The Wardman Wire

Independent Video Journalist Arrested

Brian Conley, an independent video journalist who usually works for Alive in Baghdad, was working as part of a team with New York artist James Powderly. From the Committee to Protect Bloggers:

Brian Conley, was arrested at 3:00 a.m. Tuesday in Beijing. Brian, the founder of the Alive in Baghdad video news project, as well as an employee of the Hub, was documenting the activities of New York artist James Powderly, who uses lasers. In this case, it looks as he was planning a Tibet-themed event at the Olympics.

Four other arrestees are also bloggers: Jeffrey Rae, Michael Liss, Jeff Goldin and Tom Grant.

This needs to be written about. Boing Boing has more.

Why this matters

There are two big issues here:

1 - The Beijing government had given an assurance that journalists would be allowed to continue their work. In practice this seems to have been limited to those working for major - and registered - media organisations.

In some ways, this is a more extreme version of the issue we increasingly face in the UK where independent filmmakers are challenged by the police - while those working for media organisatons are left to get on with their work. Here, however, you are unlikely to be dragged from your bed at 3:00am in the morning - rather you may be challenged and searched in the street. However, there are an increasing number of cases where challenges are being made out of ignorance - especially by poorly trained Police Community Support Officers - that interfere with legal activity.

2 - Brian Conley’s work in Iraq is one example of how indepedent work - for which blogs form a key distribution channel - is important as a way of reporting where media organisations cannot or will not go, or are not allowed to go. The latter point also applies to independent reporters in countries where the media is controlled, who are often on the front line of the battle for free expression and democracy.

Via Pods and Blogs and the Committee to Protect Bloggers.

The email address of the Chinese Embassy in the UK can be found here. I note that there is no email address for political communication, but Press Enquiries (”I want to write an article about the arrest of Video Journalist Brian Conley”, for example) can be sent to press at chinese-embassy dot org dot uk. Use your head to ask the questions you are interested in, and be polite.

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At present these feeds include Pods and Blogs, the Committee to Protect Bloggers, Dan Hardie’s Iraqi Translators feed. The Tab also carries Wardman Wire campaign articles about Free Expression and - at present - the Dave Walker articles.

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