Monday, June 11, 2007

What's the news worth to you?

Monday I read a Patrick Cockburn article in Counterpunch, "The War on Journalists," about the murder last week of Iraqi reporter Sahar al-Haideri. That led me to this site, which lists journalists assassinated or otherwise killed on the job so far this year. Via Alternet (thanks Lou, for that convenient link), I also found this excellent article from the Columbia Journalism Review about sexual assaults against journalists, and why the victims almost always keep silent. In late April, the Frontline Club in London held a panel discussion on the hazards faced by journalists as well as their fixers and translators--the video is still up on their site, and worth watching.

I'd encourage everybody to go take a look at some of this stuff, just because it's a useful reminder that there are a lot of people risking their lives to gather the disturbing facts that we get so tired of hearing--or worse yet, that we don't hear at all, because American corporate media has decided that we don't need to know.

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