On Tuesday, Reporters Without Borders named “100 Information Heroes,” with profiles of people from around the world. “Courage is the common denominator.”
Some work in democracies. They include Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras, US citizens who were responsible for revealing the mass electronic surveillance methods used by the US and British intelligence agencies. Others, such as the Iranian journalist Jila Bani Yaghoob, work under the most authoritarian regimes.
Not all are professional journalists. The Vietnamese citizen-journalist Le Ngoc Thanh, for example, is also a Catholic priest. Many, such as Lirio Abbate, a specialist in the Sicilian mafia, have focused on covering corruption and organized crime. This is the case with Peter John Jaban, a Malaysian radio programme host who spent years in self-exile on London, Serhiy Lechtchenko, an investigative journalist from Ukraine, and Assen Yordanov, a Bulgarian journalist who has been repeatedly threatened.
Liberia
Speaking at the 25th anniversary of a newspaper in Liberia, that country’s vice president suggested to the Press Union of Liberia that unethical journalists should be thrown out of the profession, Alloycious David reported for allAfrica.
(Vice President Joseph Nyumah Boakai) stated that freedom of speech is a fundamental human right, but it comes with responsibility, adding “like lawyers and medical doctors, there are rules to go by and when you breach those rules, you should not expect to escape being disciplined or falling from grace.”
The Vice President wants journalists to always strive to be example of what they preach, noting “you need to bear in mind that the litmus test of your true commitment to the adherence to rules is how you hold yourselves to your own rules.”
Italy
The International Journalism Festival begins today in Perugia, Italy.
#ijf14 live streaming: all sessions in Raffaello http://t.co/aqwrcSiCnQ Notari http://t.co/4maEvW1DaS Teatro Sapienza http://t.co/ASLlSnGp8N
— journalism festival (@journalismfest) April 30, 2014
France
On Wednesday, Newseum has this front page from Libération, a Paris publication. Looks like Spider-Man is big in Europe.
