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| Courageous Russian reporter wins big award | |
| 2010-08-23 | |
WASHINGTON — Russian journalist Ilya Barabanov, who has worked to expose official corruption, was awarded the Peter Mackler Award honoring courageous journalism Sunday, press freedom group Reporters Without Borders announced.
‘Barabanov, a young journalist, has displayed enormous courage in standing up for journalistic independence and the Russian people’s right to free and balanced news. These character traits are what the Peter Mackler Award seeks to encourage and reward,’ said award director Camille Mackler. Reporters Without Borders, which administers the prize, said Barabanov’s nomination comes amid growing accusations of Internet censorship and media intimidation in Russia. ‘We are delighted to know this award goes to Ilya Barabanov,’ Jean-Francois Julliard, Secretary General of Reporters Without Borders, said. ‘Being a journalist in Russia is one of the toughest jobs around. ‘Russian journalists need to be supported and recognized worldwide for the work they do. Ilya’s talent, courage and persistence are essential to Russian journalism,’ he said. | |
| Posted by:Steve White |
| #6 Democracies suck. Stay away from them. Here's why: |
| Posted by: gorb 2010-08-23 13:41 |
| #5 As a democracy we are dependant on being INFORMED otherwise we are not really free to make decisions. anon1, I can appreciate the spirit of your statement but take some exceptions. The first is your casual reference to a “democracy”. Hugo Chavez’s concept of freedom of the press is anything but free. Yet, Venezuela by definition is a functioning pluralistic democracy. Also, freedom of the press results from a society governed by liberty – not the converse. And lets pray that the future of journalism is not dependant upon the likes of Wikileaks. Believe it or not, it is the obligation of the goverment of the freest country in the history of the world to maintain some secrets to protect those liberties. |
| Posted by: DepotGuy 2010-08-23 12:58 |
| #4 Look at it from a reporter's point of view. They have to produce a story, film or print, each work day. They don't, as a rule, have time to do a lot of investigative work against an uncooperative government. So what do they do? They cultivate sources that feed them stories. If you are in the government, you want to shape the message. So you feed stories to your contacts in the media that support that message. We should call the western news by its proper name; propaganda. Hats off to Barabanov for having the courage to speak truth to power. This is clearly a guy who has reached his f'it limit. I agree with the statement that no reporter at the NYT or LAT is likely to win this award anytime soon. The purpose of the IG in any government organization is root out self-nominating trouble makers and punish them. Duh. Regarding Wikileaks, there are plenty of unclassified or properly sanitized (to protect sources and methods) stories that need to be told. F'em. |
| Posted by: Mike Ramsey 2010-08-23 02:37 |
| #3 Except for the _apparently_ little fact that Assange is helping a tyrranical government kill those who stand up against them. |
| Posted by: Thing From Snowy Mountain 2010-08-23 01:57 |
| #2 The problem with journalists is that they twist the facts of the story to suit their political biases. Worse, they refuse to report inconvenient truths. The founder of Wikileaks is on record saying he hates America and I'm not surprised he's using his project to harm us. If someone came to him with top-secret documents that would harm Obama, would they be published? Highly doubtful. |
| Posted by: gromky 2010-08-23 00:58 |
| #1 it's not just a question of courage though that is to be applauded. for reporters the hardest thing is to get anybody to actually leak verifiable information the problem is that whistleblowers get hunted down. In Russia they get killed. In Australia they lose their jobs and the might of the bureaucracy is arrayed against them. Their life is totally destroyed so they might as well be dead. In the US and UK I don't know what happens but I suspect it is similar to Australia - except in the US if you can save the Government cash you get a slice of it, which is one encouragement. The hunting down of whistleblowers is why Wikileaks is important. The system is set up to silence whistleblowers and it doesn't matter how many courageous journalists you have out there they are not going to be able to tell you anything when people are too scared to talk. We need Wikileaks because it encrypts and protects sources. Journalists then use Wikileaks to source stories that would otherwise never be known. As a democracy we are dependant on being INFORMED otherwise we are not really free to make decisions. Plenty of people round these parts hate Julian Assange of wikileaks but just look what is happening to him Someone who makes it easy for whistleblowers - look at the dirty tricks they fight with. Accused him of rape of course. Perfect. Trump up a charge. Western nations are becoming increasingly intolerant of dissenting voices and whistleblowers and it is up to us to grasp the nettle of keeping freedom of the media and the freedom to speak out without fear of reprisals. |
| Posted by: anon1 2010-08-23 00:51 |