Vice Media Inc., the youth-focused media company known for ambitious global reporting, is blacking out its websites and social-media channels for two hours Wednesday to protest the imprisonment of Mohammed Rasool, a translator detained by Turkish authorities while he was reporting for the company.
Visitors to Vice home pages — there are almost 100 globally — will encounter a blacked-out screen with a video message relaying Rasool’s story and a link to a Change.org online petition created with the Committee to Protect Journalists, the company said in a statement. The sites will be down from 10 a.m. New York time until noon. More.
See: Bloomberg Business
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Egipt
Local time: 01:56
arabski > angielski
+ ...
This is a very confusing issue. One government may accuse many with committing a certain crime , however , the media and the activists only get upset for a particular one. Why? This raised suspicion that what was done was by intention to do some serious harm to that government and this support is nothing but the prepared protection for that peculiar person.
Francja
Local time: 00:56
francuski > angielski
+ ...
Journalists and interpreters are essential to providing freedom of information. It seems reasonable to assume that governments see this as a threat in direct proportion to the amount of damage they would sustain if their populations were well informed. ▲ Collapse
Holandia
Local time: 00:56
Członek ProZ.com
od 2006
angielski > afrikaans
+ ...
Journalists and interpreters are essential to providing freedom of information.
That may be, but journalists and interpreters who work in conflict areas are also in a position to take sides, and they sometimes do. With regard to the Vice reporter, only someone who is ignorant of what Vice commonly does would believe that the reporters were acting in a strictly neutral way. It is not a universal idea but a Western one that it is always okay for journalists to support the underdog.
Reading the reports on the release of the other two journalists it is interesting to see how Western media tend to tell a story in a way that supports their preference. It is commonly said that they were "freed" or "released", specifically after protests by any number of organisations and governments, but the fact is that they were deported, without having their charges dropped. Perhaps Mohammed Rasool would also have been deported if the government of the country where he's from had requested it (I can't find any information to confirm or deny that -- does anyone know?).
I agree that it is unfortunate that the Turkish justice system is unwilling to give reliable information about why Rasool is being held. He hasn't been charged with anything yet.
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