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Telegraph | News | Warning over leaked secrets 

The Attorney General sought yesterday to squash further reports concerning the leaked record of a conversation between the Prime Minister and President Bush during which the latter suggested attacking the headquarters of the Arab satellite television channel al-Jazeera, based in Qatar, a key Gulf ally.

According to the Daily Mirror, Mr Blair reportedly managed to talk Mr Bush out of the operation, which appeared to have been prompted by the station's broadcasting of statements by Osama bin Laden and pictures of dead Americans.

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Well that's just a great example of censorship, the fact that we end up with dead bodies of our own troops in war is obviously not good in the governments PR campaign, but if it was bodies of our enemies it would be fine. As for Bin Laden broadcast you do have to have both sides of the story even if the truth hurts or you don't like the person.

This is not the first time that Tony Blair has used media blackout to silence the press Allegedly there was a slip to that effect on a radio 4 program saying that the media had been gagged over a personal matter with Tony Blair, this was allegedly about the fact that Cherie Blair was making money from talks and that this was not declared to the commons.

Providing that media is presented as unbiased and with truthful facts, the media regardless of the format, should not have to be threatened in this manner.

 

 Please note as a result of Yahoo ! holdings (Hong Kong) Ltd. supplying information to the authoroties about Shi Tao  a journalist sentenced to 10 years improsentment I have stopped using Yahoo email accounts you can click on the link to the right for the email address or contact radical-images(at)hotmail.com

A Full article regarding Shi Tao can be found  on the link bellow

Reporters sans frontières - China - United States

Please note the new email address: no longer using Yahoo

 Here is more on Scoopt

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BBC NEWS | Technology | Ethics issue for citizen snappers

Money always changes ethics in any profession and photojournalism is no different, but there are those few individuals in a profession that refuse to bend there ethics just because money says so. A photojournalist records history, documents and is a witness to the highs and lows of human society and those things that interact with it.

A safe job

Photojournalism is by no means a safe job either and there has been 63 journalists and media assistants killed and 2 still missing since the start of the Iraq conflict in march 2003 and 104 journalists, 3 media assistants and 75 cyber-dissidents  imprisoned  over freedom of speech in a variety of countries. How can you put a price on that? Photojournalism is far more than just a job Reporters sans frontiers

Being free to choose assignments that you want to do is very important, works on homeless issues don’t sell particularly well, but that doesn’t mean it’s not an important issue that needs to be covered.

The cost 

On the other hand money is also needed, people think that if you are using digital there are no costs involved, “no film or prints, no cost” unfortunately this is not quite true. The cost of digital equipment is far higher than film gear and you also need computers and software to manage those images, back up and safe storage of digital files and then there is still travelling costs, phones and other sundries. People need money to live and there comes a point when a photojournalist can’t take pictures because they are at work when they need to be out taking pictures. If it wasn’t for paid photojournalists we would see very little of the troubles and life styles of people living in the poor countries, where owning a camera is unheard off.

Blood and Guts-Media Influence and military control

It may come as no surprise that the news media want stuff that will help sell their papers and this means blood and guts and this dose generally influence the public at large but it only one side to what is really happening, even in conflict there are acts of humanity on both sides that go unrecorded. But photojournalists that are embedded with the military in Iraq are not likely to see these acts or very few, a photojournalist has to be able to be a part of the community even though it might not be his own, this is where they will see the highs and the lows. This being able to be accepted by other communities is a very valuable personality trait that will get a photojournalist far.

On a budget!

You don’t have to have all the latest gear and you can set up on a small budget, cameras can be brought second hand, a single body, flashgun and a zoom lens would get most people going, but to this we have to think of computers, not just for digital processing, but research, finding contacts and selling/showing your work old computers can be bought very cheap and you can also get open source software to run on these very well. Operating systems based on Linux can be downloaded free and even graphics programs for digital imaging are freely available such as “the Gimp”