Journalism is the first draft of history. On the printed page, on radio and TV airwaves are seized then frozen in time, indelible images of the human drama. Delivered “as is,” facts discourage revisionists from tampering with the truth. Alas, for many, fact has become calumny, reality a disgrace, truth is scandal. For those whose only loyalty is to the truth, it’s a lonely world as well. The price for such devotion is often steep and those who are willing to pay for it never lack enemies.

To the enemies of truth, newsmen make an especially appetizing quarry. Their accounts are never accurate enough, fair or broad or partisan enough to assuage the biases and sensitivities of all readers or to indulge their ulterior motives. If an article lacks focus or detail, we’re dismissed as shallow and irrelevant. If our exposés or commentaries are too graphic, irreverent or too close for comfort, we're accused of needlessly giving readers palpitations. No matter what we report, we are sure to be reviled by someone along the way -- as was recently witnessed in comments responding to Marco Cáceres’ editorial about Honduras’ mounting crime wave.

Of course, readers are not a homogeneous lot. They come in sundry stripes and hues and preferences. Mercifully, most seek to be informed. Most possess the mental elasticity to judge an article on its merits. It is to them that scrupulous journalists devote their columns. Others, like disoriented butterflies, skip chunks of text that do not pique their interest, that unsettle or intimidate them. Hasty or inattentive, they invariably take things out of context and misconstrue. Many see conspiracy in syntax: They scrutinize and dissect every utterance as if it concealed some subliminal code. They can't see the sentence from the words, the idea from the inflection, the message from the timbre. Others, yet, who rhapsodize Honduras' blood-soaked natural beauty or advocate censorship, are so jarred by the truth that they want it suppressed, obliterated, reduced to ashes (along with the reporters who unearth it... ) for fear that they might become infected by it.

Not all journalists rush in where angels fear to tread. Some are daunted by naked truth. Political correctness (the sacrifice of truth at the altar of hypocrisy) keeps subscribers and advertisers happy. Unlike open scandal, which peaks in an orgy of vitriol and reproof, then dies, self-censorship leaves a trail of speculations and a scent of putrefaction. It’s bad enough when governments hide behind a wall of secrecy and lies; it’s worse when the media -- the conscience of a free society -- sheepishly corrupt their mission by colluding to keep the public in the fog of ignorance. It is the height of obscenity when readers urge the press to look away.

Despite opinions to the contrary journalists do not get paid to generate solutions for the problems they uncover. Their job is to observe, chronicle and narrate the dynamics that cause or abet these problems. Solutions can only be found in the problems themselves.

What emerges from some readers’ comments is the contemptible suggestion that chronicling verifiable facts is an act of disloyalty. Analytical criticism is not unpatriotic. It’s a fundamental right and an obligation. Deploring the maelstrom of violence into which Honduras has descended is not unpatriotic but an exercise in rational citizenship. Silence is the real villain.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Pennsylvania School Press Association has awarded the 2010-11 Mountaineer, Stroudsburg High School's newspaper, a Silver Award for the overall quality of the paper.

PSPA applauded the Mountaineer on its innovative feature stories, editing and compelling, relevant graphics. For the final issue of the 2010-2011 school year, the Mountaineer staff created an entire issue dedicated to the downtown Stroudsburg area.

Read the rest of this entry »

Like many others, Mr Shahril Mohamad was taken aback when he thought Member of Parliament (MP) Seng Han Thong had made a racist remark on national television. The 35-year-old technician said he learnt of the incident last Tuesday, while surfing his Facebook page.

"I didn't catch the actual interview, but a friend had forwarded me a news article from The Online Citizen (TOC)," he said. Added Mr Shahril: "I find TOC a dependable source of news, which is why I found the report disturbing."

He didn't watch the clip and didn't catch Mr Seng's interview on Blog TV on Dec 19. Mr Shahril found out later that the TOC article wasn't accurate. On Saturday evening, Law and Foreign Affairs Minister K. Shanmugam took the socio-political blog to task for its incomplete report of the sequence of events.

"A significant part of what has been attributed to Mr Seng is false, to be quite blunt about it," he told reporters. "The article did not say that he was quoting an MRT officer. They could have pointed out that it was an inaccurate quote. They didn't say he was quoting an MRT officer and neither does it say that he disagreed with that view."Political commentators told The New Paper that this latest development affirms the need for the online media to be more accurate and balanced in their news reporting. There is no doubt Mr Seng's remarks were "insensitive", Singapore Management University's assistant law professor Eugene Tan said.

'TOC report more accessible'
However, he said it is also "fair to assume" that many netizens learned of the incident online because "people would find the TOC report more accessible than the BlogTV extract, which is also available in cyberspace."

"All this does not take away from what Mr Seng had actually said...but anyone reading that headline would be inflamed so I don't think we need to add fuel to fire, especially on something that relates to race."

On Saturday, Mr Shanmugam called for the matter to be dealt with "on the basis of facts and not on the basis of a false statement which has been quite wrongly attributed to Mr Seng."

The minister said Mr Seng's mistake was that he misquoted the MRT officer and said that the officer had referred to Indian and Malay drivers. In fact, the officer had referred to drivers of all races.

Mr Seng, an Ang Mo Kio GRC MP, had gone on Channel NewsAsia's programme Blog TV last week to discuss issues related to the recent spate of train disruptions.

During the interview, Mr Seng, quoting an SMRT public relations officer, had said that "some of the staff, because they are Malay, they are Indian, they can't converse in English...well enough". Mr Seng's comments went viral on Tuesday after the TOC article, drawing a barrage of negative comments on his Facebook page, on forums online and also on the Facebook pages of other MPs.

On Thursday, Mr Seng responded to the comments by providing a transcript of the interview. He said: "Unfortunately, some of my comments were misinterpreted." At around noon on the same day, Mr Seng followed up with a statement of apology on Facebook.

Nanyang Technological University professor Cherian George had said that Mr Seng was not the only one at fault here. On Dec 22, the academic wrote in a blog post that TOC was false in its reporting of Mr Seng's remarks. "Omitting to mention that the speaker you're quoting is quoting someone else can be a little misleading," he wrote.

"Surely, Mr Seng should know better. But so should the editors of what, by default, is Singapore's leading citizen journalism website. There is enough genuine racism in the country; TOC doesn't help by crying wolf."

When contacted, TOC editors declined to comment on Mr Shanmugam's views. In an SMS sent to this reporter yesterday evening, the website's interim chief editor Ravi Philemon wrote: "We do not have anything to say at this time". But on Dec 23, the website ran an editorial stating it disagreed with Dr George's view.

"We agree with the premise of Dr George's article that providing context in news is important, but disagree with the conclusions he's reached," said the editorial. But have the sentiments against Mr Seng changed following Mr Shanmugam's clarification?

Said SMU's Mr Tan: "The fact that TOC is not going to respond will quiet things down...but one hopes this issue has not subjected the social fabric here to strain".

Read the rest of this entry »

But this should lead to the question as to why journalism in Pakistan is sensationalist. I believe that’s because people are more receptive to sensational news than facts-based reporting. Just go to the website of this newspaper and look closely at the sidebar that shows the most viewed, most commented and most emailed news stories.

These days, such stories will most likely be about Memogate, Imran Khan, Zardari, judiciary, ISI and Veena Malik. Ever wondered why business stories are conspicuously missing from the three most popular lists? That’s because it takes extra effort on the readers’ part to understand hardcore business, economic and financial journalism.

Op-ed pieces on the politics of Imran Khan – awash with meaningless words like ‘undercurrent’ and ‘middle-class narrative’ – are a dime a dozen in our newspapers. That’s because one, the writer doesn’t have to research the topic; and two, readers love to consume frivolous commentary on politics.

So why blame journalism when a report on this newspaper’s website about the new gas load management plan goes completely uncommented while the story about Imran Khan defending his politics receives over 60 comments?

While most ‘news junkies’ – a fashionable way of describing oneself in Twitter bios – know the flip-flops of Mansoor Ijaz, I wonder how many of them have read about the government’s plan to import 1.2 million tons of urea.

The news that the state was going to import 1.2 million tons of urea because it couldn’t supply the promised amount of gas to Engro’s newly built plant would’ve caused public outrage in any other country. Not so in our case.

Take another example. It’s widely believed that Pakistan has the second largest coal reserves in the world. If that’s true, then what about the five million tons of coal that Pakistan imports every year mainly for cement manufacturing? And although the installed capacity of cement manufacturing is far higher than our domestic consumption, why haven’t we built so far a dedicated dirty cargo terminal at any port of the country to facilitate its bulk export?

These things are reported in newspapers every day. But perhaps we’re too busy consuming inconsequential and sensational news. Maybe, journalists are doing their jobs just fine, but readers are simply not interested in real news. News consumers, not journalists, are to be blamed for sensationalism that’s creeping into journalism.

Read the rest of this entry »

Back in 1982, Steven Spielberg tapped into the mindset of childhood so perfectly with his film “E.T. the Extraterrestrial,” that the film became what was then the biggest box-office success of all time. And through the rest of the decade, he produced or directed a seemingly endless array of films that attempted to recapture that magic by exploring different angles of childhood through films like “The Goonies” or thrilling all ages in the “Indiana Jones” series.
 
But as he shifted into Oscar-seeking (and winning) mode with his 1993 classic “Schindler’s List,” Spielberg seemed to think he had to abandon his playful side as he turned to other historical epics like “Amistad,” “Munich” and “Saving Private Ryan” or delivered mediocre results with films like “War of the Worlds” and “The Terminal.” He tried to get his kid spirit back with a fourth Indy Jones film in 2008 but failed miserably – and wound up taking over three years to come up with another film.
 
Actually, he’s got two films coming out this week, and they’ve both already scored some impressive award nominations from the Golden Globes and critics’ groups. “War Horse” comes out Christmas Day and is a live-action epic drama about a young man and his horse’s adventures amid WWI, but “The Adventures of Tintin” hit theatres yesterday and is the more stylishly inventive of the two, due to the fact it was shot using both 3D (Spielberg’s first foray into the medium) and motion-capture effects (which convert human actors into ultra-realistic animated characters, freeing them up to defy the laws of real-world physics in their outrageous travails).
 
“Tintin” also marks a welcome return to his childlike spirit, as Spielberg now believes he’s got his mojo back since he’s become a grandfather in the last couple of years. Based on a 24-book series of children’s adventure books by the Belgian artist Herge about a teenage boy reporter who gets into globetrotting investigative adventures along with his dog Snowy, “The Adventures of Tintin” nonetheless faces a hurdle in the U.S., since it’s popular throughout the Western world in nearly every country except America.
 
But with the film already doing business like gangbusters overseas, and this being Spielberg’s 3-D debut, “Tintin” should catch on just fine. Spielberg, his co-executive producer, Peter Jackson (who will helm the first sequel if there is one), and their writing team of Steven Moffat, Edgar Wright and Joe Cornish wove together parts of three of the most popular books to create one big adventure here, providing plenty of familiar notes for the book’s fans and an even more extravagant story for American newbies.
 
Here, Tintin tries to find out why several different men are willing to pay through the nose — and even kill — to get their hands on an antique ship model that he bought at a flea market. It turns out that the ship’s miniature sails contain the clues to a vast secret treasure, and soon Tintin is forced into the quest for riches when he is kidnapped and stashed on a freighter ship that has been hijacked from a drunken captain (played by Andy Serkis, who has become the master of motion-capture performances via the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy and “Rise of the Planet of the Apes”).
 
After helping the captain break free, Tintin and his newfound sidekick, along with Snowy, find themselves in all sorts of outrageous peril as they endure a sinking ship, a plane that’s determined to shoot them dead as they’re hanging on for dear life in the ocean and our hero learning to fly a plane straight through a massive storm. One great action scene leads to another, which makes the film enormous fun. But while the animation helps the film match the books’ colorful visuals, it also provides the only weak point of this highly entertaining film.
 
Knowing that Spielberg has provided us with some of the greatest action scenes and special effects of all time while keeping action rooted in the live-action “real world,” it might be easy for viewers of “Tintin” to wish he’d found a way to keep it real here.
 
“Tintin” is a delight to look at and the animation keeps even the constant peril family-friendly rather than too scary for kids, but at the same time that approach also removes one from the extra level of exciting tension — of wondering “How does a human being survive that?!” — that made “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and the first “Jurassic Park” such timeless rides.

Read the rest of this entry »

Domestic Issues: -  The News flow on Domestic front is quite strong & many corporates have been hit by these non economic news flow & all for wrong reasons, But these news flow will indirectly create more stringent norms for corporate borrowers. Which in turn will create an impact on infrastructure companies which have long gestation periods & debt to equity ratio is skewed towards debt. This will certainly have an impact on the profitability of these companies. On inflation front there is some good news that food prices have started to stabilize & cement prices have started to drop. The over capacity in cement will dent the profitability of cement companies & it will take some time before this sector comes out of the shadows of overproduction.
 
International Issues: - In Tradeprofit Team View markets will try to focus on ECB & Feds action & comments. Mr Bernanke is hell bent to give free flow of Dollars to the markets till a bubble is created in the markets. In his recent Statement he has indicated that they may exceed QE2 of 600 billion Dollars. The impact could be Dollars reversal & more fund flows to Emerging markets. On the other hand ECB started to buy bonds of the countries which are in peril.

In the real sense true economics is not the game anymore but interventions by Government authorities are keeping the markets on the roll & nobody knows how long they will keep supporting the markets till then its a one way journey. But as everybody knows bonds, equity, commodity or forex every market will discount this phenomenon in advance as we did in 2008 before the actual collapse started taking place.

Domestic Issues: -  The barrage of news is keeping markets on its toes, Volatility in markets are high & it will just rise further in coming days. Markets will react to all sorts of negative news with more intensity & positives will be taken with a note of caution. The negative sentiments are dominating the markets & good news or clarifications are just small supports. Rupee is depreciating which makes FIIsmore venerable to the fall. If Dollar gathers momentum then FIIs will try to sell & get a exit at faster pace than they are doing now. The picture in Tradeprofit.in View is still unclear as things are progressing in very fast manner.China & Dollar are holding key for the markets. These 2 factors along with domestic news flow will decide the very near future of our markets.
 
International Issues: - As Tradeprofit.in had stated in our previous International issues aboutPIIGS & Yuan appreciation both the points were highlighted by the markets.China stocks indices retreated sharply on fear of Government would take aggressive stance & Yuan appreciation would hit exporters. In our view Chinawould have to exit its loose monetary policy & moderate its growth.The sooner it is done would be good for China & the realignment of World growth too. Otherwise it would create a bubble bigger than SUB Prime which would eventually cause depression world over. The speed of monetization of assets inChina & the role played by the Government to make the local bodies or regional Governments afloat will cause lots of pain financially & socially.

The Clash of Titans (USA v/s China) is creating multiple & confusing dynamics in the markets. Both countries Governments are reacting heavily in the natural functioning of the markets which is creating distortions. The question is who will budge first so that other may have its way.

Read the rest of this entry »

LAGHMAN PROVINCE, Afghanistan – Afghan journalists of Laghman province attended the first ever Media Law training at the province’s Information, Cultural and Youth Department, Dec. 13-15.

The class was free and open to journalists of all forms of media, including print, broadcast and Internet. Thirty journalists from over a dozen news organizations across Laghman enrolled in the class, 10 of whom were female.

Media Law Training is something that has never been seen by Afghan journalists of Laghman province. Journalists were wary to expand their skills in media because the boundaries of the law were not clearly defined for them. “They were scared because they didn’t know their immunities,” said Walid Mashal, Afghan legal advisor to the 45th Infantry Brigade Combat Team.

When Mashal attended a Media Law Training Program earlier this year, sponsored by England’s Oxford University held in Kabul, Afghanistan, he sought to allow the journalists of Laghman province to have the same opportunity for such a class. “Because of the training, I knew the journalists in Laghman needed to know this,” said Mashal.

Mashal began coordinating with Maj. Michael Mejia, Rule of Law Attorney with Headquarters and Headquarters Co, 45th IBCT, to make the class official through the Department of Defense and the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. “I make it happen, but stay behind the scenes,” said Mejia referencing the coordination of the training.

Once all the preparations were made, Laghman Province News affiliates were contacted to advertise the class. Mohammad Ismail Hotak, another Afghan legal advisor with the 45th IBCT, along with Mashal, was an instructor for the training.

Attendees first received an overview of the Afghanistan government and legal system, learning about their rights as individuals under the 2004 Afghanistan Constitution, which adheres to Sharia Law, the religious law and moral code of Islam. “They know their rights, freedom of expressions and speeches,” said Mashal.

The journalists were then given in-depth lessons in the overall legal framework for the media in Afghanistan. They learned about The Law on Mass Media, which has been enacted in accordance with Article 34 of the Constitution and Article 19 of the International Covenant of Human Rights for ensuring the "protections of freedom of thought and speech," and "regulating the activities of mass media in the country."

According to article four, this law states, "the government shall support and strengthen the freedom of mass media. No real or incorporeal person including the government and government officials can interdict, prohibit, censor or limit the activities of mass media or interfere in the affairs of mass media through other means."

Journalists are also legally protected by this law while "carrying out their professional activities including publishing reports and critique views."“They learned very new things to them,” said Mashal. “They need to know the legalities of journalism and they were very happy to learn.”

Mahammad Akbor, Afghan legal advisor for the 45th IBCT said the class was “very good,” and “all the people liked it. They didn’t have any information before and now in the future they can avoid legal issues.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Could Generation Y end up trusting citizen journalism more than official press releases as its popularity increases?

Tim Pool, a 25-year-old protester turned independent broadcaster, has been using his Samsung Galaxy S II to stream the full events of Occupy Wall Street. There’s no fancy camera equipment, no deadlines and no sponsorship.

After police in full riot gear evicted thousands of protesters from Zuccotti Park in New York, with members of the media unable to access the area, Pool and other protesters took matters in to their own hands.

Pool began streaming his live coverage from Ustream, a live service with millions of subscribers. After the eviction took place, Pool said: “We’ve seen one of the scariest, heart-racing nights, [...] it’s really bringing everyone together.”

The 21-hour stream catapulted Pool to online fame as it went viral on Twitter. The broadcasting effort, it seems, created a strong bond in the protesting community. Unfiltered and unedited, the stream was featured on a number of broadcasting channels, and provided what camera crews could not.

It started with just one man and his smartphone. But how far could ‘citizen journalism’ go in altering the general public’s view on events?

Could Generation Y end up trusting user-generated content more than official press releases as it continues to balloon and expand?

Sometimes footage released online is ‘accidental journalism’, and can be uploaded with detrimental effects to official press releases.

A chance bystander, or a witness viewing a riot, a personal account can add another facet to a news broadcast that may have not been available 20 years ago. Considering this, the increase in user-generated content needs to be taken thoughtfully in to account by any media outlet that indulges in spin.

A single person who stands at the sidelines with their camera has the potential to derail and embarrass any media corporation.

Online broadcasts, at least currently in the West, allow for immediate global viewing. This can cause instant accountability for those involved in the situation, whether public figures, the police, or individuals themselves.

You want to know what’s happening at UC Davis? Go on YouTube. How about OWS updates? Head over to Twitter.

Social media networks are expanding at an incredible rate. Studies suggest that people find them unreliable, but when you click on the link to a witness video of the latest riot, citizen journalism can help an audience form their own opinion.

Subjective witness reports, video documenting incidents — it can all contribute to a greater understanding of the subject itself.

Objective media can be viewed, both image and video, and allows for subjective experience and opinions to be formed. It can take traditional journalism one-step further by allowing the audience to experience something for themselves rather than simply read it in traditional print.

‘People-powered’ news services like Blottr and an expanding range of citizen journalism sites are also on the rise. Whether it is a loose collaboration of writers and bloggers, or streaming platforms like Ustream and YouTube, now the general public are able to report on, collaborate and discover ‘breaking news’ as it happens.

Not all reporting is without some form of bias like that of the reporter themselves, but video media often allows an audience to view raw footage that may not be available through traditional, editing outlets.

The web has granted people the power to transmit information that was once reserved only for large corporations, who often have an agenda. Whether ’semi-independent’ — for example, posting commentary alongside news sites — or ‘independent’ — outside of traditional media outlets, citizen journalism has the opportunity to report on not only localised events.

But global concerns and give more subjective accounts of proceedings. Paul Bradshaw has written that citizen journalism takes us “from a world where members of the public needed the news industry for information, to one where they can access and produce it themselves.”

I would take this a step further. It is not only that citizens are able to produce news themselves, but also journalists are now also able to draw on them for stories to an extent not seen before.

Some commentary can be editorially valuable. or example, the BBC’s question on its website asking people to tell them where they bought their fuel if they had had a problem engine was the most accurate data gained about the areas problem petrol was being sold. It can also enrich experiences, such as questions, from the general public being tweeted and answered in live stream conferences.

There are, of course, disadvantages to this. By having intense interaction between journalists and audiences through these platforms, it’s not only beneficial discussion that can be generated. Internet ‘trolls’, hate campaigns against journalists, and even death threats all exist.

The Occupy Wall Street citizen broadcasting movement in itself is one example of how the Internet is allowing eyewitness reports, photos and videos to be logged everyday without censure or control. Though, there have been suggestions that police were confiscating laptops and destroying recording equipment in an effort to control the ‘uprising’ of unrestricted broadcasting.

Syria attempted banned the use of iPhones to try and control information leaving the country, amid fear it could be used by Western media outlets. Citizen journalism causes power shifts.

The questions are: how valuable will we view such commentary and media streams in the future, and what additional parts the Generation Y will play in the forming of future journalism?

Read the rest of this entry »

It may have made it to Wembley Arena, but this was the year in which The X Factor became an ordinary television show. A year ago, after an improbable run of increasing ratings, the progress of Simon Cowell Industries was studied by serious media types as if it were as important to the future of the nation as BP or Rolls-Royce. (Well, we do like to take ourselves seriously). Who cared about extracting oil and exporting jet engines when we send Cowell with his format across the pond with wor' Cheryl? But all that was so last year, like Matt Cardle; 4 million viewers tuned out of the final, Cowell is gone; Cole is forgotten – and above all, we have become more serious again. And so The X Factor hardly troubled broadsheet pages, reviews aside.

Newspaper media journalism can hardly normally be regarded as a real job, although mercifully its practitioners get paid for their efforts. Writing about television had dominated the discipline for the last decade: the decline of ITV and simultaneous rise of Cowell; a long narrative of BBC criticism for sloppy standards and overspending – and in the background, the gradual ascent of Sky. It was a narrative that suited the Murdochs: the BBC on the back foot; ITV in thrall to its best talent – and Sky judged in business pages that registered growth but not growing dominance. Talk about press standards, though, was a minority sport – largely for the Guardian and the steps of the high court.

Controversies about the reporting of the McCanns or Max Mosley were described as isolated events – certainly not serious enough to merit resignations or a corporate crisis of the kind that seemed to regularly befall the BBC, from Hutton to Ross/Brand. Meanwhile, a row over whether the Queen stormed out of a photoshoot – a trivial error by almost any measure other than the fact it involved the monarch – was enough to claim the scalp of the boss of BBC1. One can only wonder what would have occurred if a broadcaster had published Kate McCann's diaries without her permission; that it happened at the News of the World meant that nobody had to go.

The result was a lopsided set of ethics – and even as 2011 began there was little sign that anything was about to change, with a tabloid editor in Downing Street, and his former colleague insinuating her way into government. Until, that is, this year. Rebekah Brooks and James Murdoch may have spent part of Christmas with David Cameron, but already the fateful decision had been taken to suspend Ian Edmondson, the assistant editor (news) at the News of the World, in response to a picture emerging slowly from the phone-hacking lawsuits. It turned out to be the moment the dam was breached: the moment, finally, where the single "rogue reporter" defence was abandoned. Who knows if there was time or inclination to fill in the PM on Boxing Day, but it turned out that Edmondson's suspension was the beginning of the torrent of arrest, resignation and disclosure that overwhelmed virtually all other media news. And that too was a story first reported by the Guardian's James Robinson back on 5 January 2011.

The year ends, remarkably, with public hearings into press standards, with a debate about privacy lumped in on the back of alleged serial illegality and admitted need for regulatory reform. In contrast, the broadcasters attract almost no attention, even where BBC cuts are involved. Occasionally that has meant that important issues have been underdiscussed: the BBC's needless murder of English local radio being the most obvious. But, in reality, as the ethics seesaw gets back into something like balance, it is not the BBC that needs to be a concern. There is little point in being subtle about it: 2011 has been an extraordinary year that has ended with the hope of judging what is good and bad in the media fairly. Let's sing badly to that.

Read the rest of this entry »

A gunman in Russia's troubled Caucasus region of Dagestan shot dead a leading journalist who founded a newspaper known for fearless criticism of the local authorities, officials said Friday. Khadzhimurad Kamalov, the founder of the Dagestan weekly newspaper Chernovik and the director of its publisher Svoboda Slova (Freedom of Speech), was riddled with bullets in the main city Makhachkala, investigators said.

A gunman shot him dead with a pistol as he was coming out of the offices of the publisher at around midnight, the Russian Investigative Committee said in a statement. "The victim died on the way to hospital from multiple gunshot wounds," it said, adding a criminal case had been opened into murder. Kamalov was the founder of Chernovik, which has been published since 2003 and won a reputation for its bold criticism of the local authorities.

The journalist had become known in particular for his criticism of the Dagestan interior ministry and had carried out investigations of unsolved "disappearances" of people blamed on criminal groups. "It cannot be excluded that Kalamov was killed because of his work," the Investigative Committee said. ITAR-TASS said the newspaper had repeatedly been the target of legal proceedings by the authorities and at one point every single printing press in Dagestan refused to print it. The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) described his murder as a "lethal blow to press freedom"

"The assassination is a massive loss for independent journalism in the North Caucasus, Russia's most dangerous place for reporters," its Europe and Central Asia coordinator Nina Ognianova said. It said the newspaper's journalists had in the past been "routinely persecuted for their work" and said the paper was known for exposing corruption in the Dagestan administration. His murder follows the killing earlier this year in Makhachkala of Maksud Sadikov, leading university professor in Dagestan who criticised radical Islamists. Dagestan, a Muslim Caspian Sea region known for its ancient culture and tapestry of ethnic groups, endures regular attacks officials blame on militants seeking to establish an Islamic state across the Russian Caucasus.

Read the rest of this entry »