81–90 of 139 posts
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Sadly looking at the map in the OP, the UK is reported as 0 journalists imprisoned. Between Julian Assange and Craig Murray that seems low.
Usual problem - how do you define a journalist and how do you say whether they've been jailed for being a journalist or not.
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Usual problem - how do you define a journalist and how do you say whether they've been jailed for being a journalist or not.
How to define a journalist is a tough problem I can't easily solve, but I'd be inclined to say that once you do, any of them being in jail for any reason should count. The risk of overcounting the few journalists who might genuinely commit crimes unrelated to their journalism seems lower than the risk of undercounting journalists who were in reality jailed because of their journalism, but were officially for invented…
It's important to remember how vulgar early (and pre) 20th century journalism was. Largely opinion, hearsay and sensationalism.
Later, journalism consolidated and developed standards to sell itself. Once technology put it in everyone's hands, it became so cheap that standards could no longer be a moat. We're back to vulgarity. I don't think there is any significant difference in the market between someone who went to the Columbia School of Journalism and a blogger.
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Don't we all comment on public affairs online?
Yeah this is the crux of the problem. As the definition of journalist becomes so broad that everyone falls into this category so to does the number of journalists going to prison. The counter is that if there is too strict a definition of journalism - you put to many controls on the group. It almost feels like you should need some kind of standard to qualify as a journalist (again that has issues with it as well). It…
How so? I don't think 'journalist' is any kind of privileged or protected group - so you don't lose anything by not being a journalist do you?
Craig Murray, friend of Julian Assange, was just released from a Scottish prison for the crime of jigsaw identification of some of the accusers in the trial of former First Minister, Alex Salmond despite the fact that many journalists from mainstream media had published information that allowed their readers to identify some of the accusers explicitly. So it's not just a problem of dictatorships in second or third wo…
Well a journalist -a US citizen- (Jamal Khashoggi) was killed in a foreign (Saudi) embassy; evidence (including, Audio evidence) was presented of the killing and was found to be credible, CIA concluded that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the killing.... then.... what happened? Nothing. In a world where you can kill a US journalist so brazenly without any repercussions, would you be surprised journalis…
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/10/how-tea...
- A small increase in total jailed journalists (roughly matching world population growth, and the delta is a small discrete count which would yield large error bounds)
- Specific examples of horrific events (matching atrocities that governments have been more than willing to commit in 2020, 2019, 2018, ...)
Without looking at longer time scales (e.g., over the last 10-20 years journalist jailings significantly outpace population growth) or providing some justification for why circumstances have changed and we would expect journalist jailings to not pace population growth (e.g., if there are significantly fewer journalists per capita (not sure if that's true, just hypothetically)), a story that matches the evidence better is that lots of countries were horrible to journalists in years past and they're repeating that bad behavior now.
To be clear, that's not saying that the overall problem shouldn't be fixed or even that their framing isn't correct, but...it's not exactly hard to provide evidence that _actually_ backs up their claim; why wouldn't they?
Investigative journalism isn’t a legally protected activity and the nature of the job involves running afoul of the law if you want to uncover anything worthwhile.
The article's framing of the problem (increased authoritarianism, decreased tolerance for reporting) leaves a lot to be desired without more evidence. The evidence is: - A small increase in total jailed journalists (roughly matching world population growth, and the delta is a small discrete count which would yield large error bounds) - Specific examples of horrific events (matching atrocities that governments have be…
Sure, more numbers would help. I'm not sure what sort of mindset would make someone immediately jump to defending the jailing of journalists though.
> The article's framing of the problem (increased authoritarianism, decreased tolerance for reporting) leaves a lot to be desired without more evidence.
I think democratic backslide / the rise of authoritarianism globally is broadly recognized at this point. It's not my area of expertise though.
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The absence of assange et al is notable but it's not a bad thing to be campaigning for the release of journalists in other countries.
The conspicuous absence of Assange is indeed very bad for the purported campaign for the release of journalists "in other countries". Such other countries can now rightfully point to the hypocrisy of this campaign. What the CPJ is doing (omitting Assange in its list) is effectively harmful for the journalists jailed in other countries.
They seem to be fighting his corner, they're just not designating him specifically as a journalist.
I think demanding too much moral purity from campaigners is damaging. The perfect is very much the enemy of the good.
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I think this is where the question of "what is a journalist?" comes into play. What legitimate journalism has Project Veritas done? Wikipedia makes them seem more like a political hit squad than legitimate journalists: == Project Veritas unsuccessfully attempted to mislead The Washington Post into publishing false information about the Roy Moore sexual misconduct allegations in 2017; the Post won a Pulitzer Prize aft…
Well Wikipedia and the NYT are hardly unbiassed sources, but for an independent left wing view I suggest you read what Glen Greenwald wrote: "This not-a-real-journalist tactic was and remains the primary theory used by those who justify the ongoing attempt to imprison Julian Assange. In demanding Assange's prosecution under the Espionage Act, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) wrote in The Wall Street Journal that “Mr. Ass…
I don't believe Glen Greenwald to be either unbiased or representative of the "independent left wing view". He seems to exist to encourage the exact type of strawman you just created.