Independent Journalism?

This is just an example of what grinds my gears in regards to our journalists nowadays. While browsing the Newseum web site I saw three papers with the same picture on the front page.

The Marshfield News-Herald
Stevens Point Journal
Wausau Daily Herald
The Herald Times Reporter used a different picture but the same story.

What a coincidence. Well actually it isn't.

What got me was the accompanying article was about the governor of Wisconsin who gave his State of the State speech, and here we have at least four separate newspapers in the state, who rather then devoting their own resources to providing coverage, they instead relied on an AP version of the story. A story that directly affects your state and in your back yard and yet you use an AP wire story.

How is that serving the people of the state? If all you are going to be is an echo chamber then you are not serving any purpose.

China Profiling Foreign Journalists

Surely the noble guardians of the First Amendment will be up in arms over this report.

The Chinese government has created profiles on thousands of foreign journalists coming to report on next summer's Beijing Olympics and is gathering information on thousands more to put into a database, a top official said in comments published Monday.

The profiles appeared to undermine promises made by Chinese leaders in when they were bidding for the Games, that the event would lead to greater media freedoms.

Memo to the AP: Do not take Communists at their word.

The database with information on the 28,000 foreign journalists expected for the Olympics would be a reference for interview subjects, designed to protect them from being tricked or blackmailed by "fake reporters," Liu Binjie, minister of the General Administration of Press and Publication, was quoted as saying in the state-run China Daily newspaper.

"Disguising as reporters to threaten and intimidate others to collect money is cheating and very dangerous to society," Liu told the English-language paper.

In China, people sometimes pose as reporters to extort money from corrupt officials or demand payment for false promises of favorable news coverage. A nationwide campaign launched in August netted 150 fake reporters and 300 unregistered publications, China Daily said.

Bob Dietz, Asia program coordinator for the Committee to Protect Journalists, said fake reporters looking for kickbacks in China is a legitimate concern, but that it was an internal problem.

"Applying that to foreign journalists seems to me widely off the mark. This is an unnecessary overreaction," he said.

Yes, just an overreaction. Can you just imagine the outcry if the United States compiled such information on journalists visiting here?

We'd never hear the end of it from the left.

Let's see if they speak up now or quietly acquiesce.

I suspect it will be the latter. After all, as history has shown us, many so-called journalists put access before dignity.

UPDATE: At least one organization has noticed. It's a start.

New York, November 12, 2007—The Chinese government should abandon its crackdown on so-called “fake” foreign journalists in advance of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. CPJ expressed alarm that the government’s plan, which includes amassing records of thousands of foreign journalists seeking Olympics accreditation, is a pretext to block critical reporters from covering the Games.

Criticizing Putin Bad for Your Health

Not only over in Russia, either.

It is becoming increasingly dangerous to be a critic of Vladimir Putin, the elected dictator of Russia. That is, as KGB thugs like Mr. Putin used to say during the Soviet era, "no accident, comrade."

The most recent authority on the subject of Mr. Putin's increasingly ominous behavior at home and abroad to have met an unpleasant fate is Paul Joyal. He is an internationally renowned expert on the former Soviet Union who had the temerity last week to accuse the Russian government on the NBC TV program "Dateline" of murdering Alexander Litvinenko.

Litvinenko was himself a former Soviet intelligence agent who worked with and then turned against Mr. Putin. He had blamed the Putin regime for killing another Putin critic, the courageous Russian journalist, Anna Politkovskaya, in Moscow last year. Litvinenko wound up dead in London from poisoning with an exotic, highly radioactive element called Polonium 210, widely believed to have come from Russia.

Of the Litvinenko murder, Mr. Joyal told "Dateline": "A message has been communicated to anyone who wants to speak out against the Kremlin: 'If you do, no matter who you are, where you are, we will find you, and we will silence you -- in the most horrible way possible.' " His words appear to have been eerily prophetic.

On Thursday, two unidentified men attacked Mr. Joyal in the driveway of his home, in a way seemingly meant to send its own message: By shooting him once in the groin. Thanks to quick action by his wife, a nurse, he did not bleed to death on the spot and is recovering from his wound.

Mr. Joyal did not live in Moscow, or even some other foreign capital. His home is in Adelphi, Md., a quiet suburban community roughly 12 miles outside Washington, D.C.

The Kremlin's apparent willingness brazenly now to strike at its foes wherever they may be is all too reminiscent of past, ruthless measures taken by Russian and Soviet rulers to crush internal and external dissent. Unfortunately, it is but one piece of the reprise Vladimir Putin seems to have in mind for his country.

Read the rest.

He is not our ally.

UPDATE: Russia journalist worked on weapons story. (Hat tip: Jim K.)

A journalist who fell to his death from a fifth-story window had received threats while gathering material for a report claiming Russia planned to provide sophisticated weapons to Syria and Iran, his newspaper said Tuesday.

Prosecutors have opened an inquest into the death of Ivan Safronov, a military affairs writer for the daily Kommersant who died Friday in what some media said could have been murder.

Kommersant reported that Safronov told his editors he would write a story about Russian plans to sell weapons to Iran and Syria via Belarus, but they said he had not yet submitted the article.

Mysterious Russian Journalist Death

The 14th during Putin's reign.

Respected Russian journalist, Ivan Safronov, who reported on military affairs, mysteriously plunged to his death from the 5th floor of his apartment building Friday, making him the 14th journalist to die under questionable circumstances in Putin's Russia, according to statistics compiled by the Committee to Protect Journalists.

"They killed Ivan, they killed Ivan" said a distraught former U.S. intelligence staffer familiar with Safronov, when he learned the news today. "Another Russian journalist is dead. Ivan fell out of the window with his coat and hat on? Come on." said the former official who frequently visits Moscow and asked to remain anonymous.