* Amnesty International asks bloggers to show their support for freedom of speech and fellow bloggers who are denied it.
* Reporters Without Borders asks us to join a demonstration: “Everyone is invited to support this struggle by connecting to the Reporters Without Borders website (www.rsf.org) between 11 a.m. (Paris time) on Tuesday, 7 November, and 11 a.m. on Wednesday, 8 November. Each click will help to change the “Internet Black Holes” map and help to combat censorship.”
* Chris Anderson of Columbia emails that his friend Will Bradley Roland was killed by paramilitaries in Mexico. Chris writes: “Brad was a friend and colleague of mine. He was a true citizen journalist. He did more than sit behind a laptop all day and pontificate about what he thought the news meant. He wasn’t an “official” member of any news organization, but he took his video camera and his notebook and traveled all over Latin America, providing passionate reporting about events and places few Americans knew (or cared) much about. In the past five years, he has committed more acts of journalism than many paid, “professional” journalists. He was killed today, as a journalist.”
This would be the same “Reporters Without Borders” that recently made the risible claim that:
“Relations between the media and the Bush administration sharply deteriorated after the president used the pretext of ‘national security’ to regard as suspicious any journalist who questioned his ‘war on terrorism.’”
(http://www.rsf.org/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=639)
I’m afraid I don’t take Reporters Without Borders seriously anymore.
thats ok william, most reasonable people stopped taking the Bush administration seriously years ago.
Thank you for putting a name to the reporter killed in Mexico. I heard this morning on the radio that a journalist had died there. Like Anna Politkovskaya, Will Bradley Roland died a hero. His name will be remembered.
[...] IN PERIL: “Amnesty International asks bloggers to show their support for freedom of speech and fellow bloggers who are denied it” …. (buzzmachine) [...]
Tony seems blissfully unaware of recent election results to make his claim. I suspect that ‘reporting’ bears some of the responsibility.
Thanks for the notice, Jeff. I will post the info about press freedoms at a couple of other blogs, for good measure.
For those of you who want to learn more about Brad’s death, Indymedia is publishing in-depth coverage. Brad, who worked under the name Brad Will, was in Oaxaca on behalf of Indymedia when he was killed.
He even managed to videotape his own murder. His final video, published online by Indymedia, is about 16 minutes long. It features interviews and various b-roll, leading up to the street melee that ended his life. All of a sudden you hear Brad yell in pain, then the camera swings away as his colleagues try to drag him to safety. Eventually, the camera falls out of his hands, levels out, and goes black.
Brad’s colleagues at Indymedia are actively protesting his death. They’ve set up a blog, FriendsofBradWill.org, documenting their protests with video, photos, songs and text.
I have been bloging about freedom of speech since the beginning of the Danish cartoon controversy. during the last week I have posted on American free sppech and freedom of the press in 18th and 19th centuries. I have also posted on the increasing oppression of free speech in France.
[...] In that light, initially I didn’t note much “mainstream citizen-journalism” coverage of Will’s death. Looking around, I found mentions by Romenesko, boing boing, and media bistro, but most of the blogging about the murder was done by ideological fellow travelers, including Al Giordano at Narco News. Jeff Jarvis mentioned Will’s death; in the comments, Andy Carvin points to the memorial blog Brad Will: Presente. But Zulma Aguiar has been covering Will’s death as thoroughly as anyone; she points to Will’s final video work, which apparently (I have not watched it) ends with his shooting. NYC Indymedia just posted a statement from Will’s family. [...]
[...] Below is a roundup of some current threats ranging from censorship to violence, as well as some protests against them, usefully assembled by the journalist & blogger Jeff Jarvis (Colleagues in Peril). This is obviously a very partial survey, but it conveys a sense of the situation. Governments, terrorists, and criminals (not always easily distinguishable categories) all play roles in this story. [...]