Jay Rosen retreats from retweets

Reporter Jay Rosen writes about his twitter goof here, in a confessional post called "Anatomy of a Twitter Screw-up: My Own". This should be a warning to new media practitioners everywhere. Bottom line - Check sources and think before you post anything- even a tweet! And for accuracy, it's best not to multitask. Jobs are on the line.

Oops. [SURELY SHOME MISHTAKE-Ed]

Thanks to Hamilton Nolan , and Gawker, we have a glimpse of WashPost edits. In an embarrassing error, the paper published this piece in progress online (SURELY SHOME MISHTAKE-Ed.) A screen grab was made before it was deleted, with an apology that the piece was "incomplete".
Here's the link. Even at the vaunted Wash Post, editors apparently ask for manufactured quotes, or nag reporters to go back to the source and fish for it.

British, American journalists deported from Yemen

National Security Reporters - please note

Three freelance journalists who were providing the majority of foreign news coverage of Yemen’s increasingly unstable climate were deported from the country Monday, Michelle Shephard filed to The Star.

The two British reporters and an American journalist had been writing for the LA Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Atlantic Monthly and Time magazine, among other publications and blogs.

No major news organization staffs a bureau in Yemen, and with foreign journalist visas difficult to obtain, the daily coverage of the recent anti-government protests has been left to a handful of dogged freelance journalists.

Violence in the country increased over the weekend and Monday, with at least four people reportedly killed in clashes between riot police and student demonstrators calling for the removal of President Ali Abdullah Saleh.


Police used water cannons, rubber bullets and live ammunition to try to disperse protestors who have waged a three-week sit-in outside the gates of Sanaa University. Yemen’s news agency reported Monday that three soldiers were killed in clashes in the north, and in the central Maarib province, a local governor was critically wounded in a stabbing.

The deported journalists — who had reported extensively on the weekend demonstrations — were told their removal Monday was an issue of “national security.”

A spokesperson from Yemen’s Embassy in Washington was unavailable for comment.

“Over the past three days violence was ratcheted up in the capital and I think that’s the reason I’m not in Yemen anymore, because I was there at the protests every day, reporting,” British journalist Oliver Holmes said in a telephone interview during a flight stopover in Qatar.

“We want this to be known because I’m tired of the Yemeni government just harassing journalists and kicking them out if they’re not happy with what they write.”

The 24-year-old has lived in the country’s capital on a residency visa, studying Arabic and reporting since October 2009.

“They came into our house at 7 a.m. and told us to get dressed and took us,” said 28-year-old freelance journalist Haley Sweetland Edwards in a telephone interview from Sanaa’s airport, before she boarded a flight to Istanbul. “Four hours later they took us home, let us pack up our stuff and brought us to the airport.”

In addition to Edwards and Holmes, British journalist Portia Walker and American photographer and researcher Joshua Maricich, who had started a Yemen adventure club in 2007 to help youths learn how to rock climb, were also deported.

The four shared a home in Sanaa and were together when armed security forces detained them Monday morning.

Edwards, who had applied for her month-long visa through the U.S. Embassy, had lived in Sanaa for 10 months last year to work as a stringer and study Arabic. She said Monday she would return to her apartment in Tbilisi, Georgia but will apply for travel to Yemen again as soon as possible.

“I would love to get back,” said Edward. “Yemen is very important to me and I’ve been covering this story for two years now.”

Freelancer Laura Kasinof, who writes for the New York Times, is one of the few remaining foreign journalists in the country.

“It’s certainly very tense here for the Western journalists who are left and we’re tying to figure out the best way to proceed,” the 25-year-old said in a telephone interview from a friend’s home.

Press freedom in Yemen is considered better than most Arab countries, but as anti-government demonstrations grow and the government’s crackdown on protestors intensifies, journalists are increasingly being targeted.

The U.S. Embassy issued a statement earlier this month saying American officials had watched with “concern” over “recent infringement of press freedom.”

Yemen Times Managing Editor Jeb Boone said he had been picked up by police on his way home Sunday night and held for an hour before being escorted back to his house.

“Just today I figured out I could hide my camera in a packet of cigarettes to get through the security line to the protests,” the 24-year-old Augusta, Georgia native said in an interview Monday.

Human Rights Watch issued a statement last month urging the authorities to allow protestors to demonstrate peacefully and journalists to report freely.

“Beating up journalists is a blatant attempt by authorities to prevent Yemeni people and the world from witnessing a critical moment in Yemen,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, director of the group’s Middle East and North African division.

first Published On Mon Mar 14 2011
The Star.com

Quote of the Day - that's Rich!

Believe it or not, an opinion writer can sometimes get sick of his own voice.
--Frank Rich, on quitting his Sunday political column in the NY TImes after a 17 year run. He is moving on to a weekly, New York magazine.

Read his 'confessions of a Recovering Op-Ed Columnist' here

China blogger angered over losing Facebook account

Chinese blogger and activist Michael Anti wants to know why he is less worthy of a Facebook account than company founder Mark Zuckerberg's dog.

Anti, a popular online commentator whose legal name is Zhao Jing, said in an interview Tuesday that his Facebook account was suddenly canceled in January. Company officials told him by e-mail that Facebook has a strict policy against pseudonyms and that he must use the name issued on his government ID.

Anti argues that his professional identity as Michael Anti has been established for more than a decade, with published articles and essays.

Anti, a former journalist who has won fellowships at both Cambridge University and Harvard University, said he set up his Facebook account in 2007. By locking him out of his account, Facebook has cut him off from a network of more than 1,000 academic and professional contacts who know him as Anti, he said.

"I'm really, really angry. I can't function using my Chinese name. Today, I found out that Zuckerberg's dog has a Facebook account. My journalistic work and academic work is more real than a dog," he said.

Facebook officials weren't available to comment on his case. The company says its policy leads to greater trust and accountability for its users.

"We have tried to keep the rule simple and fair by saying personal profiles must always be set up in the real legal name of the individual concerned," it said by e-mail to Anti.

Dissidents in a variety of countries have argued that Facebook's policy can endanger human rights activists and others if their identities become known.

Anti said there is a long tradition in China for writers and journalists to take pen names, partly as protection from retaliation from authorities. If Facebook requires the use of real names, that could potentially put Chinese citizens in danger, he said.

"For my fellow Chinese, this policy could easily help Chinese police identify them," he said.

It's not the first time Anti has had problems with an Internet site. In 2005, his blog on a Microsoft site was shut down by the company following pressure from Chinese officials. Microsoft's action led to a public outcry.

Zuckerberg recently set up a Facebook page for his newly acquired puppy, "Beast," complete with photos and a profile. [Feral Beast emphasizes that there is no relation!] More than 29,000 people have clicked "like" on this page.

Tini Tran of Associated Press reports from Beijing. Microsoft famously shut down Michael Anti's controversial blog at the end of 2005, sparking debates about Chinese censorship online.

___

Daily Star not so shining. Reporter complains of anti-Muslim propaganda and lies

"Scrabbling to pump out a national newspaper with fewer staff hacks than it takes to man a yacht" is folly, according to ex-tabloid hack Richard Peppiatt, in his letter of resignation to the proprietor of the Daily Star. His screed was excerpted in the Guardian, alongside a statement from the red top paper that denied any negative stance towards Islam (despite all appearances). The plucky tabloid reporter used to be a quick-change artist in pursuit of scoops, and in his excoriating letter, he admits to making up headline grabbing incidents or quotes involving prominent celebrities. But apparently he now feels remorse:

"The lies of a newspaper in London can get a bloke's head caved-in down an alley in Bradford. If you can't see that words matter, you should go back to running porn magazines," he wrote to his erstwhile boss Richard Desmond.

Full story here.
Hat tip to Irris Makler for this gem. But did anyone actually take the stories running in the Daily Star seriously?

Another Scribe Down.

In Tribute

Derek A. Brown, Journalist, Born May 7, 1947 in Bearsden, Glasgow, Scotland; married Eileen J. Brailsford, 1972; died February 23, 2011 in Herefordshire, England

The correspondent who countered brutality with humour and wordplay

Hogamany was celebrated in style at Nizamuddin East in the early 1990s thanks to the British foreign correspondent, Derek Brown. You couldn’t predict which tall, dark man would cross his threshold first on any given Scottish New Year, but a burra peg of whisky and a sumptuous spread of food would be waiting. Laughter would always punctuate Brown’s parties.

Derek Brown, who died last week in England at age 63, had worked as a journalist for four decades with the same newspaper, The Guardian. He was based in Delhi from 1987 through 1993 as their South Asia Bureau Chief, where he worked together with the reporter Ajoy Bose. Brown and his wife, Eileen, regarded India as their favorite posting during the 13 years spent “in foreign parts”, which included assignments in Brussels and Jerusalem. From Delhi, the couple took many road trips in their cherished white Ambassador before shipping out, in Derek’s jocular phrase, “from Bombay back to Blighty”. Brown’s final newspaper column appeared in The Guardian Weekly the day before he died. He is survived by his wife Eileen, his sister Sylvia and brother David, and his mother, Renee, who is 94.

While Brown clearly relished storytelling, he was a stickler for accuracy. His reporting frequently covered conflict, whether in Belfast, West Bengal or the West Bank, and perhaps it was to counteract the brutality Brown witnessed that he had fine-tuned his sense of humour and wordplay. The reporter of Falstaffian proportions took delight in the unexpected, and he was a close observer. On holiday, he might make do with “mutual incomprehension, moderated by much giggling and goodwill”, but he analyzed unfolding events with care and pulled no punches. He did not hesitate to “put the ugh in ugly” and to disclose the reality of that polite euphemism, communal strife. He covered Ayodhya, Kabul, Kashmir, caste wars and the long war in Sri Lanka.

Brown observed: “The civil war in Sri Lanka was unavoidable, and is unwinnable. It is the ghastly outcome of a sequence of events compounded of bigotry, obstinacy, and muddled thinking on both sides of the narrow straits separating the poor, bloodied little island from its gigantic neighbour, India.”

Much to his annoyance, Brown was briefly banned from Sri Lanka because of a headline that accompanied his extensive profile of its leader, Ranasinghe Premadasa. Presidential staff perceived an insult and withheld visas after reading the following title:

“Dhobi wallah to president: The rise to prominence and power of Sri Lanka’s new leader, Ranasinghe Premadasa, whose roots lie far from the country’s traditional ruling caste”.

The author Simon Winchester, a lifelong friend, recalled how, in addition to his collection of adventure tales and Penguin first editions, “Derek kept a hoard of newspaper headlines from his time in India in a tin box in the living room, many of them so funny one would weep.” That unfortunate one from Brown’s own news desk probably did not make it into this Pandora’s box of clippings.

In 1997, Derek Brown returned from the Middle East to London to help launch the online edition of The Guardian, and he stayed on staff until 2002, after which he contributed columns for the weekly print edition from his home office in Herefordshire county.

In order to mourn him in cyberspace, friends and colleagues must first tick a box on a Facebook page that says “I like Derek Brown, Rest In Peace.” Surely he’d chortle about that, as well as the fact that this obituary was outsourced to America, near Silicon Valley.

(The author is a journalist who has worked with The Independent and The Lancet. She reported from South Asia, West Asia and Southeast Asia for over a decade)

Obituary in the Indian Express
Photo of Derek Brown in New Delhi c 1991 is courtesy of Roger Hutchings