News » International Media Conference 2012

China’s Support Enables North Korea’s ‘Bad Behavior,’ Panelists Say

Jun 262012

Peter Beck, South Korea country representative for the Asia Foundation, says China has shown a pattern of rewarding North Korea’s bad behavior. (Photo by Taein Park, Missouri School of Journalism)

SEOUL (June 26, 2012) — North Korea’s attempted rocket launch in April was just the latest example of a country accustomed to reneging on international agreements, a panel of security experts told the East-West Center International Media conference in Seoul on Sunday.

The panel on Northeast Asian Security Issues touched on a wide range of topics, most of which related to North Korea, but it all boiled down to two words: distrust and misunderstanding.

“Since the first [North Korean] nuclear crisis broke out in the early 1990s, there have been repetitions of breakthroughs and breakdowns in the negotiation process,” said Ambassador Lim Sungnam, head of the South Korean delegation to the stalled Six Party Talks aimed at North Korean denuclearization.

China’s consistent support of North Korea enables the Pyonyang regime to flout international law, the panelists said, adding that Beijing views its support as a way to balance a region that Beijing sees as increasingly hostile.

Burmese Journalists Cautiously Optimistic About Changing Media Landscape

Jun 232012

SEOUL (June 24, 2012) — In Burma, articles are screened prior to publication and a government body exists to monitor media, but three Burmese journalists expressed cautious optimism Friday at the East-West Center’s International Media Conference in Seoul. They warned, however, that their country has a long way to go to reach full press freedom.

Nyein Nyein Naing, executive editor of the 7 Day News Journal; Myint Kyaw, chief editor of Yangon Press International; and Aung Zaw, editor and publisher of the Thailand-based Irrawaddy magazine, discussed the impediments they face as journalists, even amid signs of the Burmese government’s increased openness and lighter censorship.

“Now is the time to start a new era of less censorship,” Kyaw said, adding that no journalists have been arrested since landmark parliamentary elections in April. “We can talk about more now than we could a year ago.” Continue reading »

The Internet as a Tool of ‘Publicness’

Jun 232012

Jeff Jarvis, director of the Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism, said the Internet is not a medium for content but rather “a platform for relationships.” (Photo by Taein Park, Missouri School of Journalism)

SEOUL (June 23, 2012) — “Technology is neither good nor bad, and it can be used by good people or bad people,” Jeff Jarvis, director of the Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism, told participants on the second day of the East-West Center 2012 International Media Conference in Seoul.

Jarvis, who addressed the conference from the U.S. via Skype, said he believes that individuals should have choices to be public or private, and they need to make those choices carefully because governments can use people’s own information against them.

“That’s an important concern that all have. Individuals should have choices to be public or private while the government needs to be public by default,” Jarvis said.

However, he said the reality is the opposite; government is secret by default and public by force. Continue reading »

Social Media: a Tool of Liberation or Suppression?

Jun 232012

Author and scholar Evgeny Morozov emphasized that the role of citizens is to defend the Internet from dictators and authoritarian governments. (Photo by Kaitlin Steinberg, Missouri School of Journalism)

Seoul (June 23, 2012) — The events of the Arab Spring and other recent social media-fueled democracy movements, as inspirational as they may be, tell only part of the picture, according to Evgeny Morozov, author of The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet. Morozov shared his less rosy view of the Internet’s impact with the East-West Center’s 2012 International Media Conference in Seoul.

Speaking via recorded video and Skype from Belarus, Morozov said that the Internet can be a tool of suppression by authoritarian governments as well as a tool of liberation by empowered citizens. “To be critical of the Internet is necessary. This does not mean dismissing its good, but we should not expect it to be everything,” Morozov said.

He also pointed out that dictators and their regimes can use “sophisticated technology such as data mining to crack down on protestors immediately after a protest” or track photo-sharing sites like Flickr to identify protesters. Continue reading »

A Hashtag That Started the Revolution

Jun 232012

Riyaad Minty, head of social media for Al Jazeera, said the Arab Spring taught all mainstream media a lesson, as citizens have risen to do exactly what journalists do. (Photo by Taein Park, Missouri School of Journalism)

SEOUL (June 22, 2012) — Speaking at a pace that mirrored the speed of a Twitter feed, Riyaad Minty, head of social media for Al Jazeera, shared lessons from the Arab Spring with more than 300 journalists at the East-West Center’s 2012 International Media Conference at Yonsei University in Seoul.

To an engaged audience, Minty said it is not merely protesters or media that change the faces of regimes. In fact, it was a simple hashtag, he said, that rose from the death of a Tunisian street vendor named Mohamed Bouazizi, that effected change in the 2011 Arab Uprising. Continue reading »

Diplomatic Social Media

Jun 232012

Victoria Esser, deputy assistant secretary for digital strategy, said the U.S. State Department is also using social media to reach areas where State Department officials cannot go, such as Iran. (Photo by David Cawthon, Missouri School of Journalism)

SEOUL (June 22, 2012) — The U.S. State Department encourages its ambassadors and embassies to embrace social media as an avenue towards unfettered access to local populations and a global audience, diplomat Victoria Esser said Friday at the East-West Center’s 2012 International Media Conference in Seoul.

She said the State Department uses social media with three goals: to understand people and events more clearly; to share real-time information; and to engage people as a way of building relationships. Continue reading »

Internet freedom vs. regulation in Asia Pacific

Jun 232012

Law Professor Kyungsin Park said a problem in Korea is that police have no way to detect whether illegal Internet content was posted using an innocent person’s identity. (Photo by Taein Park, Missouri School of Journalism)

SEOUL (June 23, 2012) —Speaking on Internet freedom in Asia and the Pacific at the East-West Center International Media Conference, constitutional law professor Kyungsin Park painted the Korean Internet as a chaotic mire where government policies can harm innocent users, and criminals rove unchecked.

The crux of the problem, he said, is a law that requires users on heavily trafficked portals — those with more than 100,000 daily page views — to register their personal identification data before they can post anything. Park says seven studies have not been able to report conclusively that the law decreases illegal activity. Continue reading »

Silencing Journalists

Jun 232012

Michael Josh Villanueva said there have been 12 cases of media killings in the Philippines since the current president took office in 2010. (Photo by Jessica Park, Missouri School of Journalism)

SEOUL (June 23, 2012) – “A real problem throughout the world is the ultimate silencing of journalists — journalists are killed for doing their jobs,” said Patricia Smith, Global Journalist editor at the University of Missouri School of Journalism, during a panel on threats to reporters at the East-West Center International Media Conference in Seoul.

Data from free-press organizations show that at least 25 journalists have been killed in the line of duty so far this year, and that 48 countries do not have freedom of the press.

Shahzada Zulfiqar, Quetta bureau chief for the newspaper Pakistan Today, said he himself, has been in danger. As a recent example, he said, on his way back from a media workshop on June 16, four men intercepted him and his two colleagues. They pointed guns at Zulfiqar and his colleagues, and after an hour of detaining them took their rented car, laptops, cell phones, digital cameras and cash.

“This is what we are facing in Pakistan,” Zulfiqar said. Continue reading »

Foreign correspondents tell tales of getting the tough stories

Jun 232012

Tania Branigan, a Beijing-based correspondent for The Guardian, said the task of protecting sources in China is made more difficult with a “staggering” number of surveillance cameras everywhere. (Photo by Jessica Park, Missouri School of Journalism)

SEOUL (June 23, 2012) —Veteran NPR correspondent Julie McCarthy told a gripping account of reporting in Pakistan to a packed audience Saturday at an East-West Center International Media Conference session at which foreign correspondents shared tales of getting the tough stories.

“Pakistan is a hugely problematic state to cover,” said McCarthy, NPR’s South Asia correspondent, who has spent three and half years there. “It’s not Iraq. It’s not Afghanistan. It is its own beast.”

The most serious danger for journalists there is the secret state, known as the “deep state” in Pakistan, she said. Journalists have to deal with a myriad of intelligence agents who could be either enemies or allies of the militants — a microcosm of the biggest problem that McCarthy said looms over the country: “Whose side is Pakistan fighting for?” Continue reading »

New media jump barriers to censorship

Jun 212012

Isaac Xianghui Mao, director of the Social Brain Foundation in China, said people are finding ways around China’s great firewall to join the international discussion online. (Photo by Kaitlin Steinberg, Missouri School of Journalism)

SEOUL (June 22, 2012) — Three journalists from three different countries, some who double as activists, explained how digital media has triumphed over censorship and the obstacles to free speech they encounter in their respective countries. Although the three nations — Malaysia, China and South Korea — vary in their political systems and restrictions, the people in each are finding ways to move beyond those barriers in today’s digital environment.

Speaking to their peers at the East-West Center’s International Media Conference in Seoul, the men focused their remarks on the transforming role of politics and protests. Continue reading »

#NetNews Twitter feed: Day 1

Jun 212012

Here are some of the best tweets from the East West Center’s International Media Conference’s #NetNews Twitter feed on the first day of the conference, June 22. The day’s theme was “How Social Media is Shaping Stories and the Way We Tell Them.”

Using New Media: Lessons from Arab Spring
Using New Media: Lessons from Fukushima
Peers, Politics and Protests: How Social Media Is Transforming Societies in Malaysia, China and South Korea
Facebook Candidates and Twitter Campaigns: Social Media’s Impact on Elections
Media Innovation and Future Trends in Asia, the Pacific and U.S. Continue reading »

#NetNews Twitter feed: Day 2

Jun 212012

Here are some of the best tweets from the East West Center’s International Media Conference’s #NetNews Twitter feed on day 2 of the conference, June 23. The day’s theme was “Internet Freedom: People Power vs. Government Control.”

Public Information and the Public Good in the Digital Age
Internet Freedom in Asia and the Pacific
Internet: Tool of Democracy or Government Control?
Transforming Traditional Media in the Digital Age Continue reading »

#NetNews Twitter feed: Day 3

Jun 212012

Here are some of the best tweets from the #NetNews Twitter feed on the last day of the conference, June 24. The day’s theme was “The Two Koreas – Most Wired and Most Remote”

The Hermit Kingdom: Covering North Korea in the Digital Age
Northeast Asia Security Issues
Korean Presidential Election Issues Continue reading »

Older Entries