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.VIENNA, 25 April 2014 – OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media Dunja Mijatović today expressed concern about the disappearance in Donetsk of Julia Shustraya and Mikhail Pudovkin, a journalist and a cameraman with LifeNews. According to media reports Shustraya and Pudovkin were apprehended by an armed group. Their current whereabouts are unknown. “I am very concerned by repeated attacks and disappearances of journalists. Journalists must be allowed to report freely and their safety ensured by all those in charge,” said Mijatović. In a letter sent today to Minister of Interior Arsen Avakov, Mijatović expressed concern and requested information on...

A producer for a popular program on Russia’s NTV channel has disappeared in eastern Ukraine where he came to film a report unrelated to the country’s political situation. Belarusian citizen Stepan Chirchich, a producer for the weekly program Central Television, went to the city of Pershotravinsk in the Dnepropetrovsk region to make a report about the visit of a well-known exorcist, Pastor Bob Larson, who’s there as part of his world tour. “We lost contact with [Chirchich] on Tuesday evening,” Vadim Takmenyov, the program’s host, told RT. He said that at the beginning they did not ring the alarm, but...

Recently departed CBS News reporter Sharyl Attkisson appeared with Howard Kurtz on Fox's Media Buzz on Sunday. Kurtz said her forthcoming book is titled “Stonewalled: My Fight for Truth Against the Forces of Obstruction, Intimidation, and Harassment in Obama’s Washington.” Kurtz asked her to define those forces. "I think any journalist who has been covering Washington for a few years would agree… that there is pressure coming to bear on journalists for just doing their job in ways that have never come to bear before."

TRANSLATION In Slovyansk, Crimean "Green Men" Captured Journalists Sunday, April 13, 2014, 00:46 In Slovyansk, "green men" like those seen at the beginning of the Russian occupation of Crimea, captured Hromadske TV and Lenta.ru journalists and forbade them to work in the town, highlighting events under control of the region's Ministry of Internal Affairs and other protests. This was reported to Ukrayinska Pravda by the journalists themselves. According to the journalists, the armed men in Slovyansk who took the regional Ministry of Internal Affairs, Donetsk Oblast office in Slovyansk, captured them as soon as they approached the territory of the...

The screeching polarization of American political and cultural life in recent years is exacting a toll. Debate has been debased. Contempt and hatred for those with opposing views is now the norm. While some on the right have criticized their own side -- think of Rick Perry and Jeb Bush challenging immigration opponents, or conservative columnists taking on some talk radio hosts -- liberals have been shamefully silent about the excesses committed by Democrats. That's why it gives me particular pleasure to report that two liberal columnists have recently defied this trend. One is my old friend and sparring partner...

What happened to the watchdog media? Sadly, in this day of Obama, they have turned into the lapdog media. Everyone knows that most members of the mainstream news media are card carrying liberals; however, even staunch left wingers should have enough integrity to fulfill their responsibilities to the public. Our country has benefited from a vigorous “fourth estate,” but that crucial oversight is sorely lacking today. Of course when Republicans are in office, liberal journalists become quite aggressive and love to launch investigations. When Democrats are in office, these same journalists help the politicians cover up their misdeeds. The identical...

The U.S. plummeted 13 slots to 46th overall “amid increased efforts to track down whistle-blowers and the sources of leaks,” Reporters Without Borders warned in an annual report. The trial and conviction of Private Bradley Manning and the pursuit of NSA analyst Edward Snowden were warnings to all those thinking of assisting in the disclosure of sensitive information that would clearly be in the public interest,” the organization said.

A federal appellate court ruled Friday that the author of a blog post deserves the same treatment in a defamation case as "institutional media." The three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals held unanimously that there is no difference between a journalist for a media outlet and another speaker when it comes to First Amendment protections. The case stems from a series of blog posts published in 2010 by a woman accusing a financial advice firm of fraud and corruption. One of the firm's principals was appointed as the bankruptcy trustee to a company that had misappropriated client...

The New York Times had a reporter talking to attackers on the ground during the Benghazi attacks that killed four Americans in September of 2012, including U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens, and may know the identity of some the murderers and perpetrators. David Kirkpatrick, the Times reporter who wrote the story that forced the paper's Editorial page editor to defensively declare on Monday that it has not chosen to endorse Hillary Clinton for president in 2016, said that the paper had a reporter on the ground who was witnessing the attacks.

Cairo (AFP) - Egyptian secret police have arrested an award-winning Australian journalist and an Egyptian reporter for the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera channel suspected of illegally broadcasting news harming "domestic security," the interior ministry said. The arrests come amid a widening crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood of ousted president Mohamed Morsi, which the military-installed government declared a "terrorist organisation" last week. Al-Jazeera confirmed the arrests, and said police also detained a producer and a cameraman. Officers of the National Security service raided the broadcaster's makeshift bureau at a Cairo hotel on Sunday, arresting two of the journalists and confiscating their equipment, said...

On Thursday, Fox News’ Ed Henry tweeted that MSNBC hosts Ed Schultz and Lawrence O’Donnell, as well as Ezra Klein of the Washington Post and Fox News’ Juan Williams, had been invited for a private off-the-record chat with President Obama. Obama’s signature program, Obamacare, has been flailing in the press for weeks, and Obama apparently believes that it is about time to reshift the narrative: Juan Williams refused to describe what Obama himself said, but he did state that the White House is in “full fight mode over the Affordable Healthcare Act right now.” He added, “They feel as if...

Rather than allow journalists to cover events as they happen at the White House, President Obama issues “propaganda” photos of himself to be used in all media stories, instead. And the Associated Press is not happy about it. According to American Overlook, Santiago Lyon, AP director of photography, said that no one has real access to President Obama. The only time photojournalists are allowed inside to cover an event is when “foreign dignitaries” are visiting Washington. Since he first took office in 2009, President Obama has been anything but open in regards to photographers taking his picture. Since then, the...

Two French radio journalists were killed by gunmen in northern Mali on Saturday shortly after being abducted in the town of Kidal, French and Malian officials said. The French government confirmed that 58-year old Claude Verlon and Ghislaine Dupont, 51, both journalists at RFI radio, had been found dead.

President Obama's election was supposed to usher in an era of racial unity greater than any Americans had previously experienced. By making the historic move to place the first black president in the White House, Americans signified that they were ready to move beyond the racial conflicts of the past and move forward, arm-in-arm. At least that's what we were told. So much for that. In the last two weeks, MSNBC's Chris Matthews, official hot-air-trial balloon for the Obama administration's public relations strategy, has played the race card incessantly. First, he proclaimed that Republican New Jersey senatorial candidate Steve Lonegan...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The U.S. government's aggressive prosecution of leaks and efforts to control information are having a chilling effect on journalists and government whistle-blowers, according to a report released Thursday on U.S. press freedoms under the Obama administration. The Committee to Protect Journalists conducted its first examination of U.S. press freedoms amid the Obama administration's unprecedented number of prosecutions of government sources and seizures of journalists' records. Usually the group focuses on advocating for press freedoms abroad. Leonard Downie Jr., a former executive editor of The Washington Post, wrote the 30-page analysis entitled "The Obama Administration and the Press."...

Leonard Downie, a former executive editor of The Washington Post, is the Weil family professor of journalism at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State University. This article is based on his report “The Obama Administration and the Press,” forthcoming Thursday from the Committee to Protect Journalists. In the Watergate era, the Nixon administration’s telephone wiretaps were the biggest concern for journalists and sources worried about government surveillance. That was one of the reasons why Bob Woodward met with FBI official Mark Felt (a.k.a. “Deep Throat”) in an underground parking garage in Arlington, and why he and Carl...

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., has been working on a bill to shield reporters from heavy-handed federal officials who seek to use their power to uncover information about whistle-blowers and leakers. Given the Obama Department of Justice's recent adventures in surveilling reporters' phone logs, you might think that for her trouble, Feinstein would be the object of much praise and many hosannas from the ink-stained-wretch community. But no, you can file this one under: No good deed goes unpunished. DiFi, you see, made the mistake of insisting that a proposed reporters' privilege law, the Free Flow of Information Act, apply only...

Time managing editor Rick Stengel's decision to join the Obama administration is just the latest example of a new trend among mainstream media journalists who are making it official by officially joining the Obama administration. Stengel, who is joining the State Department, is just one of 15 (or 19) who have given up a career in journalism to join Obama's crusade to fundamentally transform America:

It has now been an entire year since Al-Hurra correspondent Bashar Fahmi, a Jordanian of Palestinian origin, and freelancer Austin Tice, of the United States, went missing in Syria. But the recent liberation of two freelance journalists held for months gives us some reason to hope. Fahmi disappeared during a firefight in Aleppo on August 20, 2012, along with Turkish cameraman Cüneyt Ünal. The same day, Japanese journalist Mika Yamamoto was killed in Aleppo. Ünal was released by the Syrian government in November 2012, but there has still been no word on Fahmi's fate.... snip... But two abductees have recently...

Today marks the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech in Washington, D.C. and President Obama will attempt to channel MLK but will ultimately fail. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a man who believed in uniting people, not dividing them and for peaceful, non-violent protest. Obama serves as a stark contrast through his actions.Where Martin Luther King sought to unite, Obama seeks to divide. Where King desired to raise all people up, Obama desires to keep them down. MLK saw the inherent dignity of man, while Obama only sees a serf who needs the State to...