Journalistic death toll in #Syria reaches 33
The death toll of journalists in Syria is mounting day by day. A total of 33 professional and citizen journalists have been killed since the start of the uprising in Syria in March last year.
The past few weeks have been particularly deadly, says a special report by the Paris-based press freedom watchdog, Reporters Without Borders (RSF). Around 10 citizen journalists have been killed since late May.
The approximation is due, says the group, to “the difficulty of verifying any information coming out of Syria. The regime has managed to impose a media blackout by posing many obstacles to visits by foreign journalists.”
In a detailed and lengthy report, RSF lists the deaths of several journalists with help from the Doha Centre for Media Freedom.
Source: Reporters without Borders
Dissertation Questoinnaire on the future of news. Anyone can participate :)
This questionnaire is on my dissertation, looking at the impact of the Internet on Professional Print Journalists, and whether Citizen Journalists could be the future of Journalism.
Answer these statements in order on a scale from 1-5.
1 being you strongly DISAGREE, 5 being you strongly AGREE.
I prefer to look at newspaper articles online.-
Newspapers are still the best possible source to find accurate news.-
Online social networking is the best possible source to find accurate news.-
Citizen journalists can be just as accurate as professional journalists.-
Bloggers and citizen journalists are not real journalists.-
The public writing their own stories online is a threat to newspapers.-
Thankyou very much for participating. You can even write a comment box and just write down the number in order on how you feel about the statements
Any further comments you would like to add?
Citizen Journalist Arrests on the Rise at #Occupy Protests in #US
savethenews.orgJosh Stearns, January 10, 2012 | Tweeted by @MeltemArikan
Late last Friday journalists and protesters gathered outside the home of New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg to speak out in defense of the First Amendment. The event drew more police than participants, which only reinforced the message the group hoped to send regarding the NYPD’s heavy-handed approach to journalists covering Occupy Wall Street.
Police are increasingly targeting citizen journalists and livestreaming groups.
Last fall in New York and Los Angeles, when the respective cities and police departments internally coordinated efforts to block and suppress press coverage of raids on Occupy encampments, the bulk of the video and images coming out of those events was from citizen journalists and livestreamers. At the time, there was a lot of talk about whether police were intentionally targeting journalists. In light of many of the firsthand accounts from journalists who were arrested and harassed, it appeared so. Ironically, while police arrested and roughed up journalists with credentials and professional equipment, those with cellphone cameras and laptops often passed in and out of police lines documenting the raids.
These citizen journalists — some of whom streamed live for days on end without a break — have been held up as vital news sources, and are symbolic of a new era of journalism in the midst of protest. Their work has been given a national spotlight, with profiles in Time, features in major newspapers and their feeds embedded around the Web. The work of people like Tim Pool, Globalrevolution.TV, Los Angeles’ Spencer Mills (aka OakFoSho) and innumerable Occupy media teams has become one of the key stories of the Occupy movement. […]
Our responsibility as fellow human beings
As you all know, if it wasn’t for the independent journalists in Gaza, none of us would know the reality of the invasion. The article below explains the incontrovertible importance of citizen journalists. As the people of Gaza are further and further marginalised from the world, it is these journalists that remind us that they DO exist, that they are fighting for their right to exist and that we need to stand in solidarity with them. Israel will take every effort, backed by the US and UK, to make sure their voices are not heard. If you’re unsure about this, just look at the BBC coverage and reporting compared with what actually happened. This piece reveals how crucial the internet is for people imprisoned in their own land (in terms of how to stay connected with the world) and it highlights the responsibility that we have to help them get their message out. We wholeheartedly recommend it.
http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/rana-baker/how-we-made-world-hear-gaza-citizen-journalists
To make things clearer, we will soon post some useful articles exploring the role of the BBC in re-writing the history of this conflict.
“Why Does Syria Make White Guys Do Stupid Things?”
—— Melissa Wall, a journalism professor who specializes in Middle East media
From Melissa’s blog:
First there was the Gay Girl Blogger of Damascus who turned out to be a white American male graduate student with too much time on his hands and an uncanny ability to fool a lot of people.
Now, it’s two “citizen journalists” who’ve taken a road trip to Syria, drawing on their extensive cultural understanding of the Middle East acquired through the Occupy movement in the US. Huh?
Look guys, Syria already has activists and citizen journalists. Who are Syrian. Who live there. Who are at terrible risk. So, please pay attention to the real hereos of Syria like blogger Razan Ghazzawi and her compatriots at the Syrian Center for Media and Free Expression and stop feeding these sideshows.
HuffPost Citizen Journalists At The Conventions: We Are The History We Have Been Waiting For
huffingtonpost.comWe want to find the best, most creative citizen journalists in America and Canada and send them, at our expense, to Tampa and Charlotte and help us cover the scene in their own way, with their own vision and their own ideas.
Do you think you could and should be one of them? All you have to do — starting today and ending on June 29th — is send us an embeddable video explaining why we should choose you, what you would cover and which medium (or mix of them) you want to use to do so.
Send the video to offthebus@huffingtonpost.com. We’ll post it with others’ videos. (See full contest rules here.)
Then, with the help of our reader/viewers, HuffPost editors will select up to 24 citizen journalists to cover the Republican Convention in Tampa, Florida, August 27th to August 30th and the Democratic Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, September 3rd to September 6th.
The winners — up to 12 for each convention — will get airfare, hotel accommodation for five nights, a per diem and access to The Huffington Post’s work/social sites near the conventions and to HuffPost and other newsmaker events.
How Citizen Journalism is Reshaping Media & Democracy
Social media and mobile technology make it easier than ever for anyone to be a journalist - a “citizen journalist.”
Major events including US Airways Flight 1549 crash into the Hudson and China’s May 2008 earthquake are among the many news stories to break on Twitter before traditional media sources.
Not only are people breaking news, citizen journalists mold and reshape media and democracy on a global scale by providing invaluable information to create a well-informed public. The result - a voice for marginalized peoples whose stories would otherwise be silenced.
Citizen journalists reshaping media & changing democracy:
Food for thought - Could emergence of citizen journalists have serious impacts on major media outlets? If so, how?
"Streets on Fire" in Libya (Warning: Graphic)
Watch this video - pulled from the Al Jazeera Live Blog in Libya - then read the info pulled from the description on YouTube.
Dedicated to the murdered peaceful protesters under dictator Gaddafi’s brutal 42 year regime, February 2011. To help, please distribute and bring attention to your local governments and media outlets.
Libya has no professional journalists beyond that of state-controlled media and television. No visas have been offered to any outside news (CNN, AlJazeera, MSNBC, CBS, etc). There are NO JOURNALISTS to record the horrific killings of peaceful protesters for democratic reform. Libya is a big country with a small population (6.5 million). All information on the revolt and subsequent clashes have been from the citizens themselves, under the possible penalty of jail or death.
For up to date information on protests, visit http://www.libyafeb17.com
Video credit: Citizen journalists (YouTube, Facebook)
Music credit: Lupe Fiasco “Streets on Fire”
No money is being made with the creation of this video, but some lives may be saved.
(via @AntDerosa)
New Media and a New Way for News
Last week my class had a guest speaker from CBS Radio. He started his presentation by asking us, “How do you get your news information?” The majority of my class including me told him that we get our news through our phones especially through Twitter.
According to The Social Media Bible, a recent poll showed that:
37% of Americans regularly go online for their news
27% picked up a newspaper on any given day.
39% turn to cable television.
Those who watched a nightly news bulletin on TV fell from 34 %to 29% over the past four years.
Some of you might laugh at the thought of getting your news through your phone, but if you are following thought leaders and major creditable news sources like CNN, Washington Post, Breaking News. Even email services like Yahoo! And AOL has news updates when you log into your account. It is important for us to realize how much our world is changing especially in the way we receive news.
Social media is growing and contributing to the way we receive news. Yesterday, I was in class when the WNBA draft was on and I looked to my Twitter to keep me updated because my childhood friend who plays for JMU was up for the draft. My phone is how I get news during the day.
Ironically, social media is, also, becoming the news breaker because now our creditable news sources are relying on the “average Joe” or citizen journalist to break news. For example, our eyes were glued on Twitter as employees of the Discovery Channel in Silver Springs, MD and nearby spectators broke the news of their hostage situation in the building.
Another example is when Ronald Isley tweeted the news that Teena Marie had passed away.
And just recently we heard the voices of Egypt rise through technology and they fed the world with social media updates of their protest.
Director of BBC’s of Global News, Peter Horrocks, told his staff in 2010 to embrace Twitter and used it to find stories. Many reporters are doing this because even I have major news sources following me on Twitter.
This can be a good or bad thing, because news sources are aggressively trying to find news and be the first to break it but sometimes fact checking is ignored and the wrong information is reported. Ethics come into play because we expect journalists to report unbiased and fact driven news. Not every citizen journalists’ tweets are reliable, and according to The New Media Relations, reporters and editors say:
o 84% of social media sources were “slightly less” or “much less” reliable than traditional media
o 49% of social media suffers from “lack of fact checking, verification and reporting standards
It is clear that the way we receive our news is shifting. Communication students and professionals have to be award of this change in order to find new and unique ways to disseminate information.
(Photo: tmforum.org)
Social media is a space for changing the world
Bloggers and micro bloggers are really citizen journalists. This internet age provides a dynamic medium for anyone with a computer or mobile device to chronicle, aggregate, archive, and disseminate thoughts, ideas, whimsy, and stories. Sometimes the the content is a comment on or a compilation of something borrowed; other times original. As you can see, AMPLIFY is a great location to start conversations and to web cast those missives across a variety of social media sites.
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http://altacities.com ~ the alternate blog ~ http://altamobile.co
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pq : people quotient : http://bit.ly/kXkHNm
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truvia : life : http://bit.ly/qyWMHx
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social current see : http://bit.ly/rgUpfD
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When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change
Amplify’d from www.dailygood.org
See this Amp at http://bit.ly/q4ZNHe
New Community Reporter Sessions
I’ve introduced a few new sessions to provide more opportunities for people to get involved - http://www.citizenseye.org/2012/02/16/its-even-easier-to-get-involved-now/
Caught in the Act
Months after the very viral Amalayer video, another video has caught the attention of netizens and gave out their rages. This time they had picked a professor from a college in Antipolo.
In the video, a college professor was at rage. Because of his anger, it took over him and he hit a female student. Some students stopped him from doing so. But because the female student became furious and fought back, the professor tried to hit her again.
This kind of behavior of people caught on cam is mostly what has been the talk of the online world. It may not be as famous as the Amalayer video but it has caught the attention of the school administration to eventually fire the professor. It has served as a proof of the maltreatment of a professor to her students.
Nowadays, everyone has recognized the power of social media to disseminate information. Professional journalists have been transitioning from the conventional print media journalists to become multimedia journalists to be able to maximize the use of online platforms. The same tool is also now being used by so-called “citizen journalists” to spread stories which is then picked up by many netizens. With the use of their cell phones, they are able to record videos of incidents, calamities and happenings that later on will be posted online.
The problem rising from citizen journalists is their lack of their ethics. They don’t recognize their limits in reporting such. The cruel perpetrator caught on camera becomes the victim of many cyber bullies. The initial respond of netizens is to quickly react about the issue by posting nasty comments on how the situation turned out bad. There are two sides of the story. The other side has the right to be heard.
Like most social media users, these citizen journalists must be responsible in what they posts online. Their good intentions in reporting such incidents can turn out to something worst. They must be able to realize what the repercussions of their actions. Like the GMA social media campaign goes, “Think before you click.”
