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POPSBuying A Human Being for 50 Bucks "It's one thing when you are planning an effort like this, this is a work of journalism — I'm not going to interfere with my subjects. It's another thing when you are in an underground brothel in Bucharest, who has this girl with Down Syndrome, who you know is undergoing rape several times a day. When this girl is offered to me in trade for a used car ... I walk away ... it's not an easy thing to do," he says."
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POPSBest Documentary EVER: Never shown in USA !!! Amnesty International has publicly confirmed that a fear of violence directed at their staff forced the organisation to withdraw 'The Revolution Will Not Be Televised' from their recent film festival in Vancouver, Canada. In an article in the Guardian newspaper (http://www.guardian.co.uk/venezuela/story/0,12716,1090788,00.html), an Amnesty spokesman said the organisation had been forced to pull the film after staff at their Venezuelan office expressed fears for their safety if the film was screened. Prior to this, Amnesty has received a series of representations alleging that the film had distorted key events. These representations were rejected. The film was only pulled after the safety fears were raised. The Guardian confirmed that the campaign to halt screenings of the film is connected to opponents of the Venezuelan government.
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POPSA Little Welcome Home from the Torture Masters "As they ridiculed me, they took delight most in mocking letters I had received from readers in England. I had now been without food and water and the toilet for 12 hours, and having been made to stand, my legs buckled. I vomited and passed out. All I remember is one of them gouging, scraping and clawing with his nails at the tender flesh beneath my eyes. He scooped my head and dug his fingers in near the auditory nerves between my head and eardrum . The pain became sharper as he dug in two fingers at a time. Another man had his combat boot on my neck, pressing into the hard floor. I lay there for over an hour. The room became a menagerie of pain, sound and terror."
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POPSLet's junk the myths and celebrate what we've got Moreover, we need to become responsible versus petty humans; in the words of the article "When you see nothing but junk, create quality. Where quality is hard to find, curate it, adding your own seal of approval with a link. When you read inaccuracies and misunderstandings, add facts, corrections, context and journalism. If people on the internet get things wrong, educate them. When you hear the noise of people talking online, listen." Thumbs up.
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POPSThe Dangers of GE's Control of NBC and MSNBC Corporate owners ( General Electric ) of News organizations ( MSNBC, FOX, NBC ) have confirmed that they control what their journalists are allowed to say and report on - e.g. nothing that would hurt their corporate agenda.
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POPSWho Are The Real Pirates In Africa's Waters? Like the pirates of the ``golden age’’, today's Somali pirates see themselves as fighting for justice. As Sugale Ali told the October 1, 2008, NYT: ``We don’t consider ourselves sea bandits. We consider sea bandits those who illegally fish in our seas and dump waste in our seas and carry weapons in our seas. We are simply patrolling our seas. Think of us like a coast guard.’’ ``The truth is, if you ask any Somali, if getting rid of the pirates only means the continuous rape of our coast by unmonitored Western vessels, and the production of a new cancerous generation, we would all fly our pirate flags high. It is time that the world gave the Somali people some assurance that these Western illegal activities will end, if our pirates are to their operations. We do not want the EU and NATO serving as a shield for these nuclear waste-dumping hoodlums.’’
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POPSThe Invisible Government Rupert Murdoch has predicted that there will be just three global media giants, and his company will be one of them. It's becoming increasingly difficult to check information via independent sources, because there doesn't seem to be that many left IMO. If all we have is official sources to get our information, they can pretty much tell us what ever they want...and they do. The more they watched, the less they knew—Danny Schecter
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POPSThe Most Important Story So Far This Month I join you in your anger, disgust and dismay. I'ts the best news corporate can buy! (0.00 / 0) Between this story and the Matthew McConaughey placenta spectacular, I thank God I've lived long enough to remember what journalism used to be. Including the status of our servicemen and women, there are so many issues to be tackled and this...is the best that media can come up with? I'm too flustered to read more than the headlines of this swill. Specifically gave up on network television news 2 years ago...is print next?
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POPSHatred towards Women Bloggers... When I read this in the BBC, I thought it was just sensational journalism. I followed the link trails and went to web sites in question. Horrifying. Appalling. I remember visiting Ms Sierra's blog years ago when I started out in web design. This woman is a long time blogger advocating creativity and technology in a well written blog. I would read her stuff, zeldmans stuff among others. Why she should be threatened in an extremely frightening manner is beyond me. http://headrush.typepad.com/ While anonymity gives some freedom of expression and freedom of the constraints of identity for surfers and bloggers alike, it by no means should allow people to be able to make this extreme level of threat to another human being regardless of gender. Issues with free speech and terrorism do not necessarily mean Iraq and the war. Irrational hatred takes on so many insidious forms...
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POPSAljazeera Code of Ethics Residing in and covering such a controversial, war-torn place as the Middle East (and with a worldwide audience rivaling the BBC), the Aljazeera news department bends over backwards to adhere to the strictest possible objectivity in their coverage. Out of all the journalism sites I visited, Aljazeera had the clearest, most concise, and practical code of ethics in place for its contributors.
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POPSJust what is 'annualism'? Many would argue that there is nothing wrong with a journalist putting themselves at the centre of the story. What binds all the "annualist" titles together is that while their "year-long ordeal" might be classified as a stunt, they have serious things to say about their subject matter and its importance to society. And there is a long and honourable history of "stunt" journalism. It goes all the way back to Nellie Bly, the pioneering American journalist. In 1887 she infiltrated an asylum by pretending to be mentally ill in order to investigate conditions there. Her expose, Ten Days in a Mad-House, outlined the grim conditions, rotten food, and beatings that constituted the life of patients. Ultimately, we are impressed by feats of endurance. For many readers, it adds authenticity to an act of criticism. For many of the authors of course, one "annualist" work is enough. "It would be really nice to do something that doesn't involve the words 'I', 'me' or 'my''.
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POPSI Watch Al Jazeera English....Do You? It is virtually impossible to subscribe to the new Al Jazeera in the U.S or Canada. Many people in these countries, when they hear the words Al Jazeera, they immediately think of an Arab news channel that takes the side of terrorists in their reporting, and support Osama Bin Laden. They believe it spews anti-American and anti-Israel rhetoric 24/7. But I subscribe to it via Jump TV online, and it is absolutely nothing at all like that. Al Jazeera has some of the best electronic and newspaper journalists in the world working for them. Their production values are A+ and the news, although presented from a different perspective, is in no way anti-American or anti-Israel, and treats all reports in a reasonable even-handed manner. I urge people to go to www.jumptv.com and give Al Jazeera English a try. I think you will find your horizons expanding just a bit more.
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POPS"'Junk science' as front-page fact" more (full at source): In a lecture entitled The Three Wise Monkeys and the Marketplace of Ideas: Censorship in a Free Society , Lord Justice Sedley pointed to a story published this summer that reported as a fact that kidney stones affected one adult male in four – “a level of risk which might well send you to your doctor for preventive treatment, but which, it turns out, was made up by the PR firm which represents a pharmaceutical company with an interest in such treatment”.