Pro-Russian gunmen fire at Ukrainian border guards/AFP

In tomorrow’s class, our guest Bill Foreman will be talking about how to cover breaking news and the role of wire agencies.  Ahead of the class, please read the following for discussion

Ukraine Delays Heavy Weapons Pullback, Blames Rebel Attacks(AP)

Ukraine Says Cannot Withdraw Heavy Weapons as Attacks Persist (Reuters)

Pro-Russia Troops Violate Truce Outside Ukraine Port City (AFP)

New Violence Belies Talk of Peace in Ukraine (NYT)

Thanks to Yardain Amron, for pointing out this interesting story about how Syrian human rights activists are appropriating ISIS imagery and videos to try to call international attention to the scope of the violence.

How does a 14-year old mobilise tens of thousands to change government policy?  Find out by watching the film, Lessons in Dissent, which will be shown at UMMA on Friday followed by a q&A with the director.

Felix Salmon has been giving advice to young journalists (tl; dr:  Don’t do it!)

And now#AdviceForYoungJournalists is trending, some more useful than others.

"I Am Not in the Entertainment Business" Jim Lehrer's #AdviceForYoungJournalists http://t.co/FRKydmXIFn

— NewsHour (@NewsHour) February 10, 2015

The best way to become a good journalist is to practice journalism. Talking about it only goes so far. #AdviceForYoungJournalists

— Jeff Brady (@jeffbradynpr) February 10, 2015

Read a lot. Write more. And beware of advice from has-been journalists who rose in a different era. #AdviceForYoungJournalists

— Nicholas Kristof (@NickKristof) February 10, 2015

#AdviceForYoungJournalists Read history. Go into the world humbly. Have empathy. Be uber curious. Don't be the story & learn to love edits.

— Julie M. McCarthy (@JulieMcCarthyJM) February 10, 2015

For the next class, please read Woman’s Work and The Forever War (ps 1-86)

• Assignment: Write a 500-word blogpost on your view of the limits of acceptability in reporting and showing death. Should the public see images of dead US soldiers and coffins? Should we be able to watch footage of executions by militant groups, or should we be protected from this by internet providers?

S

From The Wrap

NBC Nightly News Anchor Brian Williams is in serious trouble.    He’s had to apologise for falsely claiming that he was on a helicopter downed by Iraqi rocket fire in 2003, a claim he had publicly repeated on friday.   The scoop came from Stars and Stripes, which quoted his letter of apology saying,  “I spent much of the weekend thinking I’d gone crazy.  I feel terrible about making this mistake.”  He said he had “misremembered” what happened.

The apology still leaves many questions unanswered, with some still saying that Williams misrepresented what happened.  But now his credibility is badly damaged, and Twitter has been whooping it up with #BrianWilliamsMisremembers

#BrianWilliamsMisremembers #BrianWilliamsWarStories Brian in the trenches defending the world. pic.twitter.com/Lk1sJaXDwF

— Яob (@robx_d) February 5, 2015

"So I told #leftshark 'Don't worry about the choreography, just go with it'" #BrianWilliamsMisremembers pic.twitter.com/NRM9GUYTPR

— Dave Murray (@Michigandmurray) February 5, 2015

Realise that I forgot to name a blog of the week last week.  I enjoyed Yardain’s post on access to information in Qatar, especially the time he spent poking around the government website.  This week, I liked Savannah’s post on how four years of drought in Syria may have been a factor behind the revolution.

• READ: Nothing to Envy ps 221 to end
• Close to the Action, AJR 2004
• Embedistan: NYT series
• Assignment: Write a 500-word blogpost about the control over coverage of conflict inside your country. Are journalists embedded with military groups? How much control over journalists do they exert? Is it safe for independent journalists to report without being embedded?   Is the situation the same for local journalists and international ones? If there is no conflict, write about what measures the government takes to control journalists.

IFJ/ Hong Kong Press Photographers Association

New report out on China christened “China’s Media War: Censorship, Corruption and Control” – sounds familiar?   In case you think these are only issues that happen overseas, the case of Barrett Brown appeared to have very little coverage in the US.   A journalist and former member of Anonymous, he was sentenced to 63 months in jail for “linking to hacked material” and fined $890,000.  In a statement after his sentencing, he wrote, ““Good news!  The US government decided today that because I did such a good job investigating the cyber-industrial complex, they’re now going to send me to investigate the prison-industrial complex.”

Meanwhile, this week we discovered that Google handed over emails and other digital data belonging to Wikileaks members to the US government, after a federal judge issued a search warrant.  It only took Google two-and-a-half years to get round to notifying Wikileaks.    Google blamed a gag order for its silence.   And finally, news that Facebook has been censoring images of the prophet Mohammed in Turkey, Alexis Navalny in Russia and Chinese dissidents. 

Blog of the week this week goes to Evan Hoye for his descriptions of the cost of internet access in Cuba.

Ahead of Thursday’s class:

• READ: Nothing to Envy ps 1-89
• Associated Propaganda (WSJ)
• Eric Talmadge is the Only Western Reporter Regularly in Pyongyang. Here’s what it’s Like (Washington Post)

ASSIGNMENT: Write a 300 word blogpost on access to information in your country? Is there access to government officials and government data, or are some media given privileged access? If so, who? Are all areas of the country open to the media, and if not, why not? Is access to all parties fair and equal? How does unequal access affect the reporting of your country and the international perception of it.

Image from Swide.com

 Secretary of State John Kerry made a stirring speech about risks to journalists today, perhaps still regretting not having made the Paris march.   He said, “In our era, roughly two-thirds of the reporters who die violently are killed because of, not despite, their profession. They are attacked for what they have written, silenced for what they have witnessed, or kidnapped for the leverage their capture may provide. And in most cases, the perpetrators are not caught. The truth is that freedom of the press, whether symbolized by a pencil, a pen, a camera, or a microphone is under siege, purposefully.”

This coincides with new revelations in the Guardian that Britain’s spy agency, GCHQ, intercepted emails from journalists working for the world’s top news organizations.

Shout-out to Blog of The Week, Ella Alter, writing about a police raid on a Russian newspaper to seize their source list

READING for Thursday:  from page 182 of People’s Republic of Amnesia to the end of the book.

ASSIGNMENT: Write a 300-word blogpost describing an important piece of investigative journalism about your country. Was it by a local journalist or someone outside your country? What tools did they use? Did they use unusual techniques which could be seen as unethical elsewhere? If there has been little investigative journalism, write about the reasons for that.  (By Thursday 22nd Jan noon)

Approaching deadlines for:

Google journalism fellowship via the Nieman Lab (Jan 31st)

RTNDA Student Edward R Murrow awards (Feb 3rd)

University of Michigan-Pulitzer Center Student International reporting fellowship (Feb 9 2015)

On the application form found via the link, please pay special attention to the 250-word summary of the reporting project proposed and the budget. Submit a hard copy to the Department of Communication Studies, 5370 North Quad, and an electronic copy to the Pulitzer Center at: studentfellows@pulitzercenter.org