links for 2008-04-24
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How the Pentagon feeds news pundits
April 24, 2008
April 21, 2008
China and the Internet
Report by Duncan Stanworth of BBC Monitoring at the "Beijing Olympics 2008: Winning Press Freedom" conference in Paris on 19 April
China is attempting to control its citizens' online activities, while using the internet - including websites in the West - to fight its critics and to spread official ideologies, delegates at the "Beijing Olympics 2008: Winning Press Freedom" conference in Paris have heard.
Under the proposals, governments should agree that the web must be regulated via enforceable international standards. Only "trustworthy, valuable" material should be permitted, and "harmful and unhealthy" content blocked, the official Chinese statement had said. Under China's proposed rules for internet governance, those with "ulterior motives" would be barred from the internet, and governments would be able to punish violators. The proposals legitimized censorship and oppression, Winfield said.
Tactics and tools
China is "the world's most pervasive filterer", said Prof Ronald Deibert of the University of Toronto, co-founder of the OpenNet Initiative (ONI), an academic joint venture which monitors and documents internet censorship free from government interference.
China's filtering tactics are centralized and consistent, usually involving domain name system (DNS) filtering (a redirecting mechanism); internet protocol (IP) address blocking (which can lead to the mass blocking of sites that share the same IP); and keyword filtering, which detects certain words in a site's URL, Deibert said. A slow unblocking of English-language sites - including the BBC News website - is under way in the run-up to the Beijing Olympics. However, local-language sites will remain blocked, he predicted. Savvy web users can overcome DNS filtering by using numerical versions of URLs, or by accessing public proxy servers. The latter can be insecure, so ONI has created Psiphon, an encrypted web proxy system. It allows surfers in a country where the internet is filtered to call up web pages via a trusted computer in another country. Deibert described it as a tool that can be used within "social networks of trust" - among friends and family, for instance.
Citizen journalists
"China cannot control the flow of information anymore," said Watson Meng, founding editor of the US-based Chinese news site Boxun. The site - which hosts more than 2,000 blogs - was blocked by the Chinese authorities within two months of its launch in 2000.
Boxun's contributors include citizen journalists within China, who report on incidents that the official media ignore, including accidents, protests and police violence.Their activities can be risky. Watson told delegates about the arrests of husband-and-wife team Sun Lin and He Fang, whose online video reports had angered the authorities. He said the world could help China's citizen reporters by funding defence lawyers and by offering financial support to journalists' families.
Yu Zhang of the Independent Chinese PEN Centre - a body set up by Chinese writers in exile - said a recent fall in the rate of convictions for dissent on the internet masked a stepping up of regulation. China has an internet police force. This agency is formally known as the "Special Police for Internet Security Inspection", and is tasked with enforcing the rigid rules in China's web environment. Some estimates put its strength at up to 50,000.
"More worrying than censorship"
China is trying to export its ideologies by using foreign, Western-facing websites, said Julien Pain, from France 24 TV.
He cited an online campaign for a boycott of the French supermarket chain Carrefour, after the troubled passage of the Olympic torch through Paris. "You had the impression [through the web comments] that China had won the argument," he said.
Any future for Foreign Correspondents?
Last month, at a conference in the US, Global Voices Managing Editor Solana Larsen predicted that there would be no more foreign correspondents in five years time. She explains why on her blog and others, including BillT, have picked up on it too. I was at the conference and, surprisingly to some, sort of agreed with her. Before any of my esteemed colleagues turn on me, let me explain. Her point was that the skill and ability of local journalists, supported by new technology, means they will soon be able to provide a far better service than a western correspondent who has only limited knowledge and contacts parachuting in. 
I actually pointed out that the BBC already has more bureaux with correspondents based on location than any other broadcaster and that the World Service operates a network of some 400 local language service stringers. In some some senses we are already a model for what she is advocating - although with the potential to take that strategic advantage further. Of course that's only part of the story. One of the reasons for the western model of Foreign Correspondent is that they are meant to have the communication skills, as well as subject skills, to convey to an audience at home in a compelling way what's going on. And local journalists may not necessarily have the skills to engage an audience that hasn't seen or heard them before. But that feels like an increasingly patronising view. However, neither am I casting aspersions on the brave and compelling reporting of the BBC's World News team - many of whom are close friends or I appointed at some stage in the past!
I do believe, though, that something is shifting in the expectations, and mindset, of the news audience as well as in the technology available to communicate between countries and cultures. One of the marks Al Jazeera International made, when it joined the band of global news channels, was in the diversity of its reporting staff. I also believe there's a question of authenticity. "Dish journalism" has been lambasted before, notably by Martin Bell who calls it puppetry, and I find myself increasingly agreeing. I think as technology and the internet make more and more alternatives available - in the way Solana Larsen talks about - we will need to demonstrate better that our reporting is close to the ground, well informed and authentic.
It takes all sorts...
Two sorts of people: those who select facts to fit their world view and those whose world view is formed by facts. And then there are those whose world view has no relation with facts of any kind....
Reporting Kenya
The BBC World Service Trust has produced this report on the role of the media during the recent violence in Kenya. A formal review of media in Kenya is underway by the government after allegations of hate speech from community radio raising the spectre of the role of Radio Milles Collines which instigated widespread violence during the Rwandan genocide. It has also raised questions of whether media can be too free in fragile states such as Kenya.
The Trust's report
"dismisses such conclusions, and - while highlighting the abuses that did occur - argues that the crisis demonstrates that a free and plural media are as much an answer to Kenya's democratic deficit as they are a problem. It argues that the role of the local language media during the crisis was the product of a chaotic regulatory policy and the lack of training - especially of talk show hosts, whose programmes provided the platform for most of the hate speech. It argues that many local language radio played a role in calming tensions as well as inflaming them, and could be a powerful mechanism for reconciliation."It's one of a number of reports looking at the role of the Media during the unrest.
April 19, 2008
April 18, 2008
links for 2008-04-18
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WSJ on the habit of blog reading
April 17, 2008
April 16, 2008
links for 2008-04-16
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Kevin on digital journalism and change
April 15, 2008
links for 2008-04-15
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