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DonateThe two websites at the University of Texas at Austin, at first blush, seemed to have been unlikely targets for attack. The Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas and its blog cover news about journalism, press freedom and journalist safety throughout the Western hemisphere, with an emphasis on trends in Latin America. The website of the International Symposium for Online Journalism provides information about meetings and other professional issues. Both websites were shut down for two weeks last month in a targeted cyber-attack.
Committee to Protect Journalists
CPJ Journalist Security Blog
USA
The U.S.-led war in Iraq claimed the lives of a record
number of journalists and challenged some commonly held perceptions about the risks
of covering conflict. Far more journalists, for example, were murdered in targeted
killings in Iraq than died in combat-related circumstances. Here, on the 10th anniversary
of the start of the war, is a look inside the data collected by CPJ.
Few cases better underscore the need for digital security among journalists. On Tuesday, ex-CIA officer John Kiriakou pleaded guilty to leaking the identity of another CIA operative to Matthew Cole, a journalist formerly with an ABC News investigative team. In a 2007 interview with ABC, Kiriakou became the first CIA official to confirm that waterboarding had been used on Al-Qaeda suspects.
With up to 15,000 journalists expected in Tampa, Fla., for next week's Republican National Convention, some reporters and photographers will undoubtedly encounter problems concerning access to news events and coverage of related protests. Several journalism organizations have compiled resource materials and tips for journalists headed to the GOP gathering, which starts August 27, and the Democratic convention that begins September 3. Here are some of those resources:
Using guns, grenades, explosives, and other deadly means, criminals
have assaulted
four Mexican newsrooms in less than six weeks. One of the country's top
journalists, Lydia Cacho, was the target of a chilling
death threat last month. Journalists in Veracruz have gone missing
or been killed
this year. Press fatalities
in Mexico remain among the highest in the world, leading to vast
self-censorship. And the perpetrators? They are not only well organized and heavily
armed, they enjoy
near-complete impunity for their attacks on the press. Mexican lawmakers
began to address the crisis this year, but now they risk losing the momentum.
As a follow-up to my previous "What
to know about covering the conventions," the National Press Photographers
Association (NPPA) has been working with a number of organizations in order to
provide support for journalists covering the U.S. national political
conventions in Tampa, Fla., and Charlotte, N.C., this month and next. Some
things for those journalists to keep in mind:
The rampage inside a Colorado movie theater that killed 12
people and injured dozens more is the most recent reminder that a journalist
anywhere can face sudden, great emotional
stress. Any story involving tragedy--from domestic violence to natural
disasters--can inflict an emotional toll on field journalists. The very empathy that
makes a journalist a good storyteller puts him or her at risk.
If May's NATO Summit in Chicago is any indication, journalists covering events outside the national political conventions in Tampa, Fla., and Charlotte, N.C., later this summer can expect that everyone--mainstream media, bloggers, citizen journalists, protesters, and bystanders--will have a camera of one kind or another. With the widespread proliferation of cellphone cameras, capable of recording high-quality images along with audio and video, it seemed like everybody was documenting everything and everyone.
When Thomas Peele came into the CPJ offices last week to discuss Killing the Messenger, his book about the murder of journalist Chauncey Bailey, he described a story that was layered with scandal, including a polygamous cult, bankruptcy, kidnapping, rape, a flawed confession, leaked evidence, and secret alliances--not to mention the aggressive attack on a free press. Peele, motivated in part by the blatant demonstration of corruption in the investigation into Bailey's death, intended to reveal the truth about the circumstances surrounding the case. Accompanying Peele at CPJ was our own senior adviser for journalist security, Frank Smyth, who became involved in the case as a CPJ representative.
The Russian manufacturer promises
results. The software can be used to control your own or, say, a customer's
computer by making it a remote software client. Or it could be used for spying
on others.
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