Media Literacy 101: Tom Stoppard and Laura, Euna and Atwar

"Journalists of your generation," said British playwright Tom Stoppard yesterday to a roomful of students gathered at the Salzburg Academy on Media & Global Change, "very often and quite rightly are considering things you'd like to change in the world -- if possible, by Tuesday. You could hardly do worse than write a play about them. I've always felt that journalism, and I include very definitely television journalism, has far more immediate leverage."

Yesterday a call to action by a Tony and Academy-award-winning playwright. Today, our attention here in Austria turned to North Korea to watch the drama of the pardoning of two television journalists, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, who had been sentenced to 12 years at hard labor for entering North Korea illegally.

Laura and Euna were fortunate -- not just for being released, but for being alive, a fact also borne home today with the broadcast of the confession to the kidnapping, rape and murder of Atwar Bahjat, a presenter on Al-Arabiya television. In an Iraqi security video that aired on Al-Arabiya, Yasser al-Takhi told interrogators that he, his two brothers and a third man kidnapped Bahjat's news team and drove them to a side street where he raped and shot Bahjat, while his two brothers killed cameraman Adnan Abdallah and sound engineer Khaled Mohsen.

In Stoppard's conversation here in Salzburg yesterday afternoon with students from Uganda and the UK, China, Chile and the United States, he essentially called journalism a "lever" to "change the world." But what is it that needs to be moved with that lever?

We are what needs to be moved -- out of our apathy or ignorance of the essential role journalists play in keeping us informed and in protecting our freedoms.

This year already, 19 individuals have been killed around the world because of their work as journalists, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Those 19 either died in the line of duty or were deliberately targeted for assassination because of their reporting or their affiliation with a news organization. Another 15, according to CPJ, died under suspicious circumstances.

Laura and Euna didn't make that list, and neither did Roxana Saberi, an American journalist who lived in Iran since 2003 and reported for several news organizations, including NPR. Not quite three months ago she was released from an Iranian prison. She had been convicted on spying charges in a one-day trial closed to the public and been sentenced to eight years in prison.

Those here at the Salzburg Academy who have come from places such as Colombia and Mexico, Turkey and Jordan know well that we need to value journalists -- and help protect them and all the platforms on which their reporting appears. If we, students and adults alike, want to change the world, we need our levers: journalists such as Roxana and Euna and Laura and Atwar. I think Stoppard would agree.

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Photo of Tom Stoppard taken by Salzburg Academy student Juanita Ceballos, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Argentina

Comments

[RobinSeattle]

It's just unfortunate that while journalists are concerned about protecting each other, too many of them are protecting the wealthy and powerful. And it is that cozying up to the establishment that makes people feel less and less concerned for the welfare of reporters.

[simplesense]

I agree that journalism is important. However, having worked at an ad agency that had stories critical of advertisers KILLED regularly (ahem....p­oliticians are HUGE advertisers), I can tell you that what you see today on the television, on the radio and in newspapers is, by and large, not anything remotely close to journalism. You haven't seen real journalism in this country in a long, long....LONG time. And you would definitely not see anything resembling real journalism coming from Al Gore's current.tv!

Did you know that the United States now ranks BELOW COMMUNIST CHINA in press freedom?!

Wake up America!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worldwide_Press_Freedom_Index#Worldwide_Press_Freedom_Index_Ranking

[Susan Moeller - Huffpost Blogger]

Actually, simplesense, in the link you gave which lists the 2008 Index of Press Freedom complied by Reporters Without Borders (also known as Reporters sans frontières) the United States is tied (at number 36) with the REPUBLIC of China (i.e. Taiwan), not the PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC of China (i.e. mainland China), which is near the very bottom of the list at number 167. Number 166, just for reference is Iran, in RWB's ranking.

There are several additional countries tied with the US and Taiwan at number 36: Bosnia and Herzegovenia, Cape Verde, South Africa and Spain. Number one on the list is Iceland. FYI the ranking is based on an evaluation of: "direct attacks on journalists and the media as well as other indirect sources of pressure against the free press. RWB is careful to note that the index only deals with press freedom, and does not measure the quality of journalism."

[simplesense]

Thanks for the correction. Still seems that for 'the land of the free', we are ranked awfully low, don't you think? I saw another survey (or was it part of this same survey - don't recall now) that asked journalists anonymously how free they were to report on politically sensitive topics, and the US did not rank high in that survey either.

[sufi66]

Hate to say it, but journalism has become a low form of communication. Far too many "journalists" take the official position all too easily without a question or thought in their heads. Most get played too easily.

The idea that these people hope to "change the world" with a story is laughable since most are employed by corporations in love with the status quo.

[LMPE]

Here's my suggestion. Let the whole world get really stupid like in "Idiocracy". If all people are complete morons, no one will ever target journalists, probably because no one has any ambition to have a serious job.