Action 251, April 2003

Nophakhun Limsamarnphun

Articulate and professional, Supinya is the epitome of the new generation of NGO staff who appeal to the young. Polished and well-educated, Supinya Klanarong, 29, has added a new face to Thailand’s non-government organisations (NGOs). The deputy secretary-general of the Campaign for Popular Media Reform (CPMR), a grouping of 45 NGOs nationwide formed to monitor crucial reform under the Constitution, says new-generation activists like her are not what people would usually perceive.

The academic year 2002-2003 was a growth-oriented year in the department of communication. With the help of World Association for Christian Communication, the Department arranged a programme on "Refugees and their Right to Communicate" for the South Asia Regional NGOs who are working among Refugees. During this year the Media Awareness Programme (MAP) was conducted for twenty schoolteachers and the classes were carried out in ten schools successfully with the help of our post graduate students. The schoolteachers and students showed a lot of interest in carrying out the MAP and requested us to do as a regular course from the next year onwards.

Norman Solomon is a regular contributor to MediaBeat at FAIR (www.fair.org) and also to ZNet (www.znet.org)

In times of war, journalists can serve as vital witnesses for the people of the world. So it's especially sinister when governments take aim at reporters and photographers.

A few weeks ago, when I was talking with a CNN cameraman, he recalled an overseas stint to cover events in the West Bank. Anger was evident in his voice: "The Israelis were shooting at us."

Armed with cameras, a group of young Afghan girls took to the streets of their capital – the same streets on which they work to earn a living – to document life in Afghanistan as they see and understand it.

Li Heng

Since the outbreak of the Iraqi War, the world's major media have plunged themselves one after another into a news battle. However, if you read their news reports on the war carefully, you will find the puzzling practices of some Western countries and their media, which always flaunt "freedom of the press" and advertise themselves as being "true, objective and just" in their covering of the war.

Pradip Thomas

The tradition of lunch seminars at WACC - recent speakers included Sam Gregory from the NY-based Witness, Linda Hartke from the Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance, CRIS Co-ordinator Myriam Horngren and WACC staff Ana Fiol, continued on April 10th with a presentation by Premesh Chandran, one of the founders of the web-based Malaysian news service, Malaysiakini. Founded in 1999 as an alternative news source to the government-controlled press and broadcasting, Malaysiakini has quickly become an established, and credible source of opinion on all sorts of issues traditionally prone to government spin. While this pioneer news service has many admirers within Malaysia and outside, the Malaysian government is not a huge fan.

Lewis R. Scudder Jr.

Matthew Arnold’s poem, “On Dover Beach,” still has a very contemporaneous ring out of its 19th century setting. Like a retreating tide, faith, once so all-embracing, in his time too seemed to be …
… Retreating, to the breath
Of the night wind,
down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.
Speaking to someone he loves on that ominously peaceful night of a violent age, overlooking the calm and undulating sea at Dover, Arnold sighs,

By Farai Chideya, AlterNet

A few days after the start of the war, I was sitting in a hotel restaurant having breakfast. At night, the eatery was a sports bar. But that morning, fifteen television sets, some as large as five feet square, broadcast war coverage.

Sean Hawkey

The brutal reality of war, a picture of what the collateral damage looks and feels like, has so far successfully been kept from us. It is clearer than ever that the first casualty of war is the truth. And it’s not surprising. Journalists have been threatened - with death - by the pentagon, journalists have been killed by coalition forces, broadcasting infrastructure has been systematically destroyed, independent media has been forced to close - officially and unofficially, and, many reporters covering the attack have been co-opted into the military. The ‘fog of war’ has been manufactured.

MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay -- APC opposes actions against the online presence of Al-Jazeera. The Internet must be allowed to freely perform its unique and vital role as a promoter of "freedom of expression" and content diversity, especially in times of conflict.