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The future of journalism: Latest issue, autumn 2014

01 Oct 14 | Magazine, Volume 43.03 Autumn 2014

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”The explosion of social media, the rise of citizen reporters, the dangers of freelancing in a war zone, the invention of new technology: journalism is clearly going through its biggest changes in history. But will the public know more or less as a result?”][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]

This is the question we explore in great depth in the latest issue of Index on Censorship magazine. Contributors include Iona Craig (2014 winner of the Martha Gellhorn Prize for her reporting in Yemen); Index award nominee Dina Meza and the BBC’s Samira Ahmed. We also have an exclusive, new short story by acclaimed novelist, playwright and author Ariel Dorfman.

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And Australia’s race commissioner, Tim Soutphommasane, speaks out on how the right to be a bigot should not override the right to be free from the effects of bigotry.

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”SPECIAL REPORT: THE FUTURE OF JOURNALISM” css=”.vc_custom_1483551011369{margin-right: 0px !important;margin-left: 0px !important;border-bottom-width: 1px !important;padding-top: 15px !important;padding-bottom: 15px !important;border-bottom-color: #455560 !important;border-bottom-style: solid !important;}”][vc_column_text]

Back to the future: Iona Craig on journalists trying to stay safe in war zones

Digital detectives: Ray Joseph on the new technology helping Africa’s journalists investigate

Re-writing the future: Five young journalists talk on their hopes and fears for the profession – from Yemen, India, South Africa, Germany and the Czech Republic

Attack on ambition: Dina Meza on a Honduran generation ground down by fear

Stripsearch cartoon: Martin Rowson envisages an investigative reporter meeting Deep Throat

Generation why: Ian Hargreaves asks on how the powerful may or may not be held to account in the future

Making waves: Helen Womack reports from Russia on the radio station standing up for free media

Switched on and off: US journalist Debora Halpern Wenger on TV’s power shift from news producers to news consumers

TV news will reinvent itself (again): Taylor Walker interviews a veteran TV reporter on the changes ahead

Right to reply: Samira Ahmed on how the BBC tackles viewers’ criticism

Readers as editors: Stephen Pritchard on how news ombundsmen create transparency

Lobby matters: Political reporter Ian Dunt on the push/pull of journalists and politicians inside Britain’s corridors of power

Funding news freedom: Glenda Nevill looks at innovative ways to pay for reporting

Print running: Will Gore on how newspapers innovate for new audiences

Paper chase: Luis Carlos Díaz on overcoming Venezuela’s newsprint shortage

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”IN FOCUS” css=”.vc_custom_1481731813613{margin-right: 0px !important;margin-left: 0px !important;border-bottom-width: 1px !important;padding-top: 15px !important;padding-bottom: 15px !important;border-bottom-color: #455560 !important;border-bottom-style: solid !important;}”][vc_column_text]

Free thinking? Australia’s race commissioner Tim Soutphommasane on bigotry

Guarding the guards: Jemimiah Steinfeld on China’s human rights lawyers becoming targets

Taking down the critics: Irene Caselli investigates allegations that Ecuador’s government is silencing social media users

Maid equal in Brazil: Claire Rigby on the Twitter feed giving voice to abuse of domestic workers in Brazil

Home truths in the Gulf: Georgia Lewis on how UAE maids fear speaking out on maltreatment

Text messaging: Indian school books are getting “Hinduised”, reports Siddarth Narrain from India

We have to fight for what we want: our editor, Rachael Jolley, interviews the OSCE’s Dunja Mijatovic on 20 years championing free speech

Decoding defamation: Lesley Phippen’s need-to-know guide for journalists

A hard act to follow: Tamsin Allen gives a lawyer’s take on Britain’s libel reforms

Walls divide: Jemimah Steinfeld speaks to Chinese author Xiaolu Guo about a life of censorship

Taking a pop: Steven Borowiec profiles controversial South Korean artist Lee Ha

Mapping media threats: Melody Patry and Milana Knezevic look at rising attacks on journalists in the Balkans

Holed up in Harare: Index’s contributing editor Natasha Joseph reports from southern Africa on the dangers of reporting in Zimbabwe

Burma’s “new” media face threats and attack: Burma-born author Wendy Law-Yone looks at news in the run up to the impending elections

Head to head: Sascha Feuchert and Charlotte Knobloch debate whether Mein Kampf should be published

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”CULTURE” css=”.vc_custom_1481731777861{margin-right: 0px !important;margin-left: 0px !important;border-bottom-width: 1px !important;padding-top: 15px !important;padding-bottom: 15px !important;border-bottom-color: #455560 !important;border-bottom-style: solid !important;}”][vc_column_text]

Political framing: Kaya Genç interviews radical Turkish artist, Kutlug Ataman

Action drama: Julia Farrington on Belarus Free Theatre and the upcoming Belarus election

Casting away: Ariel Dorfman, a new short story by the acclaimed human rights writer

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”COLUMNS” css=”.vc_custom_1481732124093{margin-right: 0px !important;margin-left: 0px !important;border-bottom-width: 1px !important;padding-top: 15px !important;padding-bottom: 15px !important;border-bottom-color: #455560 !important;border-bottom-style: solid !important;}”][vc_column_text]

Index around the world: Alice Kirkland gives a news update on Index’s global projects

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”END NOTE” css=”.vc_custom_1481880278935{margin-right: 0px !important;margin-left: 0px !important;border-bottom-width: 1px !important;padding-top: 15px !important;padding-bottom: 15px !important;border-bottom-color: #455560 !important;border-bottom-style: solid !important;}”][vc_column_text]

From the factory floor: Vicky Baker on listening to the world’s garment workers via new technology

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”SUBSCRIBE” css=”.vc_custom_1481736449684{margin-right: 0px !important;margin-left: 0px !important;border-bottom-width: 1px !important;padding-bottom: 15px !important;border-bottom-color: #455560 !important;border-bottom-style: solid !important;}”][vc_column_text]Index on Censorship magazine was started in 1972 and remains the only global magazine dedicated to free expression. Past contributors include Samuel Beckett, Gabriel García Marquéz, Nadine Gordimer, Arthur Miller, Salman Rushdie, Margaret Atwood, and many more.[/vc_column_text][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][vc_single_image image=”76572″ img_size=”full”][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]In print or online. Order a print edition here or take out a digital subscription via Exact Editions.

Copies are also available at the BFI, the Serpentine Gallery, MagCulture, (London), News from Nowhere (Liverpool), Home (Manchester), Calton Books (Glasgow) and on Amazon. Each magazine sale helps Index on Censorship continue its fight for free expression worldwide.

SUBSCRIBE NOW[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Current issue: Seeing the future of journalism – will the public know more?

16 Sep 14 | Magazine, Volume 43.03 Autumn 2014

Index on Censorship autumn magazine

In the autumn issue of Index on Censorship magazine, don’t miss: Burmese-born author Wendy Law-Yone on the challenges the Burma’s media face in the run-up to the next election; TV journalist Samira Ahmed on how television channels should respond to viewers’ complaints; award-winning foreign correspondent Iona Craig reports from Yemen on threats to journalism in conflict zones; plus a brand new short story from playwright and author Ariel Dorfman.

While debates on the future of the media tend to focus solely on new technology and downward financial pressures, we ask: will the public end up knowing more or less? Will citizen journalists bring us in-depth investigations? Will crowd fact-checking take over from journalists doing research? Who will hold power to account? The subject is tackled from all angles, from our writers from across the globe.

Also writing for this issue are Australia’s race commissioner Tim Soutphommasane; human rights lawyer Tamsin Allen on defamation; and novelist Kaya Genc. From South Korea Steven Borowiec talks to controversial artist Lee Ha, and in London political editor Ian Dunt walks the corridors of political power in the UK’s Houses of Parliament and asks if journalists there get too close to government.

Children of the internet: Free speech in the digital age

02 Jun 14 | Digital Freedom, News and features, Young Writers / Artists Programme

(Image: Shutterstock)

Unlike any previous time in the history of the world, there is a generation growing up today with unprecedented knowledge and power at their immediate and constant disposal. Their voices cannot be silenced, they can communicate with each other instantaneously from anywhere in the world. They are children of the internet, and they are politically and socially empowered in ways that are not yet clearly understood. Increasingly defining their identities online as much as offline, net-powered Millenials are collectively reshaping social norms — defining the legacy their generation will leave society. The internet is a product of, and a critical factor in, this legacy.

For example, the internet is a key medium for personal expression. Deliberately open-access and open-source architectures that transcend national boundaries means that the online world is a place where its users become increasingly accustomed to possessing both a platform and a voice regardless of their status in society. Even where it is dangerous to criticise politicians, or to practice a faith, or to be homosexual, the internet provides shelter in anonymity and the chance to meet like-minded people. In this way, the children of the internet have access to support, advice and assistance, but also to allies. Even the most isolated human can now take action with the power of a collaborative collective rather than as a lone individual, and they do so with an attitude that has become acclimatised to unfettered freedom of speech.

For the internet generation, this translates to their political actions online and often erupts into their offline behaviour, too. Online petitions gain infinitely more traction than their pen-and-paper twins, and the more anarchic side of the internet takes no prisoners in parodying public figures, as evinced recently with the numerous revisions of the recent “beer and bingo” tax cut advertisements produced by the ruling coalition. More controversially, Wikileaks infamously released hundreds of thousands of classified government communiqués, and “hacktivist” groups such as Anonymous make their presence felt with powerful retaliations against firms and governments that they perceive to have suppressed internet freedom. Even high-security sites such as the US Copyright Office and Paypal have been targeted — civil disobedience that is symptomatic of the new, sharing internet generation that is paradoxically mindful of personal privacy and disparaging of public opacity.

For the strongest demonstration of the way this attitude and power translates, look no further than the violent reaction of a primarily young body of protesters during the Arab Spring and in Ukraine. The internet was the conduit through which popular campaigns against ruling regimes transformed into widespread civil disobedience and a full-blown political movement. Empowered with access to forms of political commentary comparatively free of governmental intervention and the ability of every protester to act as a professional journalist by virtue of a camera phone and a Twitter account, the children of the internet communicated, mobilised and acted to cast away governments from Tunisia to Yemen; Egypt twice over. They made their voices heard: not at the ballot box as previous generations might have, but in the streets of Cairo and Sana’a and the virtual spaces of Facebook and Blackberry Messenger. Small wonder then, that governments targeted and blocked social networking sites to quell dissent. In many countries the internet was shut down altogether.

Yet, the internet persevered — as John Gilmore, co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation noted: “The internet treats censorship as a malfunction and routes around it”. Despite the long running tussle between the users of the internet and governments who seek to regulate it, it remains untameable. In each instance, almost immediately after internet usage has been restricted, information has circulated about circumventing government regulations — even total shutdowns have been dodged through external satellite connections.

Powered overwhelmingly by the young, the internet is changing the way our societies are structured. Its effects upon our civilisation are poorly understood, particularly among young people who have never known a world without the internet. Ultimately, however, it has done more for individual freedom than any other development in the last half-century. It grants any person a voice with mere access to a keyboard and a broadband connection. It holds governments to account in new and innovative ways, and most crucially, it is an irreversible development. An entire generation defines itself, subconsciously, through the internet; previous such advancements came only through the invention of the printing press, radio and television. One thing is for certain — as broadband usage approaches saturation in many developed countries, we are all children of the internet now.

This article was originally posted on 2 June, 2014 at indexoncensorship.org

British news blind spots: Omission and obscurity

28 Mar 14 | News and features, Politics and Society, Religion and Culture, United Kingdom, Young Writers / Artists Programme

(Illustration: Shutterstock)

“The media tells you what to think!”

That’s a basic criticism of Western journalism, whether it’s of the “CNN controls your mind” or “Left Liberal Elites have monopolised the agenda” variety. Most people reject this, rightly, as a straw-man. We pride ourselves on our ability to sift information, reject weak arguments and come to our own points of view.

A more worrying criticism is that the news directs what you think about. Decisions to give Story X prominence and headlines, and to bury or spike Story Y, mean most of us can only encounter X. Newsworthy stories become obscure if drowned out by others or omitted entirely. We’re denied investigation or campaigning on vital issues because nobody knows they exist.

In Britain this is not what we typically mean by ‘censorship’, not the recourse of despots or prudes. Nevertheless, self-censorship with market and readership in mind denies all but the most devout news-addict important stories. And without the news we can’t have comment pieces, columns, Twitter debates and opinion blogs.

Consider the EuroMaidan protests in Kiev through spring. Coverage gave the impression of a pro-EU crowd led by a heavyweight champion, with a worrying fringe of violent nationalists – Svoboda and Right Sector. This followed the ‘mainstream-extremist’ simplification presented in Egypt, Syria and Libya. Other crucial groups were ignored: LGBT activists set up the protest’s hotlines, feminists ran the makeshift hospitals, Afghan war veterans defended them.

The world’s focus on Kiev and Crimea drove other issues from the spotlight. The Syrian civil war has hardly featured recently, but that conflict has far more casualties, worse upheaval and more immediate consequences for Britain. Refugees are currently en route to claim asylum – this is the last we heard. Similarly, the Philippines dominated the winter’s news after Typhoon Haiyan. Now it’s forgotten in favour of flight MH370 despite the catastrophic ongoing humanitarian crisis, again with more lives at stake.

The Arab Spring is itself a good example of one narrative deafening public consciousness. How many of us knew that at the same time as protests ignited Yemen and Syria in July 2011, Malaysia’s government gassed peaceful crowds and arrested 1,400 protesters after tens of thousands marched for electoral reform? It’s tempting to wonder whether greater coverage, and greater international pressure, could have supported the democratic reforms demanded.

Closer to home, consider the brief uproar caused by the 2013 UK policing bill, drafted to outlaw ‘annoyance and nuisance’ and give police arbitrary powers to ban groups from protest areas. Although the drafts were publicly available, and campaign groups voiced outrage swiftly, left-wing papers took notice only after the bill had passed the Commons. The bill was softened, not by popular pressure or national debate, but by a few conscientious Lords.

Readers could forgive the media for prioritising other stories if they are more pressing. When headlines are crowded by non-events, however, this seems a poor excuse. The British news spectrum was recently obsessed with Labour politicians Harriet Harman and Patricia Hewitt, who worked for the National Council for Civil Liberties (now ‘Liberty’) in the 1970s. That council granted affiliate status to the now-banned Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE). The Daily Mail made a huge splash about its PIE investigation in February, despite uncovering no new information. That paper alone had reported the same story in 1983, 2009, 2012 and 2013. Eventually the BBC, online world and print media all covered the controversy, meaning more worthy issues lost precedence.

Madeleine McCann has dominated countless front pages, reporters chewing over the barest scraps of Portuguese police leaks. No real progress has been made for years. Pundits admit the story retains prominence largely because the McCanns are photogenic, and similar stories would have fallen off the agenda. There are hundreds of similar unsolved child disappearances, just from the UK. Drug scares, MMR vaccine hysteria, celeb gossip and royal gaffes (not to mention Diana conspiracies) complete the non-story roster.

If this seems regrettable but harmless, consider sexual violence. Teacher-child abuse, violent assaults and gang attacks deserve coverage, but their sheer news monopoly perpetuates the public’s false idea of ‘real rape’. Most sexual abuse is between couples or acquaintances: campaigners have shown the myth that ‘real rape’ must involve a violent stranger impedes both prosecution and victim support.

There is no silver bullet, just as no one news organisation can really be blamed for censorship by omission. Few people want or need constant updates on upheaval in South Sudan or Somalia – but we could be reminded they’re happening at all. Editors will always reflect on what is vogue, what will sell, and a diverse free press ensures a broad range of stories. Perhaps the rise of online citizen-reporting can bridge the gap. Nevertheless, the danger of noteworthy events falling into obscurity should niggle at the back of the mind – for those who know enough to think about it.

This article was posted on March 28, 2014 at indexoncensorship.org

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