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