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Journal-isms Jan 6

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Little Diversity on Decade’s "Most-Watched" List

Iran Becomes World’s Biggest Prison for Media

Yemen Arrests Editor-in-Chief, Managing Editor

"Hell Is Breaking Loose" after Brit Hume’s Religious Advice"

Columnist Attempts to Debunk "Myths" About Indians

Deaths of Iraqi Civilians Called Top "Censored" Story

Little Diversity on Decade’s "Most-Watched" List

"NBC’s Andrea Mitchell logged more TV face time than any other network evening news reporter during the past decade," as the Associated Press reported.

"News consultant Andrew Tyndall, who logs each evening newscast, calculated that Mitchell was on NBC’s ‘Nightly News’ for 2,416 minutes from 2000 to 2009. The veteran diplomatic correspondent beat her NBC medical correspondent colleague, Robert Bazell, who had 2,328 minutes.

Lists of which reporters get the most face time usually reflect who has the most newsmaking beats, not who does the most substantive stories. Either way, however, the list is disappointing for its lack of journalists of color.

"It’s your classic good news/bad news scenario: For those who grouse about the superficiality of TV news, recent data shows the top most-covered stories on the decade were super-substantive – the war in Iraq, the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, fighting in Afghanistan and the hijacked jets on Sept. 11," media critic Eric Deggans wrote on his St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times blog.

"But for those who hoped the inauguration of the country’s first black president might add more diversity to news coverage, the data was more disappointing.

"Just one reporter of color landed among the top 20 most-used reporters of the decade – 60 Minutes correspondent Byron Pitts – and no reporters of color were featured in the top 20 list for 2009."

Below are the most-used reporters for the decade, excluding anchors. Listed are network, name, assignment and minutes:
NBC Andrea Mitchell Diplomatic 2416
NBC Robert Bazell Medicine 23280
NBC Pete Williams Justice 2280
CBS David Martin Pentagon 2096
NBC David Gregory White House 2082
NBC Lisa Myers Capitol/Investigative 2069
CBS Jim Axelrod White House 1960
NBC J.Miklaszewski Pentagon 1829
NBC Anne Thompson Dom/Environment 1758
CBS Anthony Mason Economy 1697
ABC Dan Harris Domestic 1694
ABC Martha Raddatz Pentagon 1675
CBS John Roberts White House 1602
ABC/CBS Dean Reynolds Domestic 1527
ABC Betsy Stark Economy 1497
NBC Robert Hager DC Bureau 1481
CBS Byron Pitts Domestic 1463
ABC Brian Ross Investigative 1461
ABC Lisa Stark DC Bureau 1445
CBS Sharyl Attkisson DC Bureau 144

Iran Becomes World’s Biggest Prison for Media

"The Islamic Republic of Iran has recovered its status as the world’s biggest prison for the media, with a total of 42 journalists detained following the confirmation of Ahmad Zeydabadi’s six-year sentence on appeal on 4 January and a Tehran revolutionary court’s decision the same day to sentence Bahaman Ahamadi Amoee to 34 lashes and seven years and four months in jail," Reporters Without Borders said on Wednesday.

Last week, in a review of 2009, Reporters Without Borders secretary-general Jean-Fran?ßois Julliard said,"Our major concern in 2009 has been the mass exodus of journalists from repressive countries such as Iran and Sri Lanka. The authorities in these countries have understood that by pushing journalists into exile, they can drastically reduce pluralism of ideas and the amount of criticism they attract." A total of around 160 journalists in all continents were forced to go into exile to escape prison or death, the organization said.

Separately, Joel Simon, executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, wrote Monday about the plight of Iran’s Mashallah Shamsolvaezin, a 2000 CPJ International Press Freedom Award winner .

"Scores of other journalists have been arrested and released; mores still have been intimidated, beaten and harassed," Simon wrote.

"Each one of these incidents is appalling, as is the brutality the Iran regime is inflicting on demonstrators and critics, who have been shot down in the streets in recent days.

"But the arrest of Shamsolvaezin, or Shams as he is known, hits home in a very personal way. We consider him a friend. When we honored Shams in prison in 2000 he was serving a 30-month sentence for ‘insulting Islamic principles.’ After his early release from prison in September 2001 we stayed in touch. Shams has emerged not only as a vital defender of free expression in Iran, but also an analyst for international media. In the last few months, has criticized the election process and the subsequent crackdown."

Yemen Arrests Editor-in-Chief, Managing Editor

"The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the arrest today of the editor-in-chief and managing editor of the independent daily Al-Ayyam on the third day of a government siege of the compound that houses the paper’s offices in Aden," a port city in Yemen, the press freedom organization reported on Wednesday.

". . . On Monday, security forces besieged the paper’s building. At the time, journalists from different media outlets were conducting a sit-in outside the compound to protest the daily’s suspension since May. News reports said that at least nine people have been injured and two killed."

Meanwhile, in Nigeria, Emmanuel Ogala reported that¬†Wednesday that, "As controversy and anger continue to trail the listing of Nigeria as one of the 10 countries on the United States of America’s top security watch list, the Senate has threatened to severe diplomatic relations with the country if by next week, it fails to remove Nigeria from the list of countries "of interest" for terrorism."

A federal grand jury in Detroit Wednesday indicted Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab in the Christmas Day terror attack on a Detroit-bound airliner, the Detroit Free Press reported. He had trained in Yemen.

On Comedy Central’s "The Daily Show," host Jon Stewart and Aasif Mandvi riff on Brit Hume’s assertion on "Fox News Sunday" that Tiger Woods should take up Christianity, but manage to disparage another religion. (Video)

"Hell Is Breaking Loose" after Brit Hume’s Religious Advice"

"All hell is still breaking loose for Fox News’s Brit Hume since he advised Tiger Woods on what he ought to do religiously to help himself," as Betsy Rothstein reported on FishBowl DC. "Here’s Jon Stewart’s take on it. In this episode he convenes a panel to discuss which religion Tiger ought to take up."

Columnist Attempts to Debunk "Myths" About Indians

"I try to make it a point every New Year to explode some of the myths and misconceptions that Native Americans have had to live with since that first ship landed on the shores of the Western Hemisphere," syndicated Native American columnist Tim Giago wrote on Wednesday.

"First off, not all Native Americans live on reservations with gaming casinos spouting an endless stream of money. Many reservations out in the west are isolated from the mainstream and their casinos are barely surviving. Their main challenge is to supply the jobs that are so vital and yet so scarce and still keep their doors open.

"Native Americans do not get a monthly check from the government unless it is a welfare check, social security check or a retirement check. And it is wrong for so many Americans to think that Indians do not pay taxes. . . .

"There is no free ride for Indians seeking a higher education. Like all Americans, Natives struggle to get the few scholarships available to them. The best kept secret in America are the more than 30 Indian colleges scattered throughout the reservations providing an opportunity for the residents to get a higher degree while still living with their families. . . .

"And finally, the money the federal government provides to the different Indian nations for education, hospitals, homes, law enforcement, court houses, and government is not charity. It is payment for the millions acres of taken by the United States, land written into treaties between sovereign nations."

Deaths of Iraqi Civilians Called Top "Censored" Story

That more than 1 million Iraqis have met violent deaths as a result of the 2003 U.S. invasion was the top "censored" story of 2009, according to the annual compilation by Project Censored at Sonoma State University in California.

The figure is based on a 2007 study by Opinion Research Business, a British polling group. "These numbers suggest that the invasion and occupation of Iraq rivals the mass killings of the last century—the human toll exceeds the 800,000 to 900,000 believed killed in the Rwandan genocide in 1994, and is approaching the number (1.7 million) who died in Cambodia’s infamous “Killing Fields” during the Khmer Rouge era of the 1970s," Project Censored said.

Others in the group’s Top 10 are: "Security and Prosperity Partnership: Militarized NAFTA," "InfraGard: The FBI Deputizes Business," "ILEA: Is the US Restarting Dirty Wars in Latin America?" "Seizing War Protesters‚Äô Assets," "The Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act," "Guest Workers Inc.: Fraud and Human Trafficking," "Executive Orders Can Be Changed Secretly," "Iraq and Afghanistan Vets Testify" and "APA Complicit in CIA Torture," a reference to the American Psychological Association .

ILEA is a reference to the International Law Enforcement Academy. "secretive training of Latin American military and police personnel that used to just take place at the notorious School of the Americas, in Fort Benning, Georgia—including torture and execution techniques—is now decentralized. The 2008 US federal budget includes $16.5 million to fund an International Law Enforcement Academy (ILEA) in El Salvador, with satellite operations in Peru," the project said.

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