Wednesday, July 04, 2007

Alan Johnston is free

The best news of today is the release of Alan Johnston. Alan is a reporter for the BBC who was kidnapped by some criminals and held hostage for 114 days. It is wonderful news because at least one reporter is alive to tell the tale.

When you read what UNESCO has to say about Freedom of the Press, it is sickening to see how many journalists have been killed for keeping our society Free and informed. When you are part of the Wiki world like I am, many of the notions what makes good journalism, what makes for providing people with good information are the same.

Today we celebrate the release of Alan Johnston, it is wonderful that he is Free. The price of the kidnap may be that there will be no journalist of Alan's stature left to report from places like Gaza. The price may be that we will not be informed of what is happening in many parts of the world. The price may be that we will only know our point of view without the possibility of getting something like a neutral point of view.
Thanks,
GerardM

1 comment:

pfctdayelise said...

I read this new story yesterday and I too was overjoyed.

I also read another article in The Monthly magazine (in a few months it may be available here), about how basically the internet is inadvertently killing "quality journalism", because newspapers are rapidly losing the profits they used to make from classifieds, to the internet, and thus that money which used to in effect "subsidise" in-depth journalistic reporting is no longer available. It was something that made me stop and think.