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Akhlis Purnomo laments the state of investigative journalism in Indonesia.
…there has not been much of investigative journalism in Indonesia. Most of them are not even investigative, but more like reportage on everyday issues….These are then labelled as investigative by producers and TV stations.
Claire Ulrich moderating the workshop “What role for bloggers and citizen journalists within newsrooms?” at 4M 2013 Montpellier (photo by Suzanne Lehn)
The media mogul Rupert Murdoch has filed for divorce from his Chinese-born wife Wendi Deng. Deng is his third wife and they have two daughters. The divorce has prompted a wave of speculation online that she married Americans with ulterior motives of climbing the social letter and getting richer. ChinaSmack looks at the online reactions.
Mia Freedman of popular website Mamamia attacks the “disgraceful” behaviour of shock jock Howard Sattler when he asked Australia's Prime Minister Julia Gillard whether her partner Tim was gay. [Wikipedia: 'A shock jock is a type of radio broadcaster or disc jockey who entertains listeners or attracts attention using humor and/or melodramatic exaggeration that a notable portion of the listening audience may find offensive.']
Freedom of the Press worldwide in 2013. Source: Reporters without Borders on Facebook
“Worldcrunch Impact, solutions without borders” is a collaborative funding campaign for “the first truly global effort at Solutions Journalism”. With the project, Paris-based Worldcrunch hopes to report on one urgent issue monthly, offering “not just the problems, but real solutions”. The project will be funded if at least $15,000 is pledged by July 3, 2013. With 23 days to go, the Kickstarter campaign has 84 backers donating $6,630.
Vachanalays (newspaper reading centres) are a familiar sight in most neighbourhoods in Bombay where locals read the papers and discuss the day’s news. Sans Serif reports how they are slowly going out of fashion. The blog also highlights photoblogger M.S. Gopal's excellent photo essay on the subject at Mumbai Paused.
Transparency International (TI) and the Instituto Prensa y Sociedad (Press and Society Institute, IPYS), with the kind support of the Open Society Foundations, are organising a new edition of the Latin American Investigative Journalism Award. The prize will award US$30,000 to the highest quality journalism published in the press, on the radio or television, or in any online medium, in Latin America and the Caribbean in 2012.
You can find more details at the Transparency International website.
“Who's next for Liquidation?” – a poster at today's journalist protest in Skopje, referring to the official code name of the operation (“Liquidation”), in which journalist Tomislav Kezarovski was captured along with others on May 28. Photo by Biserka Velkovska/@bvelkovska, used with permission.
Macedonian journalists gathered [mk; video and text: sq, mk] in front of the Criminal Court in the capital Skopje today to protest against the arrest of their colleague, Tomislav Kezarovski, according to this note [en] posted in the Macedonian Facebook group titled “Journalists and citizens in defense of the right to freedom of information.” It appears that the official reason for Kezarovski's 30-day detention is a story he wrote five years ago for a publication that no longer exists. On the other hand, he has been investigating the death of Nikola Mladenov, publisher and editor of an independent media outlet, for the past two months. More »
South Korea's independent investigative journalism site, NewsTapa, together with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), released its initial list containing names of South Korean corporate moguls who allegedly have founded paper companies in the British Virgin Islands to avoid tax. Net users in Daum Agora filed an online petition [ko] calling for severe punishment on those suspected to have illegally evade tax.
State-controlled media outlet, the People's Daily, has recently published a series of editorials on Dishonest Americans. Like many other propaganda pieces, social media users attack its hypocrisy with questions like “Why do our officials keep sending their wives and sons to this immoral and dishonest country?” More from Beijing Cream.
Sans Serif reports about a legal battle between Indian media giant Times Publishing House and Aparajita Lath, a student of the National Institute of Juridical Sciences (NUJS) for her 669-word blog post in February 2013 capturing the Times group’s trademark tussle with the Financial Times of London.
A DeviantART website user wrote how South Korea's Children and Youth Protection law, that cracks down on child porn, can greatly undermine freedom of expression. Rough English translation appears in the latter half of the post. (There soon will be a detailed GV post on this issue)
The Ministry of Communication of Angola threatens to suspend the public license of the Radio Despertar station and of the Folha 8 newspaper, despite the measure being unconstitutional. The government says they encourage public disorder. The announcement was made on Wednesday, May 15, as reported the Voz da América [pt] website. Some owners of the Radio have ties with the main opposition party UNITA [en]. In 2012, the police confiscated computers of the Folha 8.
Ukrainian blogger Olena Bilozerska's User Winner prize in the Bobs 2013 Best Blog Ukrainian nomination has been revoked, writes [ru] Mustafa Nayyem, the Ukrainian member of the Bobs 2013 jury, on his Facebook page, linking [ru] to the official statement [uk] posted on the Bobs 2013 website. The scandal (more on it in this GV text) seems far from being over in Ukraine, however, as many netizens are displeased with the decision. Nayyem's Facebook announcement has generated over 150 comments so far, many of them critical of the contest organizers in general and Nayyem in particular. In one of the few English-language comments in that thread, Andreas Umland, a Kyiv-based German political scientist, writes:
More than 3,000 students are participating in the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas‘ second Massive Open Course (MOOC) in Spanish: “Introduction to Data Journalism.” The course began on May 13, but registration is still open.
Blogger and activist Masaki C. has something to say about English media coverage of LGBT politics in Japan, arguing that they simplify the issue down to marriage equality:
They are, in constructing LGBT politics in Japan as such, erasing local history and ignoring dialogues taking place among queers in Japan.
Online journalism and news portals are gaining popularity in Nepal as evident in Surath Giri's list of 20 online newspapers. However, according to reports, the Ministry of Information and Communications of Nepal has recently formed a five-member committee to register, regulate and manage online news.
WeiboSuite is a new toolbox for journalists and netizens. Created by data journalists from the University of Hong Kong, WeiboSuite provides English translations of censored materials on Weibo and tools to translate textual images.
Mehwish khan at ProPakistani compiles a list of sites which are providing live updates and results of the Pakistan general elections 2013.
kiskeácity links to a letter which “echoes many of the issues Haitians face with the White Savior Industrial Complex…and its army of 3,000 NGOs, 12,000 UN troops, innumerable speakers for Haiti, appropriators of Haiti's ancestral religion, culture and music and other so-called ‘allies’ who silence Haitians for a profit while assuming their voice.”
I don’t think this cigarette newspaper ad was necessary and it was in very poor taste.
aka_lol takes issue with a cigarette advertisement, which apparently found loopholes around the prohibitions applied to such advertising under the Tobacco Control Act.
Gulnara Karimova, the daughter of the President Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan, is very active in social media, and her provocative Twitter posts and photos shared on Instagram often raise eyebrows among the mostly conservative audiences in Uzbekistan and other countries in the region. Blogger Ayana Seidimbek presents a collection of the most controversial posts and images the ‘Uzbek princess’ has shared in social media.
More »Colombians commemorated World Press Freedom Day showing their outrage over the May 1 attack against journalist Ricardo Calderón from Semana magazine. Calderón was investigating corruption among military officers [es]. On Twitter the hashtag #NoNosCallarán [es] (we will not be silenced) is trending in Colombia.
On FT.com's beyondbric blog, Graham Stack writes [en] about the “murky takeover” and “a tangled history of offshore ownership” of the Ukrainian TV station TVi, 31 of whose journalists resigned [uk] on April 29.
The web was abuzz over the photo of 20 of South Korean pageant contestants who all look uncannily alike, and jeering comments were made against South Korean women's beauty standards. However, some Korean net users, pointing out some media coverage can be misleading, posted another photos of contestants which people can tell them apart and explained that it is more of the ‘photoshop’ issue- the overuse of airbrushing.
Haiti does not need more prisons, it needs better prisons and fewer prisoners.
Haiti Chery provides some interesting statistics which support his view.
On April 26, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) issued a statement [en; fr; uk - .pdf] on the situation at the Ukrainian TV station TVi:
Reporters Without Borders condemns the sudden change of management at the opposition TV station TVi, announced three days ago, and is disturbed to learn that ensuing internal disputes have resulted in broadcasting being suspended. [...]
The International Journalists’ Network, IJNET, recently announced the release of the Spanish translation [es] of The Data Journalism Handbook, “a free, open-source book that aims to help journalists use data to improve journalism.”
Both the original English version and the Spanish translation are freely available online under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license, which means that they can be freely downloaded, shared and built upon.
Nora Abdulkarim shares a Saudi-American perspective on the Boston Bombings.
She explains:
I won't try to simplify what is inherently complex. I will simply present and reflect, and nothing more. No fancy theorizing, no overarching message. This post is only meant to be a glimpse at personal identity – that wild thing which one cannot pin down.
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