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From Slashdot:
Oh well, so much for the Hub in Iran....
Iran's Telecommunications Ministry will start filtering "immoral" video and audio messages sent via mobile phones, state television reported on Saturday.
Read the rest of the eWeek article here.
Steve Safran of Lost Remote writes:
I like it whenever I come upon contrarian points of view. And newassignment.net has a doozy. Steve Fox writes about Virginia Tech student Jamal Albarghouti’s cellphone video of the shooting at Virginia Tech. Here are some of his thoughts:
As everyone steps up to applaud the “citizen journalism” that occurred yesterday, with kudos upon kudos give to the cellphone video made infamous by CNN… Consider this: the video had no inherent news value and told no story. It did have sounds of bullets being fired and screams. Those were bullets that killed, maimed and injured students and faculty members. This wasn’t a video game. Is such video responsible journalism? Are these the types of Citizen Journalists that people want to see? Are we doomed to create “citizen journalists” to play the I-patsies for cable television?
A poster in Fox’s piece also points us to Paul McCleary’s thoughts from CJRDaily called “What Happens When an I-Reporter Gets Hurt?”:
Arguably the most stunning thing about Albarghouti’s footage is not what he was filming — it took repeated viewings to figure out exactly what it was that he captured — but the fact that he seemed to run toward the gunshots. We applaud — scratch that — we expect any cameraman worth his salt to move toward the action, but a grad student with no experience in these situations?
I will respectfully disagree with Fox’s take on this. There is plenty of news value in a firsthand, eyewitness account of a major news story. Just because Albarghouti wasn’t in the classroom doesn’t mean what he captured wasn’t news. He had sound and he had pictures of police moving in. We show pointless exteriors of buildings hours after a crime has taken place there. This was news video. McCleary’s point is more provocative. There will come a time when someone rushes to he scene of a tragedy to capture it on video and gets hurt. Does that mean we stop asking people to send in pictures? No. It means we - as you already hear - tell people to use common sense and not take risks. Mind you - If he were my kid, I’d scream at him. (And take away his cellphone…)
From Slashdot:
"A fifteen year old from Perth, Australia, posed as an employee of the Australian Broadcasting Commission, demanding that YouTube remove hundreds of video clips of 'The Chasers War on Everything.' The amusing part is that The Chaser is a comedy company well known to perpetrate exactly this sort of prank."
Interesting to see how little it takes to get something pulled off YouTube.
We received and email from our friend, Charles of blip.tv alerting us to a situation in Mexico. A person working with Alive in Mexico (the same folks who started Alive in Baghdad) was injured while covering demonstrations. We've tried to put them in touch with some of our contacts, but they could use some help putting together some guidelines on safety measures about how they can more safely do their work. If you have any suggestions, let them know.
[Editor’s note: One of our correspondents, Yazmín Nuñez was injured by police in Mexico City on Tuesday, the 27th of March, while covering a demonstration concerning the ISSSTE (Instituto al Servico de la Seguridad Social de los Trabajadores del Estado) for more information read about the demonstrations here.. English is coming as soon as possible, if you would like to offer translation skills, please be in touch.]
To the general public:
On March 27, 2007, the reporter and camerawoman Yazmin Nuñez H. was beaten by the riot police of the Mexico City police department as she was covering the demonstration against changes in the Social Security law. Lacerations on her waist, neck, left ear and other parts of her body were caused by the kicks and blows of uniformed police. They show a total lack of respect for the journalism practiced by our compañera and for the news media that she serves as a correspondent, including aliveinmexico.org internet television for the United States, the independent newspaper Machetearte, and the media coop libertasanticorpTV.
After the attack, other reporters and photographers came to her rescue and were able to pull her out of the police encirclement, where her press credentials and 800 pesos were taken from her.
Our work is based on freedom of expression, freedom of the press, freedom of thought, and the right of the society to communicate and stay informed. We demand respect for our work as journalists and are hereby publishing this denunciation to register our opposition to the dreadful treatment of the press and innocent citizens. We cannot allow violence against reporters to be a constant, appalling custom in the country.