Murder in the Media

Andrea Mitchell, 2017 Lifetime Achievement Award Winner
International Women's Media Foundation

Another journalist was killed Tuesday in Mexico, the ninth to die this year.

Cándido Ríos Vázquez, a crime reporter in the Gulf Coast state of Veracruz, was shot Tuesday along with two other men, according to the State Commission for Attention and Protection of Journalists.

Thank you to Kate Linthicum of the Los Angeles Times for this story:

http://www.latimes.com/world/mexico-americas/la-fg-mexico-journalist-killing-20170823-story.html

Journalists die to report on their cities, their states, and their national governments, as well on drug cartels and crime of every kind--not to mention the arts, scientific events like the eclipse, sports, and other activities of people in their nations.  

Journalists face harrassment and rape as well as death.  Kim Wall of Sweden is the most recent example.

Yet dt constantly derides "the media."  Newspapers, radio, and television news shows are reporting on his misdeeds from his years as a landlord to his 2016 election campaign.

I for one will stand up and applaud the courageous journalists around the world who give their time, their energy, and sometimes their lives to find out what is really happening around us and to disseminate it to others.

To see awards given this year by the International Women's Media Foundation, go to their website:  http://www.iwmf.org/2017-courage-in-journalism-awards/

In Memoriam: Kim Wall

Today I'm grieving over the murder of Kim Wall, investigative reporter from Sweden honored internationally for her work.

Here's her website--partially locked: https://kim-wall.com/about/

She has reported from Haiti, Cuba, Sri Lanka, and China.

Kim graduated with honors from Columbia University, where she studied masters degrees in Journalism & International Affairs. She holds a B.Sc in International Relations from London School of Economics & Political Science (LSE).

The BBC gives this praise:
"She reported them deeply - she never made a spectacle of the characters. Her reporting was rock-solid." Kim Wall -- March 23, 1987 - August 10-2017

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-41022925

See also this report in The Independent including her mother's comments:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/kim-wall-mother-swedish-journalist-killed-died-homemade-submarine-tribute-copenhagen-denmark-peter-a7907951.html

The International Women's Media Foundation has lost yet another of the reporters it has supported and honored.  https://twitter.com/iwmf

I've attended many of the IWMF fundraising dinners in Los Angeles.  More than once a reporter receiving awards on the stage one year is killed the next year.

Mexico and Russia are the worst offending nations for media deaths.

dt chooses to overlook the number of "media" people who give their lives for the truth.  #notfakemedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearence_of_Kim_Wall

An earlier photo (from Facebook) of Kim.  

May she rest in peace, and may the fight for truth and justice continue.

IWMF Women of Courage

BBC reporter Vicky Ntetema exposed the murder and mutilation of albino people in Tanzania at the command of witch doctors. For this, her life is now in danger.

Claudia Julieta Duque was kidnapped for investigating the murder of journalist Jaime Garzon in Colombia. The Colombian secret police threaten death, rape, and torture against her and her 13-yr-old daughter, so she lives in exile.

Tsering Woeser was taken from Tibet and placed under house arrest in Beijing for writing a book and blog about China's persecution of Tibetans resisting Chinese rule. She continues to put human rights violations on her blog, and 13 of her friends and informers have been jailed.

Alma Guillermoprieto reports on drug wars, civil wars, politics, and culture in Latin America. In 1981 she and another reporter risked their lives to report on the massacre of 1,000 villagers in El Mozote, El Salvador, by elite US-trained forces. The Reagan administration claimed her reports were not true and called her a leftist, but ten years later the mass graves were uncovered and officials were forced to admit to the slaughter. She received the IWMF Lifetime Achievement Award.

These four women were honored at banquets in New York on Oct. 19 and in Los Angeles on Oct. 21 at the Beverly Hotel. The acceptance speeches of Duque, Ntetema, and Guillermoprieto were very moving. Woeser, however, was not allowed to leave China to accept her award.

See more on these women at http://www.iwmf.org/archive/articletype/articleview/articleid/1272/claudia-julieta-duque-has-the-courage-to-speak.aspx