Threats to Journalism…
FNC’s Steve Centanni penned an article in his (and my) hometown paper, The San Jose Mercury News…
According to research by the Committee to Protect Journalists, a New York-based advocacy group, 15 journalists have been kidnapped in Gaza since 2004. All were freed and unharmed.
But these abductions in Gaza were just part of a much larger picture. Reporters Without Borders found that at least 871 members of the media were detained around the world last year, and 129 have been imprisoned so far this year. They, too, were just doing their jobs. And some paid a very high price indeed.
The Committee to Protect Journalists reports 31 journalists have been killed in the first seven months of 2007. Reporters Without Borders puts the number at 59. This is not only a tragedy for those hardworking journalists and their families, but for the larger cause of freedom of speech, freedom of the press.
Journalists must be free to cover difficult stories in dangerous places. The riots, wars and humanitarian disasters are the visible fault lines of our society. If we don’t shed light on them, we lose a vital opportunity - a chance to save lives, lift people out of poverty and build the foundations of a more peaceful world.
These are real journalists, those who get out there and risk their lives to tell the story. Not some desk jockey who pretends to be a journalist and makes millions doing it while othes are dying. But in the case of Iraq for example, I’m not sure how you convince warring sides to respect the rights of journalists and not kill them.
Comment by Alison — August 27, 2007 @ 9:29 am
I appreciate and respect the work of Centanni and many of his fellow reporters, but maybe the best thing is to deprive media coverage to the terrorists who run places like Gaza. The media coverage they do get from the West mostly serves to spew their bile around the world.
As for “shedding light” and “build[ing] the foundations of a more peaceful world,” most of those terrorist hellholes have much more serious problems than a lack of airtime and ink in Western media.
And it’s not poverty that drives the biggest threat to us today - radical Islamist terrorism - but a desire to impose their interpretation of their religion on the rest of the world. Building nursery schools and giving them dental care won’t change that. Fundamental changes to their societies have to come first.
Comment by Amused — August 27, 2007 @ 10:32 am