UNITY Calls for Release of Al Jazeera Journalist Dorothy Parvaz

Dorothy Parvaz


6 May 2011 14:00 Africa/Lagos

UNITY Calls for Release of Al Jazeera Journalist Dorothy Parvaz

PR Newswire

MCLEAN, Va., May 6, 2011

MCLEAN, Va., May 6, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- UNITY: Journalists of Color is calling on the government of Syria to release Al Jazeera reporter Dorothy Parvaz and allow her to continue her important work in the country.

(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20110506/DC97026 )

(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20110310/DC62460LOGO )

Parvaz, a former reporter for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and a 2009 Nieman Fellow at Harvard, was apparently detained shortly after arriving in Damascus on Friday to cover anti-government protests in the country. Al Jazeera has been told by Syrian officials that they're holding Parvaz. She is a citizen of the United States, Canada and Iran. She joined Al Jazeera in 2010.

UNITY joins the Committee to Protect Journalists, the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University and other media organizations in urging President Bashar al-Assad to immediately free Ms. Parvaz, and to cease efforts to hinder the work of the international media.

UNITY believes that a free press is one of the pillars of a democracy and it is our hope that Syria will adhere to the principles that guarantee the free flow of information and ideas.

About UNITY: Journalists of Color




UNITY: Journalists of Color, Inc. is a strategic alliance advocating news coverage about people of color, and aggressively challenging its organizations at all levels to reflect the nation's diversity. UNITY is comprised of four national associations: Asian American Journalists Association, National Association of Black Journalists, National Association of Hispanic Journalists, and the Native American Journalists Association together with an outreach to more than 8,000 journalists of color. In addition to planning the largest regular gathering of journalists in the nation, UNITY supports research and advocacy initiatives that promote its mission. For more information on UNITY, visit www.unityjournalists.org, email info@unityjournalists.org or call (703) 854-3585.

Media Contact:

Onica N. Makwakwa, Executive Director

UNITY: Journalists of Color, Inc.

Tel: (703) 854-3585

executive@unityjournalists.org

SOURCE UNITY: Journalists of Color

Web Site: http://www.unityjournalists.org/

Miami Herald Catches Chevron In Lie About Ecuador Well Site

Miami Herald Catches Chevron In Lie About Ecuador Well Site
Reporter Finds Oil Sludge In “Remediated” Pit

Washington, DC – The Miami Herald has caught Chevron in a lie about its so-called “remediation” in Ecuador that the oil giant uses as its primary defense against an $18 billion judgment in a massive oil-contamination case brought by indigenous groups.

In a story published in today's newspaper, journalist Jim Wyss said he witnessed “thick oil slicks” only a few feet into the ground of a dirt-covered storage pit Chevron told him the day before had been remediated of all oil.


After watching a man dig into the ground at the Sacha 53 well site, Wyss wrote, “Within a few inches the dirt gives off the pungent odor of petroleum. Within a few feet the dirt glistens with oil residue. When a few handfuls of the soil are dropped into a bucket of water, a thick oil-slick coats the surface.”

Chevron has continually claimed to courts and the press that it conducted a remediation of the site.

This report is significant because Chevron has testified in front of U.S. Judge Lewis Kaplan of the Southern District Court of New York that it cleaned the site, along with many others. In fact, evidence has shown that Chevron simply covered the pits with dirt and never removed the toxins. Chevron has claimed to Kaplan that it is the victim of a racketeering scheme cooked up by the plaintiffs -- 30,000 rainforest residents – and their American and Ecuadorian lawyers.

The plaintiffs argue Chevron’s charges are only last-minute, desperate attempts to cover up its unlawful racketeering scheme in Ecuador, which led to the deliberate discharge of billions of gallons of toxic waste into the Amazon, killing off indigenous groups and causing an epidemic of cancer.

On a series of rulings over the last several months, Kaplan has cited the remediation agreement between Chevron and the Ecuadorian government as evidence that Chevron is not responsible for the contamination.

“This American journalist’s eyewitness account, along with massive evidence in the trial, puts the lie to Chevron’s claims to the U.S. court,” said Karen Hinton, spokesperson for the Ecuadorians.

In 2002, Chevron had the case – originally filed in the same New York federal court -- moved to Ecuador after submitting 14 separate affidavits claiming the court system was fair and transparent.

After the trial in Ecuador began in 2003, testing at the unlined oil pits left by the company in the jungle began to show illegal levels of life-threatening toxins. By 2007, when overwhelming evidence began to pour onto the court docket, Chevron was taking out advertising in the Ecuadorian newspapers accusing judges, the government and the plaintiffs of conspiring against the company.

In 2009, an Ecuadorian prosecutor indicated two Chevron lawyers and a dozen former Ecuadorian government officials for falsifying the remediation at Sacha-53 and other sites.

Judge Kaplan has, by and large, adopted Chevron’s view on the remediation agreement, writing in one opinion, “the release by Ecuador seems to have been intended to put an end to any claims or litigation concerning Texaco’s alleged pollution.”

The Miami Herald’s Wyss has a different account. He begins his story this way:

“Donald Moncayo (a plaintiffs’ representative) walks to the edge of a flat grassy field that once held two large pits that brimmed with a stew of water and crude from an oil-drilling operation. He lifts a heavy auger above his head and prepares to plunge it into the ground. “They (Chevron) always show you the shirt the coat and the tie,” he said of the area, called Sacha 53, which is now pastureland and spindly trees. “They never show you the tumor underneath the shirt.”

After describing the oil he saw and smelled only a few feet into the soil, he quotes Moncayo again:

“This is their remediation effort,” Moncayo says. “They’re no better than animals.’’

Chevron’s PR representative in Ecuador, James Craig, attempted to explain the oil away by asserting it may have “occurred naturally” or the Ecuadorians may have “spiked” the ground with oil. He even claimed that if Chevron didn’t completely clean the pit, the oil wouldn’t hurt anyone anyway.

“Knowing James Craig, he probably said all of this with a straight face,” said Hinton. “Chevron’s PR people make a lot of money to not only spin the facts, but to lie about them.”
#


Karen Hinton
Hinton Communications
1215 19th Street, NW
Washington, DC 20036
Karen@hintoncommunications.com
703-798-3109, cellular
480-275-3554, fax by email

Journalist Beaten By Guards in Semi-Autonomous Somalia Region of Puntland

2 Mar 2010 12:32 Africa/Lagos

Journalist Beaten By Guards in Semi-Autonomous Somalia Region of Puntland / IPI Calls on Puntland Authorities to Punish Anyone who Assaults a Journalist

MOGADISHU, March 2, 2010/African Press Organization (APO)/ -- A Somali correspondent was allegedly beaten by court security guards last Wednesday in Puntland, the semi-autonomous region of Somalia, according to a 25 February statement by the National Union of Somali Journalists (NUSOJ).

Ahmed Ibrahim Nor from Mogadishu-based Radio Simba was recording proceedings in the high court of Bosaso, capital of Puntland, when he was allegedly attacked by the court's chief security officer and other guards, NUSOJ reported. Nor and other journalists were reportedly told to stop recording, but were attacked even after they had turned off their equipment.

“IPI condemns the attack on Ahmed Ibrahim Nor,” said IPI Director David Dadge. “The Puntland authorities must take action against anyone who attacks a journalist. In doing so, they will be ensuring that no one is above the law. If security guards are found to have been involved in an assault on a journalist, they should be prosecuted. Attacks on journalists should never be tolerated.”

This is the second courtroom attack on a journalist in Puntland in a year. Last July, Aweys Sheikh Nur, a reporter for the Netherlands-based broadcaster, Horseed Media, was allegedly attacked by five guards at a Bosaso courtroom, who beat the journalist with the butts of their AK-47 rifles. Nur was beaten for having taken photographs despite an order not to do so, which was reportedly given while the journalist was outside the courtroom. The judge and other guards failed to intervene during the beating, and Nur subsequently checked himself into a local hospital for treatment.

“The problem in Puntland is that the armed forces have absolute protection,” NUSOJ Secretary General Omar Faruk Osman told IPI by phone. “They do whatever they want, and no one talks to them,” he added, citing as an example an attack on a senior Radio Galkayo reporter that occurred in December, when a well-known Puntland police officer allegedly fired shots at Hassan Mohamed Jama as he arrived at the local airport to pick up a friend.

Jama managed to escape unharmed. The police officer has not faced any disciplinary proceedings for his actions.

Several Puntland journalists were attacked, arrested, jailed or suspended last year under criminal defamation and other laws, as a result of their critical reporting. In November 2009, Voice of America (VOA) reporter Mohammed Yasin Isak was shot in the shoulder in Galkayo while exiting a Puntland police checkpoint, IPI reported at the time.

Elsewhere in Somalia, kidnapped radio correspondent Ali Yusuf Adan, who was detained on 21 February by Al Shabab militia soldiers, continues to be held incommunicado.

For more information, please contact:

Anthony Mills
Press & Communications Manager
International Press Institute (IPI)
Tel: + 43 1 512 9011
Fax: + 43 1 512 9014
E-mail: amills@freemedia.at

Source: International Press Institute (IPI)

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Andrew Jaffe, Noted Journalist-Author and Former Editor of Adweek Magazine (1938-2010)

For the record.


Andrew Jaffe, Noted Journalist-Author and Former Editor of Adweek Magazine (1938-2010). (PRNewsFoto/Jaffe & Co., Inc.) NEW CANAAN, CT UNITED STATES

26 Feb 2010 20:38 Africa/Lagos

Andrew Jaffe, Noted Journalist-Author and Former Editor of Adweek Magazine (1938-2010)

NEW CANAAN, Conn., Feb. 26 /PRNewswire/ -- Andrew Jaffe, a noted foreign correspondent for Newsweek, editor of Adweek Magazine, head of the international advertising Clio Awards, and finally a consultant to the advertising and marketing industries, died today after a courageous ten year battle with multiple myeloma, a cancer of the bone marrow. He was 71.


(Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20100226/LA61715)


Fresh out of Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, Jaffe began his career as a newsman for the Associated Press where he won notice for his coverage of the 1965 Watts Riot. He then joined Newsweek Magazine, first as a domestic correspondent in Atlanta covering race relations, and then in 1969 as a correspondent and later bureau chief for its Africa bureau in Nairobi, Kenya. While there, he covered the Biafran civil war, the end of Haile Selassie's rule as emperor of Ethiopia, and Idi Amin's rule in Uganda, as well as the end of Portuguese colonialism in Mozambique and Angola. In 1975 he accepted a post back in the U.S. as bureau chief in Miami. He left Newsweek in 1977 to become business editor for the Los Angeles Herald Examiner.


In 1984, he set off for New York, where he worked as marketing director of the international travel firm, Special Expeditions. In 1986 he was hired by Adweek Magazine as editor of a regional edition based in Atlanta. And in 1988, he moved to New York to become editorial director of the magazine's six editions.


Jaffe spent the next 15 years immersed in advertising. In 1992 he was made a vice president of Adweek responsible for starting Adweek Conferences and other brand extensions; and, in 1997, he managed its acquisition of the Clio Awards. He headed the Clios for the next six years, until he retired from the company in 2003 and set up his own consultancy in Norwalk, Connecticut.


Before going to Columbia Journalism, Jaffe was a student at Phillips Exeter Academy and then Pomona College. From 1960-1962 he served on active duty in the U.S. Army in Korea and Alaska, with the rank of First Lieutenant.


Opening his own consultancy, Compass Consulting, in 2003, he worked for various New York agencies and for the One Club, helping it introduce the first awards show for branded entertainment, One Show Entertainment. He also served on the board of the Brandcenter, a graduate program at Virginia Commonwealth University that offers a masters degree in the creative side of advertising. As a board member, he helped establish its executive education program for mid-career professionals. In 2003, he authored a book, "Casting for Big Ideas," published by John Wiley & Co.


Jaffe was a member of the Cornell Club, the American Society of Magazine Editors and the Overseas Press Club. He was chairman of the Neal Awards program, sponsored by American Business Media to recognize excellence in business-to-business journalism.


His hobbies included fly fishing, travel and experiments with fiery cooking recipes. Jaffe was married to communications executive Eileen Ast in 1994. Their home is in New Canaan, Connecticut. Jaffe is survived by his wife, his son, Christopher, a computer executive, Chris' wife Katie and a granddaughter, Stella, all of whom live in Burlingame, California; a stepson, Nicholas Ast, a student at Eckerd College; and two brothers, Steve, a crisis PR expert in Beverly Hills, and Bruce, a computer specialist and photographer in New York City.


The family requests that in his memory people consider a charitable contribution to the Andrew Jaffe Scholarship Fund at the Brandcenter, Virginia Commonwealth University or to the Whittingham Cancer Center at Norwalk Hospital. Memorial services are pending.


For more information contact: Steve Jaffe, Jaffe & Co., Inc., public relations (310) 275-7327, info@stevejaffepr.com; ekharrington@vcu.edu for Brandcenter


Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20100226/LA61715
PRN Photo Desk, photodesk@prnewswire.com
Source: Jaffe & Co., Inc.

CONTACT: Steve Jaffe of Jaffe & Co., Inc., Public Relations,
+1-310-275-7327, info@stevejaffepr.com; or ekharrington@vcu.edu for
Brandcenter