North Korea, Iran Holding U.S. Reporters as “Political Hostages,” Media Group Says/Online Newspaper's Investigation Unleashes Corruption Scandal in El

Internews Announces Earth Journalism Awards on Opening Day of G8 Environment Ministers’ Meeting

Internews Earth Journalism Network Director James Fahn addresses press and policymakers in Siracusa.

(April 22, 2009) The global media assistance organisation Internews today announced the creation of the Earth Journalism Awards for climate change reporting at a round table on communication at the G8 Environment Ministers’ Meeting in Siracusa, Italy. Designed to increase and improve media coverage of climate change around the world, the competition will culminate with a ceremony at the pivotal United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP15) in Copenhagen this December.
“Today on Earth Day we are launching the Earth Journalism Awards that will support journalism that is more balanced and more environmentally aware,” said H.E. Stefania Prestigiacomo, Italy’s Minister of Environment and President of the G8 Environment Ministers Meeting. “Such journalism can make us all more responsible towards our environment.“
Also featured in remarks by Mary Robinson, former President of Ireland, in her Earth Day speech at the World Bank in Washington, D.C., the Earth Journalism Awards will honor journalists in all media formats and from different global regions who produce the best climate change stories this year. Winners will be selected by expert international juries and invited to attend and cover the Copenhagen Conference, where they will receive their awards in a high profile ceremony on the eve of the political negotiations.
The Earth Journalism Awards’ partners and sponsors to date include the Government of Denmark, which is the COP15 host country, the Ministry of Environment, Land and Sea of Italy, The World Bank, MTV International, the V. Kann Rasmussen Foundation, the Edgerton Family Foundation and Flip Video Spotlight.
“All around the world we are seeing some outstanding stories on climate change, in a multitude of media and linked to a wide range of related issues,” said James Fahn, Global Director of Internews’ Earth Journalism Network (EJN). “The Earth Journalism Awards will finally provide some recognition for this work, along with a higher profile for the journalists who often have to overcome extremely adverse conditions to report them.”
"Global climate change threatens to derail or even roll back hard-won development gains for many countries," said Katherine Sierra, World Bank Vice President for Sustainable Development. "In this critical year, as countries strive to 'Seal the Deal' in Copenhagen, it is essential that climate change communications gets more attention," she said. "In this respect, the Earth Journalism Awards will be a great incentive to media across the world to turn the spotlight on the challenges and opportunities before us."
The complete list of partners and award categories for the Earth Journalism Awards will be announced on World Environment Day, June 5th, when new partnerships will be unveiled and an online platform will officially be opened for journalists to submit their applications. Journalists are invited to register from today in order to receive more information on the Earth Journalism Awards.
“We are excited to see what wonderful creativity the awards will bring from around the world,” explained John Jackson, Director of Social Responsibility for MTV International, which is sponsoring a multimedia youth citizen journalism prize. “We hope that everyone involved in the important work of Copenhagen will get a chance to see what is produced, and that it will help to stir the minds and the hearts of those who have hard but important decisions to make in December.”
A particular goal of the awards is to generate climate change coverage across scores of developing countries where there is a dearth of information and public debate on what is at stake for them in Copenhagen. Internews will be building on the success of The Every Human Has Rights Media Awards held last year. Those awards attracted submissions from more than 100 countries and major participation from developing world journalists. Thirty award winning human rights journalists were brought to Paris to cover the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, at a ceremony featuring former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and Mary Robinson.
The awards were announced at a Siracusa roundtable entitled “Communication and Climate Change – Development Challenges and Opportunities,” organised jointly by the World Bank and the Ministry of Environment, Land and Sea of Italy. Panelists included Dr Max Boykoff, Research Fellow, Environmental Change Institute of Oxford University, Gustavo Faleiros of O Eco news agency in Brazil, Connie Hedegaard, Denmark’s Minister for Climate and Energy and the World Bank’s Kathy Sierra. All spoke about the vital importance of communication in climate change response and the challenges facing developing country journalists in trying to cover climate change in the most affected areas of the world.
Details about the awards, and how to apply for them
Press Contacts:
Europe and International :
James Fahn – + 66819607673
Mark Harvey – + 44 7703 180 524
US :
Annette Makino – +1 707 826-2030 x123
Notes for Editors:
Internews is an international media development organization that was established in 1982. Its mission is to empower local media worldwide to provide people with the news and information that they need, the ability to connect, and the means to make their voices heard. Internews activities include training, production, media infrastructure, and media law and policy. Internews has worked in over 70 countries and currently has offices in 35 countries throughout Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and North America.

In 2004, Internews developed the Earth Journalism Network (EJN) to empower enable journalists from developing countries cover the environment more effectively. EJN establishes networks of environmental journalists in countries where they don't exist, and builds their capacity where they do, through training workshops, support for production and distribution, and dispersing small grants.

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Boyfriend of U.S. journalist jailed in Iran waits, hopes
AFP/Getty Images
Bahman Ghobadi says he is tired of censors and Islamic politics intruding upon his life and art.
Kurdish Iranian film director Bahman Ghobadi doesn't want to leave Iran until his girlfriend, Roxana Saberi, is freed on appeal. He partially blames himself for her imprisonment.
By Ramin Mostaghim and Jeffrey Fleishman
April 23, 2009
Reporting from Cairo and Tehran -- His girlfriend is in jail for espionage and acclaimed Kurdish Iranian film director Bahman Ghobadi is thinking about packing up his scripts and editing equipment and heading to Europe. He is tired, he says, of censors and Islamic politics intruding upon his life and art.

But Ghobadi, director of spare, poetic films such as "A Time for Drunken Horses," doesn't want to go anywhere until his girlfriend, Roxana Saberi, is freed on appeal. The 31-year-old Iranian American journalist was convicted of spying for the U.S. and sentenced to eight years in prison.

On Wednesday, Ghobadi sat in his Tehran office, gray flecks in his hair, but a face still young, waiting for news.

"I am absolutely sure she will be freed in less than a month," he said. "If not, I cannot even imagine it."

The real-life saga since Saberi's sentencing Saturday seems grist for a thriller: A journalist accused of crimes against the state emerges as the protagonist caught between two enemy nations -- the U.S. and Iran -- locked in a struggle haunted by the specter of nuclear arms. But for Ghobadi such a script may lack the grit and lyrical, redemptive realism he conjured in "Turtles Can Fly," the story of children in the mountains of Kurdistan who collect unexploded bombs and wait for satellite TV at the brink of the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

There have been indications in recent days that Saberi's sentence may be commuted or rescinded. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the chief judge of the country's judiciary have stressed that the journalist, who worked for the BBC and National Public Radio, should receive a quick and fair appeal. Iran, where hard-liners and moderates are battling ahead of June elections, may not want the case to jeopardize improving relations with the Obama administration, which contends that Saberi is innocent.

Ghobadi worries, makes plans, writes letters and talks about the restrictive lives artists and journalists face in his country. He spoke about his depression over the censors' objections to his films, including "Half Moon," which was banned in Iran, and his latest, "Nobody Knows the Persian Cat," which is scheduled to be shown in May at the Cannes International Film Festival.

He is also a man fighting guilt: He asked Saberi to stay in Iran while he worked on "Nobody Knows the Persian Cat," despite her desire to leave for the United States. She ended up as a co-writer on the script.

"Roxana and I met 18 months ago, through a Japanese mutual acquaintance," said Ghobadi, 40. "We had tea at my home and we understood each other and became intimate friends. She's a talented girl. She even advised me to tone down when I couldn't get authorization for my last film."

"She's more cautious than me," he said. "I'm sorry that I encouraged her to stay while I finished my film. She was always unhappy because as a journalist she couldn't get authorization to work and so devoted herself to writing a book about Iran."

In an open letter posted on the Internet and titled "To Roxana Saberi, Iranian With an American Passport," Ghobadi writes: "My heart is full of sorrow. Because it is me who incited her to stay here. And now I can't do anything for her. Roxana wanted to leave Iran. I kept her from it."

Iranian security forces have gone through Saberi's papers, read her notes, confiscated her laptop. Her one-day trial was held in secret, and few details of her alleged crimes have emerged from the courtroom, except the broad accusation that she funneled information to U.S. intelligence services.

"They can read her book manuscript and see that there is nothing [incriminatory] there, just writings about Iran today, its culture, art, politics and economy," Ghobadi said.

He remembers when Saberi was led away after her sentencing. She looked at him for a moment and was gone.

"I stood at the gate," he said. "When she was taken away after the verdict, I had one chance to catch her eyes. She was waving and pleading to the guards to let her see me for a moment. Her plea was rejected.

"I fell down on my knee, sat on the ground weeping," he said. "I am disoriented. My new film has gone to the Cannes, but I have no desire to go."

jeffrey.fleishman@latimes.com

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Obama invites Israeli, Egyptian and Palestinian leaders for talks
Ron Edmonds / Associated Press
Jordan’s King Abdullah II and President Obama say their goodbyes at the White House.
The leaders will come separately to the White House over six weeks to work on concrete steps toward peace, the president says after meeting with Jordan's King Abdullah II.
By Paul Richter
April 22, 2009
Reporting from Washington -- Declaring a need to defeat growing cynicism about the prospects for Mideast peace, President Obama has invited the leaders of Israel, Egypt and the Palestinian territories to the White House for separate talks over the next six weeks.

Obama said he wants to see Israelis, Palestinians and neighboring Arab countries take their first steps toward progress within months.


The overture faces daunting obstacles. The Bush administration's slow-starting peace efforts sputtered to a halt as the administration's clock ran out, partially because of paralysis in Israel's domestic politics. The newly installed Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has not endorsed the two-state goal supported by the United States.

Meanwhile the government of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has been losing influence to its rival Hamas, the Islamist militant group that controls the Gaza Strip. The United States refuses to deal with Hamas, calling it a terrorist group.

Yet Obama has moved swiftly to engage in the region, where so many previous attempts to find common ground have crashed. In one of his first steps after taking office, Obama appointed George J. Mitchell, a former U.S. senator and the architect of Northern Ireland's peace agreement, as his special envoy to the Mideast.

"There's huge potential now . . . because the new administration has taken this on from day one, which is entirely sensible," said Tony Blair, the former British prime minister who now serves as envoy of the so-called quartet -- a grouping of the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations that has assumed responsibility for trying to steer the Israelis and Palestinians toward a deal.

"What we need in order to make this process work is a simultaneous political negotiation that is credible, and major change on the ground," said Blair, who was speaking to the editorial board of the Los Angeles Times.

Obama, in his meeting Tuesday with Jordan's Abdullah, suggested that he shares that approach, saying he was seeking a commitment to "moving that process forward with some urgency."

He said that though the Israeli government is new and the peace discussions have only recently begun, "we can't talk forever. At some point steps have to be taken so that people can see progress."

It remains uncertain whether the Obama team intends to adopt its own positions in negotiations and push for them, as the Clinton administration did, or simply coordinate talks, in the style of President George W. Bush's team.

Obama appeared to suggest that his administration intended to follow the Bush pattern.

He said, "What we can do is create the conditions and the atmosphere and provide the help and assistance that facilitates an agreement."

On a separate issue, Obama chastised Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for criticizing Israel this week, and declared that his administration's diplomacy with Tehran would be "tough."

At a U.N. conference Monday, Ahmadinejad denounced Israel for establishing a "totally racist government" in the Palestinian territories.

Obama said Ahmadinejad's language was "harmful, not just with respect to the possibility of U.S.-Iranian relations, but I think it actually undermines Iranians' position [in] the world as a whole."

Administration officials have emphasized, as they have sought to reach out to the government in Tehran, that they want to restore trust with Iran after 30 years of friction. But Obama shifted the emphasis.

"We are going to continue to take an approach that tough, direct diplomacy has to be pursued without taking a whole host of other options off the table," he said.

paul.richter@latimes.com
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JOURNALISM IN THE AMERICAS
Online Newspaper's Investigation Unleashes Corruption Scandal in El Salvador
The digital newspaper El Faro made public a phone conversation between a leader of the ruling Arena party and a former deputy who had fled from justice in El Salvador. The revelation has shaken the party.
In that conversation, which took place in March 2008, the party's local director in San Salvador, Adolfo Tórrez, speaks with the former deputy Roberto Silva, offering to clear Silva and his wife in exchange for US$500,000. Torrez insinuates that he has already contacted judges and prosecutors to drop the charges of money laundering, corruption, and narco trafficking against Silva.
El Faro's revelation dropped a bombshell on the ruling party, which was defeated in the March 15 elections, and it caused a deep division among its members, Notimex reports. In response, Arena expelled Tórrez from the party for connections to “illicit activities,” Diario CoLatino adds.
The scandal also harmed the Attorney General, Félix Garrid Safie, who had access to the conversation but dismissed charges against Tórrez, La Prensa Gráfica explains. According to El Faro, Arena has decided not to support Garrid Safie's reelection, scheduled for this week.
North Korea, Iran Holding U.S. Reporters as “Political Hostages,” Media Group Says
The two countries have imprisoned the three reporters to strengthen their position in negotiations with the Obama administration, and their authoritarian rulers have accused the journalists of being spies “to smother the truth and delude their populations,” the International Press Institute (IPI) says. (See this report by Bloomberg.)
The coincidence between the jailing of Roxana Saberi in Iran, and Euna Lee and Laura Ling of US-based Current TV connects to the larger issue of the nuclear programs of both Iran and North Korea, allowing both countries to accuse the journalists of spying, journalist David Kirk writes for Asia Times.
“The cases, however, have highly disturbing differences,” Kirk notes. “Iran may seem like a forbidding place, to judge from reports of what's happening to Saberi, but it's a free and open society compared to North Korea.” Saberi’s father has been in Iran, pleading on his daughter’s behalf, but Ling and Lee have had no foreign visitors in North Korea, except for a Swedish diplomat, he says.
San Francisco columnist Arthur Bruzzone, criticizes former Vice President Al Gore, and his online Current TV network, for “abandoning its own reporters.”
(Source:Knight Challange Journalism)

Re-Edited by MUKTI MAJID,Dacca,Bangladesh.