages to advocacy[at]globalvoicesonline[dot]org, or use the Contact page to send us a link to the image.

The Wiki: This is another important project of Global Voices Advocacy designed to track information related to online anti-censorship efforts throughout the world. The wiki will be used to compile information about the technical, legal and political challenges faced by bloggers, cyberactivists and online writers. By creating a country page (you may use this page as a template to create your country page) or a persecuted blogger page (like this one), you can help raise awareness about activities being undertaken in your community and share best practices, tactics and strategy and raise questions for discussion among the wider community.

The Global Voices Advocacy Wiki will also provide a secure, password-protected online space where people can brainstorm strategies, coordinate activities among bloggers and activists and generally interact online.

The Unfiltered: Is an RSS aggregator of feeds from activist blogs and websites. It keeps track of conversations in the blogosphere relating to online freedom of speech issues. Send us your suggestions for news feeds and we'll add them to the channel!

Advox: is the newsletter of Global Voices Advocacy blog. Advox is available free to charge to anyone who subscribes. Our current list of subscribers includes activists, tools developers, experts, bloggers and people who have a general interest in issues of freedom of speech. Subscribe to Advox via this page, and receive regular site updates.

“403 Access Denied Checker”: this early alpha release is a useful piece of software that scans a large number of URLs and finds the ones that your country has banned. The “403 Access Denied Checker”, which was developed by the Tunisian blogger and activist Astrubal, is not a circumvention tool; it was designed, rather, to help activists in nations where censorship takes place to test local blockages.

In addition to these components, which we hope will form a solid foundation for the success of our anti-censorship network, we are also developing strong relationships with some of the key actors in the online anti-censorship and free speech movement, including Tor, the OpenNet Initiative, Amnesty International, NGO-in-a-box and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Thanks for reading this quick review of what's going on at Global Voices Advocacy, and stay tuned for news of a couple of surprises we're in the process of cooking up!

Show your support by posting this badge on your blog!

You can simply grab the HTML code from here!

The debate in the country continues to be the same: on one side the opposition to the Chavez government considers that this has to do with political retaliation in punishment for the channel's role of political opposition, and on the other hand, the Chavistas support the measure because it can now “liberate” the open television signal from a channel that has destabilized the country through its propaganda.

There is very little gray area in a situation so polarzied, but the best thing is to read both sides.

The Venezuelan blog directory To2blogs.com opened a special section about RCTV and is collecting all of the posts that the Venezuelan bloggers are writing about the subject. This tells us about the importance of this governmental action in the morale of the Venezuelan blogosphere, because in itself, the process is another opportunity for political confrontation, as we have become accustomed to. Blogs have been created especially about the topic, those that are in favor the measure (RCTV from the inside) or against it (I am with RCTV).

Up until now, there are more than 2,000 articles just in that site alone. There is a wealth of opinions about this conflict.

A channel without signal is a closed channel?

Within the political correctness language, “the non-renewal of the channel's license” means that it cannot transmit over open signal, which will affect the channel's economic standing and also the viewers will not be able to see it. The channel will not close, but it is restricted to transmit over cable, but because there is also no Digital TV technology in Venezuela, it ends this discussion.

Freedom of speech, public or private

The internal debates within each blog, such as the one at Slave to the PC [ES] with more than 200 comments, center upon whether the measure against the private channel represents a violation of freedom of speech.

Kira Kariakin comments:

Para mí la cuestión radica en los principios que mueven una sociedad que se precie de democrática y en esos principios están incluidos no solo la libertad de expresión, sino el derecho a la disensión, al juicio justo, a la defensa, a la protesta, al trabajo, a la propiedad privada, entre tantos otros que con este retiro de la concesión de la señal para RCTV se violentan. Luego de sentado un precedente como éste no habrá marcha atrás en cuanto a la libertad de expresión en los medios.

Iria at Resteados [ES] criticizes the quality of the channel and thinks that the problem of freedom of speech goes beyond whether or not it stays on the air:

RCTV sigue siendo hoy, el canal que hace 12 años dejé de ver por razones éticas y estéticas. No ha cambiado en estos meses desde que Chávez le dictó la sentencia de cierre.

Así que no tengo más que repetir: “Yo no estoy con RCTV”.

Lubrio asks at El Espacio de Lubrio [ES] whether opinions and protests are really restricted in Venezuela, and provides an example of the opposition march on May 19, in which there was not a single repressive event.

La oposición marchó el 19 de mayo de 2007 en defensa de RCTV. Miles de opositores marcharon pacíficamente, algo que no pasa en dictaduras. Sin embargo, varios líderes opositores hacen llamados a que el 27 de mayo la población debe permanecer en las calles creando desestabilización para sacar al gobierno, lo cual es transmitido con normalidad en Globovisión y RCTV. Hasta llaman estúpido al Presidente Chávez.

This week appears to be the end of the line for the channel. The license expires at midnight on May 27 and another Public Service station designed by the state called Tves will begin to broadcast. This is another station in the hands of the state, in addition to the official station and another four that are broadcasting on a national level.

Caracas is particularly tense and filled with protests and mobilizations for the past week. Vendors, actors and workers of the channel, university students, politicians, television viewers and members of political parties have all taken to the street … all in favor or against the shutdown of the station. Marches and gatherings are separated by geographic and ideological distances. The opposition is actively distributing audio of the protest (mp3) via the internet on the nights of the 26th and 27th in order to sound an alarm in favor of freedom of speech. The government has released the National Guard and Armed Forces in the city since Friday to prevent any public disorder.

On Monday morning, another intense reason for the political conflict will have taken place. The communications war in Venezuela will continue, even though the opposition will have one less channel at its disposal.

For a photoset, visit h_xavier's Flickr.

However, they have found, through blogging, an opportunity to express themselves, to share their works, and to promote the interest among Guatemalans, especially in poetry and short stories.

Poetry is the pioneer in the art of blogging, Pablo Bromo on his Bicicleta [ES] is blogging since 2005. Other poets blogging are Alejandro Marré with Marré v. Marré [ES] , Alan Mills and his revolver [ES] , Gerardo Sandoval with “Palabras Mayores”, and Arnoldo Gálvez with “Tercer Perfil” [ES]
The Novelist Ronald Flores even has his own domain [ES], where you can find not only his work but also critiques, suggestions and even comments on international books

Every Thursday you can read and comment on the column of Maurice Echeverría, a young, but quite successful Guatemalan writer in Buscando a Syd [ES].

You can read Claudia Navas either in Ordinaria Locura [ES] or in a collective blog called Panoptico Literario [ES], Wingston González [ES] a young Guatemalan writer just started with his blog ALFILER [ES] a collective project of e-books and critics with a blog called LIBROS MINIMOS [ES] (little books), where many of the writer-bloggers are sharing their publications and also comment on their blog .

What is important to stress is the use of technology and spaces such as blogs to promote culture, where they can attract young readers and also share their ideas with the world. All of them have at least a book published, and they have several literary prizes and book awards. And they are using the blogosphere to share their works, completely open minded to critics to build a new, free culture in Guatemala, and to let the world know what they are saying with their blogs.

Today is Francophonia Day. About 50 French-speaking countries and territories, some belonging to the Organisation Mondiale de la Francophonie and others not, will reflect on what it means to have French as a language –often alongside others. (Not to worry we will tell you what the bloggers said as soon as they've said it.)

At Global Voices, this day has special significance as well. One year ago, I was barely getting my feet wet as a novice Francophonia Editor, translating into English blurbs from the blogs of French-speaking countries who don't get much coverage in other media. Today as Global Voices Lingua team leader, I and wonderful francophones like India-based Haitian blogger Pascale Doresca, French journalist and Le Monde contributor Claire Ulrich and Malagasy blogger and GV author Lova Rakotomalala have been translating in the other direction, i.e. from English to French at Global Voices en Français. The goal is to bring more and more Francophones online into the global conversation. By translating Global Voices content into French, we hope to do just that.

See for yourself, the Global Voices en Français site is a work in progress but volunteer translators have been generating French-speaking GV content for Francophones for over a month. If you are a French-English bilingual, please contact us to join the team at francophonia [at] globalvoicesonline [dot] org.

Flashback. Inspired by Global Voices Latin-America Editor David Sasaki's workshop on GV and language at the GV 2006 Summit in Delhi, a group of francophone bloggers approached Global Voices co-founders Ethan Zuckerman, Rebecca MacKinnon and Portnoy Zheng about starting a Francophone GV page similar to Portnoy's then year old GVO China site over lunch at Delhi Day 2. Other language communities expressed interest and Project Lingua was born.

Lingua, which is still in its infancy, brings you more than just GV en Français. It comes in:

-Bangla http://bn.globalvoicesonline.org/
-Chinese (simplified) http://zh.globalvoicesonline.org/hans/
-Chinese (traditional) http://zh.globalvoicesonline.org/hant/
-French http://fr.globalvoicesonline.org/
-Portuguese http://pt.globalvoicesonline.org/
-Russian http://ru.globalvoicesonline.org/
-Spanish http://es.globalvoicesonline.org/

Please join me and the whole Lingua team by contributing your language skills to any of the above groups. For Bangla, contact Rezwan Islam at i_rezwan[at]hotmail[dot]com. For Chinese contact Leonard at romleonard[at]gmail[dot]com. For Portuguese contact José Murilo Junior at portuguese[at]globalvoicesonline[dot]org. For Russian contact me at francophonia[at]globalvoicesonline[dot]org as we are looking for an energetic person to run that group. For Spanish, contact David Sasaki at osopecoso[at]gmail[dot]com.

Francophonia Day is truly a multilingual day for us at Global Voices.

A very exciting thing is the vast array of languages in which people are blogging about Blog Day. It will be a day in which we celebrate our right to express ourselves online, and help each other to be heard above the din of spin and bad news… and in some places, help people to be heard despite efforts by governments, politicians or companies to silence independent speech online. Thanks to Israeli blogger Nir Ofir who conceived and organized Blog Day. I repeat a recent quote from about why we should all participate:

On these days, of war in the middle east, I would like to remind you all that BlogDay is a celebration of people and for people. It is a celebration of the ability to visit blogs that are different from our own culture, point of view and attitude and it is a celebration of free content written by people like you and me. Wars, in the other hand, are being foughtby governments. Let us not let governments to stop the celebration of Internet, Blogging and democracy.

Here are Nir's instructions for participating:

In one long moment In August 31st, bloggers from all over the world will post a recommendation of 5 new Blogs, Preferably, Blogs different from their own culture, point of view and attitude. On this day, blog surfers will find themselves leaping and discovering new, unknown Blogs, celebrating the discovery of new people and new bloggers.

BlogDay posting instructions:

1. Find 5 new Blogs that you find interesting

2. Notify the 5 bloggers that you are recommending on them on BlogDay 2005

3. Write a short description of the Blogs and place a a link to the recommended Blogs

4. Post the BlogDay Post (on August 31st) and

5. Add the BlogDay tag using this link: http://technorati.com/tag/BlogDay2006 and a link to BlogDay web site at http://www.blogday.org

If you are interested, Global Voices invites you to help fellow bloggers living in other parts of the world get to know you better. We're finding that people in different countries blog for different reasons, and that blogospheres in different places have developed different kinds of relationships with the rest of their culture, politics, and mainstream media. We'd like to help people understand you and your region's blogosphere better. So if you have the time, please help us do this by writing a post any time between now and Thursday (or several if you like), answering some or all of the following questions:

• Why did you start blogging?
• What do you blog about mainly?
• Do you blog in your first language or in another language, and why?
• What motivates you to keep blogging even if (like most bloggers) you're not paid much for it?
• Is your audience mainly inside your own country or around the world?
• What do your family and friends think about the fact that you are a blogger?
• Does your boss know you have a blog?
• What is the relationship between blogs in your country or region and the mainstream media?
• When you blog, how would you describe what you write? Is it part of a conversation? Is it ranting? Is it a daily diary? Is it journalism? Is it some or all of these things at different times? Does the definition matter?
• Have blogs started to have an impact on politics in your country? Have they started to influence what stories get covered in your country's media? We'd love to know some examples.

When you're done, please trackback to this post, or leave a link to your post in the comments section of this post. If you don't have a blog but would like to share your views about the state of blogs and blogging in your country, please feel free to leave a comment on this post. On Blog Day, we'll do a post or two summarizing, quoting, and linking to what you said.

Nevertheless, as the influence of political bloggers increases so does the persecution they endure from governments who wish to silence all voices of criticism. In fact, 50% of all people arrested for statements made online are blogger. It was in order to learn more about this phenomenon that I visited the international headquarters of Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans Frontières), a Paris-based organization dedicated to defending press freedom around the world. I was there to talk to Julien Pain, head of RSF's Internet Freedom Desk. I was interested in how Julien and his colleagues protect bloggers.

RSF was founded in 1985 by four French journalists who wanted to defend imprisoned journalists and protect freedom of the press around the world. The Internet Freedom Desk was a natural outgrowth of this goal. It was founded in 2001 as a direct reaction to the perceived crack-down on media after September 11th. Explained Julien, “Governments used the fight against terrorism as a pretext for controlling the internet and invading privacy. This worried us.” The Internet Freedom Desk at first focused on protecting privacy on the internet. However, when Julien took over the desk in 2003 he changed the focus to advocating on behalf of people who are jailed or persecuted because of what they write online.

In the beginning, bloggers were not the focus. The people most often targeted by authoritarian governments were “cyber dissidents,” traditional political dissidents who “went cyber” and started publishing critical material on the internet. They were not writing in blogs, but rather on traditional websites like Boxun.com, a US-based site advocating for human rights in China. Even in September 2005, when the Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber Dissidents was published, it was cyber dissidents and not bloggers who were most often targeted by repressive governments. This was because, according to Julien, political blogging was still in its infancy in most of the world and thus bloggers did not pose much of a threat. Bloggers made up only 7% of all people arrested for statements made online, compared with 50% today.

In the future, Julien expects the situation of bloggers to become more dangerous. The number of enemies of the internet is increasing. “There was a time,” he recounted, “when some governments, such as those in Sub-Saharan Africa, did not try to control cyberspace. That isn't true anymore. Governments around the world are realizing that they need to get their hands on the internet.” This new awareness by repressive governments of the power of cyberspeech does not bode well for people who blog.

So, how does the Internet Freedom Desk protect bloggers? Every morning, Julien checks to see where blogs are being blocked or bloggers arrested. He doesn't get his information from traditional media, but rather from a global network of 120 paid correspondents whose job it is to keep an eye on the internet in their respective countries and fact-check reports of blocked sites. Once a story of a blocked site has been confirmed, Julien's next task is to write a press release describing the situation. These press releases are sent to members of the traditional media (television, radio, the press) who have an ongoing relationship with RSF and use the press release as a basis on which to write a news story. Stories in the traditional media further raise awareness of the blogger's situation. In addition, the Internet Freedom Desk lobbies on behalf of bloggers and for greater internet freedom in general. Lobbying might take the form of contacting a foreign embassy, asking an official of the European Union to press a foreign government to release a blogger, or trying to influence internet legislation. Finally, RSF gives money to the families of jailed bloggers so the family can survive financially even though their prime breadwinner is in prison.

You can help the Internet Freedom Desk protect bloggers. If you become aware of a blog that is being blocked or a blogger that has been arrested, e-mail Julien at internet@rsf.org. In the case of a blocked blog, you can even go one step further and help RSF confirm the story. It is highly unlikely that a government will admit to blocking a website, so the blockage will probably never be officially confirmed. For this reason it is necessary to collect evidence from multiple sources to collaborate the story. First, have people living in the country where the site is blocked try to access the site from different ISP's (internet service providers). If people from several ISP's can't access the site, that rules out the possibility that there is a technical problem with one of the ISP's and indicates that the site is being blocked centrally. Second, try to contact the site's owner. It is always possible the owner is updating or has taken her site off-line intentionally for some reason. If the owner believes that her site is blocked, that will also strengthen the argument that a blockage has in fact occurred. Global Voices' international network of bloggers and blog-readers can be a powerful force for freedom of internet expression by making themselves the eyes and hears of organizations like RSF.

To add the Global Voices blogger advocacy badge to your own website you can copy and paste the image directly or copy and paste the code below:

Portnoy's translation hobby has now turned into a full blown GVO Chinese Translation Project, which he recently announced on his blog here. Translated GVO posts are being published on two blogs: one in mainland China using simplified Chinese characters, and the other in Taiwan using traditional Chinese characters (which is blocked in China because the so-called Great Chinese Firewall blocks many Taiwan-based blogging platforms).

Here is how Portnoy describes the translation group's motivations:

簡單來說，GVO翻譯計劃有兩個目的：

第一：透過翻譯，將世界其它地方的在地觀點傳達至中文世界。

第二：提供主流媒體忽略的視角，讓中文網絡世界能與其它國家的blogger對話。

To put it simply the GVO Translation Project has two purposes:

First, to relate perspectives from other parts of the world to the Chinese speaking world through translation.

Second, to provide points of view that the mainstream media neglects, so that the Chinese online world can converse with bloggers in other countries.

If you are fluent in Chinese and want to help translate GVO, click here for Portnoy's full write-up in Chinese on how you can get involved. There is a GVO翻譯小組 Google Group, as well as a GVO 翻譯計畫 wiki hosted at Taipedia.

If you have questions about the project, please hit the comments section on this post and Portnoy will respond. We certainly hope that Chinese speakers from all over will be interested in helping out.

Congratulations to Portnoy and his group for getting this important project off the ground!!

Naturally, Global Voices welcomes grassroots translation efforts in all languages.

About the political scenario Victor Hugo (ES) posts that even in developed countries this is controversial, and “maybe there are no agreements, no solutions, but what we are seeing in Chile, is that they are eliminating a debate because this could produce political or governance problems.”

The left wing doesn’t want to accept proposals that aren’t include in the government programme. A lot of controversy have been stirred before the project got into congress.

Esteban Valenzuela (ES), writes in his blog many of the reasons why this issue is controversial as “it doesn’t correspond submitted censure to the Leal Table (Leal is a parliament in charge of the discussion table) because he made her duty on a project that is constitutional” referring to some politician asking to censure the legal state to process the project.

Three social perspectives of why this is controversial in Chile can be found in C.A.V.G (ES)
He posts that doctors have to support life, the catholic church believes that god is the owner of the human life, and we only administrate it, and social issues just don’t have laws in this issues. He also writes that this was a family dinner conversation on Sunday.

We only have to wait to see if the politician will use the legal process to discuss this law, or if he will first be censured.

UPDATE: Video has now posted on the Reuters site. You can watch the whole thing or some selected highlights, including: Bloggers weigh in, why the complete story isn't being told, the dangers of reporting, and how partisan criticism and pressure from both left and right puts pressure on journalists.

The conclusion of the panelists seemed to be that the media isn't presenting a full picture of what's happening in Iraq, but there were no concrete ideas as to what can or should be done about this problem. Problems with the coverage include: It's too politically polarized. There isn't enough background and context due to space and time limitations in news outlets. News organizations are businesses and must tailor their reports to the interests and sensibilities of their audiences (which explains why non-Iraqi victims get more play than Iraqi victims in the Western media). There are physical limitations on what Western, other Middle Eastern, and Iraqi journalists can physically report on because the situation is so physically dangerous. Etc.

We had about 40 people or so who watched the webcast around the world and joined a live IRC chat. We had our own parallel discussion going, and I managed to relay some of the online questions into the room so that the panel could address them.

The consensus among bloggers in the chatroom was that the media does indeed fail to provide a comprehensive or truly objective picture of what is happening in Iraq. However people disagreed on why, or what is to be done. Fayrooz Hancock asked: “why when a foriegn journalist is kidnapped, the media cover it extensively. When an Iraqi journalist is kidnapped (we have two right now), the story is forgotten the next day.” The media representatives answered honestly that unfortunately, audiences back home are more concerned about victims from their own country than Iraqi victims. The concerns of the audiences do drive coverage.

Global Voices Iraq contributor Salam Adil asked why the media doesn't do a better job at explaining the context of news events: “I heard a lot of talk for and against the media. But here is the problem - things happen and the media is flailing around for answers. There is no good background reporting to explain why things are happening.” Panelists admitted that news organizations generally don't do enough on that score.. but blamed lack of audience interest or attention as the main reason why better context and background is not given. Salam responded to this on a blog post titled “the real problem with the media“: “Why are people blaming journalists - when it is the editors who are failing to inform the public or put the politicians on the spot.” I then asked his question as a follow-up to the panel. Panelist Roger Cohen of the New York Times responded that editors actually do follow and respect the guidance of journalists in the field. His claims, provoked the following exchange on the IRC chat:

[extraneous chitchat deleted]

JelloWorld [former news correspondent]: omigod b***s**t alert
MarvinHutc: Roger - wrong. You are the limiting factor and not as good as your correspondents. You being “editors”.
salam_adil: its not just the correspondents - what about commentators
JelloWorld: liar!!
RMacK [me]: i agree w/ you jello. i was fighting w/ my editors constantly
pokegirl: did you expect anything else?
JelloWorld: no. just scary to hear it again…said so bloodlessly
rachelrawl: profit. there we are. news is widgets. a product
JelloWorld: 1. report 2. ???? 3. Profit!
pokegirl: audience line. no wonder newspaper subscriptions are dropping. they have no clue what audiences want! i'm not involved with the media world at all and he's got it all wrong

Salam followed up on his blog:

my question gets answered - but it had to be asked twice and there are no editors willing to explain themselves. One former editor blames the correspondents. Oh dear.

So what about all the comment and analysis? What about all those panel shows held in CNN and the like where the speakers only argue two sides of the same point? People sit there pointing at journalists and no editors are taking the blame.

Here is the point - if we had a full debate in the media on Iraq would this tragedy have been allowed to happen in such a disastrous way? Would there be some understanding for when and how troops are to leave Iraq? Would the Pentagon have felt safe to throw away the State Department's Future of Iraq plan and go for its scorched-earth-year-zero plan?

Up to now the media as a whole has not done its job as a pillar of democracy - and its failure will be felt for years to come.

While all agreed that media coverage of Iraq is very incomplete, there was a wide range of views about whether the media is biased in a left or right direction. Several military bloggers on the chat voiced the view that the media is overwhelmingly against the U.S. presence in Iraq and reports accordingly. Said “Cannoneer04“: “The insurgency thrives on getting their message out. They require journo assistance for that.” Omar, who blogs from Baghdad at Iraq the Model remarked: “each news outlet has an agenda. and I think the way they report news from Iraq reflects that agenda. the media is telling the truth but not the whole truth. and is unfortunately adding or omitting some fine details according to their agenda.” Fay addressed the problem that embedded journalists seem to be the only non-Iraqi journalists who are able to spend much time outside of their secure locations: “Real reporting comes from walking the streets and talking to people. Most embedded journalists are being there to report what's the army doing not what people lives look like.”

The discussion continues in the blogosphere. This post will be updated with more links after the archived video gets posted on the Reuters website and key quotes get posted, giving bloggers who were asleep in the Middle East during the discussion time more opportunity to react and share their views.

Is the media telling the truth about Iraq? Do you have an opinion on this issue? How does the nature, quality, and content of media coverage of the Iraq war ultimately impact the lives of people in Iraq, the Middle East and around the planet?

In your country, how does the media’s Iraq coverage rate? Fair and balanced? Biased? Which way?  How about bloggers’ reporting and discussion of the issue? Have blogs helped clarify things or added to the confusion? We want to bring the opinions of the world’s bloggers on this issue directly into the debate.  Please join us for a live discussion on Wednesday at 22:00–24:00 GMT (6–8pm EDT).

Here’s the plan: Reuters will be hosting a panel discussion which will be videocast and audio cast via this link: http://reuters.com/IraqNewsmakers. 

Several members of the Global Voices community will be live-blogging the event: Middle East/North Africa Editor Haitham Sabbah, Iraq contributor Salam Adil, Iraqi-Australian blogger who now lives in the U.S., Fayrouz Hancock, Omar of Iraq the Model blogging from Baghdad, and Iraqi blogger Raed Jarrar (who will be present in the room in New York).

Panelists in the room will include CBS’s Lara Logan, independent Iraqi photo journalist Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, Reuters’ Iraq Bureau Chief Alastair MacDonald, Lt. Col. Steven Boylan, Chief of Strategic Communication, Combined Arms Center, U.S. Army, and others. 

We will have a live IRC chat which you can join (via the link above or on Freenode at #globalvoices. Read here for more instructions for getting on IRC, or you can use the client on the Reuters event site.). I will be present in the room as “IRC ambassador,” representing your questions and comments in the room and making sure that the panelists address as many as possible.

If you have views in advance, you can start sharing them now in several ways:

Feel free to tag your own posts that way too so we can find them easily and re-blog them for the world to see.

More links and background:

The ongoing debate about media coverage of Iraq has flared up again recently in the U.S. Last month Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz asked: Have the media declared war on the war?  Others think the Bush Administration has declared war on the media.  Lara Logan of CBS recently did an interview on CNN in which she responded to critics who think she and her fellow journalists covering Iraq are biased against U.S. efforts there. Her response angered supporters of the U.S. Iraq policy. (Click here to watch the video clip on YouTube.) The experience of kidnapped journalist Jill Caroll also highlights the risks journalists face in covering Iraq.

In the U.S., the right-wing thinks the U.S. media is biased against the war, and the left-wing thinks the U.S. media was too unthinkingly supportive of the war. There is a real question about whether the war would have happened or unfolded differently if the press had reported different facts. In 2003 a study by the Program on International Policy Attitudes found that an American person’s support for the war had a strong correlation to what media organizations they relied on for their news. After the war started, analysts point out that depending on whether you were American, European, or Middle Eastern, you got a very different view of the war through your media.

Some U.S. media organizations have concluded that their prewar coverage may not have been vigorous enough. The New York Times said in its mea culpa of May 2004: “we have found a number of instances of coverage that was not as rigorous as it should have been.” Such conclusions are unacceptable to those who think the Times was too biased against the war in the first place.

We’d really like to bring your opinions on these issues to a global audience beyond normal blog-readers through this online and offline forum. If you aren’t available to participate in the live online discussion on Wednesday, don’t worry. The Reuters web team will archive the video and make shorter highlights and quotes available as well. We’re also hoping to have a transcript of the IRC discussion. We will summarize, quote, and link to your reactions and opinions here on Global Voices in the days following the event. We’re looking forward to some lively comments threads and trackbacks!

FINAL NOTE: Global Voices participation in this Reuters’ Iraq Newsmaker event is an experiment in figuring out how to create positive interaction between mainstream media and bloggers – with the goal of bringing voices from citizens’ media to a wider audience. For more information about our relationship with Reuters, please see our FAQ.