While here in the US the discussion around journalism centers on its broken business model and how it will adapt to new media, around the world some are paying a much higher cost.
The Committee to Protect Journalists says that as of December there were 125 journalists in jail around the globe, with 56 of those online journalists. The number continues to grow. For instance, Iranian-American journalist Roxana Saberi is now serving a trumped up sentence in Iran,
In many of the more repressive governments, like China, the only way to disseminate unbiased journalism is online, through blogs and other means.
When reading an Op-Ed this morning about this growing problem, I was introduced to the Global Network Initiative. Google, Yahoo and Mocrosoft are all members of this group:
[GNI is] a multi-stakeholder group of companies, civil society organizations (including human rights and press freedom groups), investors and academics spent two years negotiating and creating a collaborative approach to protect and advance freedom of expression and privacy in the ICT sector, and have formed an Initiative to take this work forward
As part of this group these companies promise to not be complicit in the oppression of bloggers.
It gave me pause to keep perspective. In some places of the world, the cost to be a blogger is freedom.
What are your thoughts?
