Aside from cartooning, Matt Buck keeps an excellent blog. He’s been asking what the future holds for political cartoonists, given the parlous state of the print media, and he invokes the spirit of James Gillray: Continue reading
Like Jeff Jarvis, Charlie Beckett, and Richard Sambrook, I too was at Ditchley recently for a conference on the media and democracy. Present company excepted, it brought together a fascinating and lively group of people (not always the case at conferences).
Sir Jeremy Greenstock, formerly Britain’s man at the UN and in Iraq (and someone who speaks in perfect paragraphs), gives his impressions below (bold, italics, and broken paras are me).
For the record, I’m more pessimistic about democracy than about journalism — but I also think Google — the accidental monopolist — should step up to the plate and fund some independent content resource (listen — that’s the sound of me not holding my breath). Continue reading
There is an exceptional and very poignant post from a sacked Chinese journalist translated and reproduced at the China Digital Times:
I am afraid of other people praising me as a brave newspaperman, because I know I am full of fear in my heart. I did write some commentaries on current affairs, and edited some articles that exposed the truth.
I lost my job and was threatened for speaking the truth.
However, to be honest, these were exceptional cases. They were my miscalculations. In my various media positions in the past decade, what I’ve practised most is avoiding risk.
Self-censorship has become part of my life. It makes me disgusted with myself. Continue reading