Looking for Trouble

A little perspective on hard times for journalists in the United States

These are hard times for journalists in the United States. Newspapers are losing money and trimming staff. Some papers have gone out of business – the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, for example, where I worked as the National/Foreign editor. Across the country, roughly 20,000 journalists have lost their jobs since the beginning of 2008. Few of my 160 or so colleagues at the P-I have found work at all, not to mention work as journalists.

Sometimes, just to keep things in perspective, I look at what’s happening with journalists in other countries, where losing their jobs isn’t the biggest worry.

Here’s part of just one week’s report, from the International Freedom of Expression Exchange, of what journalists face overseas:

In Vietnam, nine Vietnamese bloggers and writers were charged with anti-government propaganda and sentenced to severe prison terms. The bloggers were convicted of demanding greater “political pluralism, democracy and respect for human rights.”

In Yemen, a demonstration in the capital Sana’a – organized by the NGO Women Journalists without Chains – which called for freedom of expression, was broken up by police who injured several of the demonstrators and destroyed several video cameras.

In Nepal, the government intends to use journalists as informants as part of a security plan, a decision that would undermine the role of independent media and increase attacks on journalists.

In Kuwait, a journalist known for his reporting and activism on corruption was attacked and beaten by an unknown assailant while the journalist was at a conference on transparency.

In Israel, Israeli security forces disguised themselves as photojournalists in the midst of a Palestinian demonstration and later arrested protesters.

OK, I know this is little consolation to any journalist in this country who is out of work, with little prospect of a job on the horizon. Still, it helps me to know, as I fill out my unemployment claims for the seventh month in a row, that I can blog about any damned thing I want, and no one is going to come after me for it.