Ibrahim Essa, the outspoken editor of Egypt’s independent opposition Al Dustour newspaper has won the 2008 Tueni award from the Paris-based World Association of Newspapers (WAN). He used his December 13 acceptance remarks in Beirut, Lebanon, to call on Arab journalists to fight restrictions in the region directed against independent media voices.

“All those whom you see scrambling, competing, calling one another’s names, quarrelling and disputing at summit meetings never come out with any agreement, except on the bottom line of fighting press freedom,” Essa said. “This is the only war Arab rulers have ever agreed upon.”

The Tueni award is given in memory of Lebanese publisher Gebran Tueni who was killed by a car bomb in Beirut on December 12, 2005. Tueni’s family created the award with WAN to encourage other courageous and independent publishers, editors and newspapers in the Arab world.

Essa, who has been sentenced to prison terms and seen his newspaper temporarily shut down due to the Egyptian government’s objections to its material, was praised by WAN for crossing “many red lines” in the cause of press freedom and paying “a high price for doing so.”

In a separate statement, WAN said the hostility of Arab regimes to press freedom and critical voices is “alarming” and those daring to express dissent or investigate and challenge their governments “face charges of criminal defamation, blasphemy or endangering national security, and are regularly sentenced to hefty fines and imprisonment.”

On the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, President Bush met with eight bloggers and new media users from China, Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, Egypt and Belarus.

The White House said Bush planned to discuss “the challenges they confront in overcoming censorship.”

Six of the individuals met with Bush at the White House; participants from Egypt and Venezuela joined by teleconference.

The White House also highlighted the efforts of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) to aid citizen journalists. BBG oversees international radio broadcasters such as Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and Radio Farda, as well as television networks like Alhurra and TV Marti.

BBG news outlets are getting reports out of heavily censored countries by getting citizen journalists to submit information from cell phones, SMS feeds and e-mails, and encouraging participation in its radio, television and blog discussions.

Partnering with nongovernmental organizations, BBG also has developed free anti-censorship software and technical tools that are available in English, Persian, Kazakh, Mandarin and Vietnamese. A BBG spokesperson said users can go to one of those language sites and sign up to get updates, which include information “alerting people to work arounds” for the ongoing battle with the state censors.

As a further sign of the times in the challenging world of print media, the 100-year-old Christian Science Monitor will cease printing in April 2009 and thereafter be available only over the Internet, the first major U.S. periodical to take this step.

In announcing the action, editor John Yemma said having a daily print edition had become “too costly and energy-intensive.” Online journalism, he said, “is more timely and is rapidly expanding its reach, especially among younger readers.” Yemma added that CSM’s bold step “is likely to be watched by others in the news industry as they contemplate similar moves.”

The Chicago Tribune’s Phil Rosenthal describes an “end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it vibe” among those in the news business these days, and says CSM’s decision is “intriguing.”

“It’s also a test case to be watched intently by anyone who enjoys flipping pages, or at least need something for the bottom of their pet’s cage,” he writes.

When asked about whether a New York Times print edition could disappear, publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. said a week before CSM’s announcement that “The heart of the answer must be we can’t care.”

Fewer and fewer readers are getting newspapers on their doorsteps or from newsstands, and nostalgia cannot compete with economic reality. “I care very much,” Sulzberger said. “But we must be where people want us for our information. It’s the thought of cannibalizing yourself before somebody else cannibalizes you.”

You probably thought it was the other way around, right? But former New York Times bureau chief Bill Kovach illustrated this point for visiting journalists at the State Department’s Foreign Press Center by looking back before the 17th century’s Age of Enlightenment transformed European society.

Back then most, as impoverished commoners, “had no place in the community except to keep their mouth shut and do their work,” Kovach said. “They had no information about how the community was run and how the people and institutions of power did their business because no one told them.”

Occasionally, word would trickle down of the monarch’s latest proclamation, a local religious leader would relay a few pieces of news, or a traveling troubadour would pass through singing about the happenings in a village hundreds of miles away.

But public opinion “is what democracy is based on,” Kovach says. And there was so little information back then that it was basically impossible to have a real opinion on your leaders or how you were being governed.

When people began compiling newsletters of information for their communities, they not only invented journalism, but for the first time they enabled others to have an opinion about anything, which increased the pressure to allow more to have a say in government.

For more on Kovach’s views on the media, see the article “Media Analyst Urges Revival of ‘Independent’ Journalism.”

My (Freedom of Expression’s) very first entry, “Blogs self-regulate to stay credible,” pointed out that bloggers have a vested interest in being honest if they want to build and maintain an audience.

But when money is involved, it seems bloggers might need something more than mere self-policing.

Someone identified as “Johntw” posted a bogus story October 3 saying Apple CEO and founder Steve Jobs had suffered a heart attack, sending the company’s shares plunging more than 10 percent before Apple could quash the rumors.

The story appeared on CNN’s iReport, which some, such as TechNewsWorld’s Renay San Miguel, believe helped add to its credibility. Yet CNN only requires a valid e-mail address in order to post, and the only other information it can now provide to investigators at the Securities and Exchange Commission is the sender’s IP address.

If “Johntw” was doing some day trading on Wall Street, it is estimated he/she could have netted as much as $21 million by buying up Apple’s temporarily devalued shares with the knowledge that they would go right back up once the truth was exposed.

San Miguel, as a former CNN anchor, predicts that because of the Apple fiasco, the staff at iReport will now be vetting all submissions from the public.

“It may be a hassle and colossal time-suck to do it, and the company certainly won’t make a big deal about it, but it will do it. Because in the end, the people in charge of the network really do care about credibility,” he says.

Where do you think the line should be drawn? Can the blogosphere be a self-regulated news source or should measures be put in place to prevent people from exploiting its free-wheeling nature?

The importance of good media relations has long been understood by politicians, corporate leaders and philanthropists, but it seems pirates, even from an impoverished country like Somalia, are becoming media-savvy in the 21^st century, with prepared talking points and authorized spokesmen (spokespirates?).

After the Ukrainian vessel Faina and its crew were hijacked in Somali waters on September 25, the New York Times’ Nairobi-based reporter Jeffrey Gettleman obtained the pirates’ satellite telephone number from a high-level Kenyan contact involved with efforts to bring the incident to a peaceful end.

Gettleman recalled, “It was probably my 50th call. The line had always been busy. Or the phone had been shut off.  But on Tuesday [September 30] morning, someone actually picked up.”  The reporter asked, “Can I speak to the pirate spokesman, please?”

He was actually able to talk to several pirates but was told “in no uncertain terms” that Sugule Ali “was the only pirate allowed to be quoted. Or else.”

For everything Gettleman asked, Sugule seemed to have a ready answer, comparing his band of pirates to a sort of Somali “coast guard,” whose goal is simply $20 million in cash which they claim would be used to buy themselves food.  “[W]e have a lot of men and it will be divided amongst all of us,” Sugule said.

Piracy has been a growing problem off the Somali coast for years, with nearly 30 hijackings in 2008.  But the Faina incident has heightened international attention and prompted the intervention of both the U.S. and Russian navies because the vessel is loaded with armaments, including tanks and grenade launchers.  Sugule was able to turn the cargo into a talking point by claiming the hijacking aimed to inhibit arms trafficking and prevent the weapons from reaching war-torn Somalia.  (See transcript.)

Mark Fitzgerald of Editor and Publisher said the notion that pirates now have public relations flacks who can set the rules over who can and can’t be quoted “deserves a place in the history of journalism.”

“And just what are the ethics of dealing with a pirate? … Aren’t the rules turned upside down?” he asked.   But Gettleman “played fair, and that’s probably all to the good for next journalists who have to deal with, you know, pirates.”

The situation certainly says something about the power of the press, but where do journalists draw the line between informing the public and providing a public platform for criminal activity?