The New Censorship

The New Censorship PDF Author: Joel Simon
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231538332
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 249

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Book Description
An examination of how the media is under fire and how to safeguard journalists and the information they seek to share with the public. Journalists are being imprisoned and killed in record numbers. Online surveillance is annihilating privacy, and the Internet can be brought under government control at any time. Joel Simon, the executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, warns that we can no longer assume that our global information ecosystem is stable, protected, and robust. Journalists are increasingly vulnerable to attack by authoritarian governments, militants, criminals, and terrorists, who all seek to use technology, political pressure, and violence to set the global information agenda. Reporting from Pakistan, Russia, Turkey, Egypt, and Mexico, among other hotspots, Simon finds journalists under threat from all sides. The result is a growing crisis in information—a shortage of the news we need to make sense of our globalized world and fight human rights abuses, manage conflict, and promote accountability. Drawing on his experience defending journalists on the front lines, he calls on “global citizens,” U.S. policy makers, international law advocates, and human rights groups to create a global freedom-of-expression agenda tied to trade, climate, and other major negotiations. He proposes ten key priorities, including combating the murder of journalists, ending censorship, and developing a global free-expression charter to challenge the criminal and corrupt forces that seek to manipulate the world's news. “Wise and insightful. [Simon] offers hope to all who care about maintaining the free flow of information in a world full of would-be censors.”—Ann Cooper, Columbia Journalism School

The New Censorship

The New Censorship PDF Author: Joel Simon
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231538332
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 249

Get Book Here

Book Description
An examination of how the media is under fire and how to safeguard journalists and the information they seek to share with the public. Journalists are being imprisoned and killed in record numbers. Online surveillance is annihilating privacy, and the Internet can be brought under government control at any time. Joel Simon, the executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, warns that we can no longer assume that our global information ecosystem is stable, protected, and robust. Journalists are increasingly vulnerable to attack by authoritarian governments, militants, criminals, and terrorists, who all seek to use technology, political pressure, and violence to set the global information agenda. Reporting from Pakistan, Russia, Turkey, Egypt, and Mexico, among other hotspots, Simon finds journalists under threat from all sides. The result is a growing crisis in information—a shortage of the news we need to make sense of our globalized world and fight human rights abuses, manage conflict, and promote accountability. Drawing on his experience defending journalists on the front lines, he calls on “global citizens,” U.S. policy makers, international law advocates, and human rights groups to create a global freedom-of-expression agenda tied to trade, climate, and other major negotiations. He proposes ten key priorities, including combating the murder of journalists, ending censorship, and developing a global free-expression charter to challenge the criminal and corrupt forces that seek to manipulate the world's news. “Wise and insightful. [Simon] offers hope to all who care about maintaining the free flow of information in a world full of would-be censors.”—Ann Cooper, Columbia Journalism School

Repressive State and Resurgent Media Under Nigeria's Military Dictatorship, 1988-98

Repressive State and Resurgent Media Under Nigeria's Military Dictatorship, 1988-98 PDF Author: Ayo Olukotun
Publisher: Nordic Africa Institute
ISBN: 9789171065247
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 144

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Book Description
This study documents a crucial dimension of the resistance of Nigerian civil society to a repressive and monumentally corrupt military state in the late 1980s and 1990s in Nigeria. Employing a neo-Gramscian theoretical framework, the study relates how a section of the media defied censorship laws, outright bans, incarceration and the assassination of opposition figures, to prosecute the struggle for democracy. It captures the tensions and contradictions between a pliant section of the media which sought to legitimise the state and a critical section of the same media which, in alliance with radical civil society, invented rebellious outlets to carry on the struggle against dictatorship. The study seeks to make fresh departures by documenting not only the role of the national media in the throes of democratic struggle, but that of the international media whose role was influential in the years studied. Finally the report offers empirical proof of the mechanisms by which a vibrant civil society can curb the ravages of a predatory state in an African country. Book jacket.

Media Capture

Media Capture PDF Author: Anya Schiffrin
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231548028
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
Who controls the media today? There are many media systems across the globe that claim to be free yet whose independence has been eroded. As demagogues rise, independent voices have been squeezed out. Corporate-owned media companies that act in the service of power increasingly exercise soft censorship. Tech giants such as Facebook and Google have dramatically changed how people access information, with consequences that are only beginning to be felt. This book features pathbreaking analysis from journalists and academics of the changing nature and peril of media capture—how formerly independent institutions fall under the sway of governments, plutocrats, and corporations. Contributors including Emily Bell, Felix Salmon, Joshua Marshall, Joel Simon, and Nikki Usher analyze diverse cases of media capture worldwide—from the United Kingdom to Turkey to India and beyond—many drawn from firsthand experience. They examine the role played by new media companies and funders, showing how the confluence of the growth of big tech and falling revenues for legacy media has led to new forms of control. Contributions also shed light on how the rise of right-wing populists has catalyzed the crisis of global media. They also chart a way forward, exploring the growing need for a policy response and sustainable models for public-interest investigative journalism. Providing valuable insight into today’s urgent threats to media independence, Media Capture is essential reading for anyone concerned with defending press freedom in the digital age.

Democracy and Development in Africa

Democracy and Development in Africa PDF Author: Claude Ake
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
ISBN: 0815723482
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 184

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Book Description
Despite three decades of preoccupation with development in Africa, the economies of most African nations are still stagnating or regressing. For most Africans, incomes are lower than they were two decades ago, health prospects are poorer, malnourishment is widespread, and infrastructures and social institutions are breaking down. An array of factors have been offered to explain the apparent failure of development in Africa, including the colonial legacy, social pluralism, corruption, poor planning and incompetent management, limited in-flow of foreign capital, and low levels of saving and investment. Alone or in combination, these factors are serious impediments to development, but Claude Ake contends that the problem is not that development has failed, but that it was never really on the agenda. He maintains that political conditions in Africa are the greatest impediment to development. In this book, Ake traces the evolution and failure of development policies, including the IMF stabilization programs that have dominated international efforts. He identifies the root causes of the problem in the authoritarian political structure of the African states derived from the previous colonial entities. Ake sketches the alternatives that are struggling to emerge from calamitous failure--economic development based on traditional agriculture, political development based on the decentralization of power, and reliance on indigenous communities that have been providing some measure of refuge from the coercive power of the central state. Ake's argument may become a new paradigm for development in Africa.

Freedom of the Press 2003

Freedom of the Press 2003 PDF Author: Freedom House (U.S.)
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9780742528741
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 180

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Book Description
The annual Freedom of the Press, which tracks trends in media freedom worldwide, appears for the first time as an expanded book. Covering 192 countries, the survey provides numerical ratings of the level of press freedom in each country. The Freedom House survey team also assesses the legal environment for the media, political pressures that influence reporting, and economic factors that affect access to information. Essays include a 25-year retrospective of press freedom and a timely analysis of the upcoming World Summits on the Information Society (2003 and 2005). Academics in several disciplines, governments, the news media, and the World Bank employ Freedom of the Press as a standard reference.

The Causes of Instability in Nigeria and Implications for the United States

The Causes of Instability in Nigeria and Implications for the United States PDF Author: Clarence J. Bouchat
Publisher: Army War College Press
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 136

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Book Description
The political economy problems of Nigeria, the root cause for ethnic, religious, political and economic strife, can be in part addressed indirectly through focused contributions by the U.S. military, especially if regionally aligned units are more thoroughly employed.

Freedom of the Press 2006

Freedom of the Press 2006 PDF Author: Freedom House (U.S.)
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9780742554368
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
Freedom House's annual press freedom survey has tracked trends in media freedom worldwide since 1980. Covering 194 countries and territories, Freedom of the Press 2006 provides comparative rankings and examines the legal environment for the media, political pressures that influence reporting, and economic factors that affect access to information. The survey is the most authoritative assessment of media freedom around the world. Its findings are widely utilized by policymakers, scholars, press freedom advocates, journalists, and international institutions.

Nigeria During the Abacha Years

Nigeria During the Abacha Years PDF Author: 'Kunle Amuwo
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
The autocratic regime of Sani Abacha (1993-1998) stands out as a watershed in the history of independent Nigeria. Nigeria's darkest years since the civil war resulted from his unrestrained personal rule; very close to the features associated with warlordism. Nepotism, corruption, violation of human rights, procrastination over the implementation of a democratic transition, and the exploitation of ethnic, cultural or religious identities, also resulted in the accumulation of harshly repressed frustrations. In this book, some distinguished scholars, journalists and civil society activists examine this process of democratic recession, and its institutional, sociological, federal and international ramifications. Most of the contributions were originally presented at a seminar organized by the Centre d'Etude d'Afrique Noire (CEAN) in Bordeaux.

Human Rights in Developing Countries

Human Rights in Developing Countries PDF Author: P. Peter R. Baehr
Publisher: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers
ISBN: 9789041101273
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 436

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Book Description
This edition of the "Yearbook on Human Rights in Developing Countries" focuses on government policy with regard to the relationship between human rights and development in Austria, Denmark, the Netherlands and Norway. These thematic studies make a contribution to the discussion on the role of human rights in development policy in what are termed like-minded countries. The "Yearbook" also contains eight country reports which assess human rights trends in countries in the South, covering civil and political as well as economic, social and cultural rights during the period 1992-1994. The reports have a common structure, allowing comparisons between countries. Reports appear on Bangladesh, Botswana, the Philippines and Sudan, which were last covered in the 1990 "Yearbook," and Nicaragua and Surinam, last covered in the 1991 "Yearbook," Colombia and Nigeria are reported on for the first time. The "Yearbook on Human Rights in Developing Countries" is a joint project of the Chr. Michelsen Institute, Bergen, the Norwegian Institute of Human Rights, Oslo, the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, Lund, the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute of Human Rights (BIM), Vienna, and the Netherlands Institute of Human Rights (SIM), Utrecht.

The Feasibility of Democracy in Africa

The Feasibility of Democracy in Africa PDF Author: Claude Ake
Publisher: African Books Collective
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 214

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Book Description
The book outlines, in a sweeping continental survey and with telling detail, how the democratic commitment has transformed Africa's legacy of dictatorship, military regimes and single-party rule. Yet, at the same time as 'we are all democrats now', Ake shows how cleverly conservative autocrats have stolen the democratic message and subverted its promise. The danger of trivializing democracy into successive multi-party elections, where one narrow elite succeeds another, is a real one in present-day Africa, and the book spells out the hazards that lie ahead for nascent democratic movements at the grassroots.