Today’s MediaWireWorld roundup of journalism news from outside the U.S. Send tips to Kristen Hare: khare@poynter.org.
Canada
Linden MacIntyre, host of CBC’s The Fifth Estate, said he’d retire this summer “in part to preclude the layoffs of younger colleagues he characterized as being vital to the broadcaster’s future,” Simon Houpt reported Wednesday in The Globe and Mail.
“I just started to do the math,” he said in an interview Wednesday. With an editorial staff of about 20, the show is “sort of at bare bones, as far as associate producers and producers are concerned.” He believes his departure, which will leave the show with three co-hosts, would do the least damage possible while prompting viewers to register the severity of the cuts.
This is MacIntyre’s 50th year as a journalist, Houpt wrote. The CBC plans to cut $130 million, and more than 600 people will lose their jobs.
Ukraine
Eastern Ukraine “has become an all-out information war, waged by both sides but particularly, and most violently, by the separatists,” Simon Denyer wrote Tuesday in The Washington Post, detailing threats and kidnappings of Ukrainian journalists and seized airwaves.
Some of those facing violence and threats are expressly pro-European, pro-Ukrainian journalists who supported the protests that ousted pro-Moscow President Viktor Yanukovych in February. They are people like Tatyana Zarovnaya, who fled Donetsk after police tipped her off that separatist thugs were about to visit her home. “In Donetsk, the only journalists that are left are those who do not interest the separatists,” she said. “They have my pictures and personal data, and [those] of my colleagues, at the checkpoints.”
Vietnam
Two bloggers in Vietnam were arrested Monday for “abusing democratic freedoms that infringe on the interests of the state,” Roy Greenslade wrote Wednesday in The Guardian.
They are among an increasing number of peaceful critics charged by the authorities. under article 258. During the first three months of 2014, at least six other people have been convicted under the same charge they are facing.
Committee to Protect Journalists also wrote about the arrests of Nguyen Huu Vinh and Nguyen Thi Minh Thuy on Wednesday.
Vinh, 58, established Ba Sam (Talking Nonsense) in September 2007. The blog often posted links to state-run Vietnamese media with critical commentary added by the blog’s administrators, as well as translated versions of foreign news on political, economic, and social issues, according to reports. The site also publishes posts from activists and was considered a rallying point for recent protests in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City against China’s perceived encroachment on Vietnamese territories, the reports said.
Canada
No one knows where Rob Ford is, although he’s having tons of fun in rehab. So the Toronto Sun Where’s Waldo-ed him (courtesy the Newseum).
Correction: An earlier version of this story reported CBC cuts of $350 million, that number was incorrect. It’s $130 million.
