International News Safety Institute update: August 2012
August 24, 2012 Leave a comment
INSI Director Rodney Pinder (centre) addressed journalism students at the University of Sheffield on safety issues affecting journalists
• INSI has recorded the deaths of 86 journalists and media staff so far this year, with a further 31 cases under investigation.
The relentless clashes in war-torn Syria make it the deadliest country for journalists and media workers – at least 22 news media casualties have been recorded in 2012. Many more have been injured, detained and threatened. The death toll is more than double that of the entire war in Libya last year.
This week Mika Yamamoto, an award-winning journalist for The Japan Press, was gunned down while travelling with the Free Syrian Army in Aleppo. She is the first Japanese national to be killed in the 17 month conflict, and the first Japanese female correspondent killed in conflict since INSI began keeping records 10 years ago.
Anyone can be a journalist, but they need to be protected
July 19, 2012 1 Comment
By Eric Matthies
A shot of protests in 2011, Baniyas, Syria. Citizen journalists have been risking their lives to document the violent unrest in the country. (Syria Frames of Freedom/Flickr)
It’s been seven years since US-based Slate magazine declared – Who Is a Journalist? Anybody who wants to be. The conversation is far from over.
The media critic Jay Rosen has gone to great lengths to identify ‘acts of journalism’ as indiscriminant of the accreditation of the person reporting. In fact, the argument that bloggers are not journalists is one that should long have been put to rest.
The importance of acts of journalism carried out by civilian or otherwise self-declared correspondents has never been more prevalent in today’s news ecosystem. Take the conflict in Syria, where the local people picked up video or smart phone technologies and conveyed the news.
It should almost go without saying that they are at great risk for their bravery.
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Filed under Advisories, Comment, Guest Posts, INSI Blog Tagged with advisory, Arab Spring, blogger, Christof Heyns, citize journalist, citizen journalism, civil unrest, local journalists, Syria, technology, United Nations