Archive for 'Media'
Oped in Hartford Courant
Posted on August 26, 2008, by Hanna Ingber Win, under Culture, Media, Politics, Religion.
Check out my personal essay in the Hartford Courant this Wednesday. It’s about driving cross country and learning about the presidential campaign and American culture from the radio shows along the way.
My husband and I just finished driving from our home in Los Angeles to my parents’ in upstate New York because I will be taking a job on the East Coast. The trip was a great success: We slept in a budget hotel each night and never got bed bugs — just one night with a spider — and we made it to New York without crashing or getting a speeding ticket. More important, we learned about this country we live in, yet know so little about.
Neither of us had ever been to most of the places we visited along the way. My husband was born and raised in Burma, and I have never traveled in the South or much of the Midwest. We got to check out the vistas in the Grand Canyon, art galleries and jewelry shops in Santa Fe, beautiful brick mansions in Tulsa, Cardinal fans in St. Louis and cornfields in Illinois. But what was most interesting to us about our trip was listening to the radio.
Throughout the entire country — between Los Angeles and New York — we couldn’t flip through the radio stations without finding multiple shows dedicated to people talking about Jesus. Some were singing songs about him; most were discussing how their lives had changed since they had accepted the Lord into their heart. On one station a host was interviewing a child about which Biblical verse was her favorite.
Read more.
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Saving Face, Not Lives
Posted on May 21, 2008, by Hanna Ingber Win, under International, Media.
The Burmese junta continues to be more concerned about its image than about the safety of roughly 2.5 million people affected by Cyclone Nargis.
Homeless people and beggars have been kicked off the streets in preparation for visits to cyclone-hit areas by the dictator, Sen. Gen. Than Shwe.
The Irrawaddy reports that soldiers arrested eight Burmese journalists Monday night for trying to cover the disaster in Laputta Township in the Irrawaddy delta. The soldiers arrested the journalists at their hotel and interrogated them all night. They released them the following morning, but only after the reporters signed an agreement that they wouldn’t return to cyclone-affected areas without permission.
A source in Rangoon also told the Irrawaddy that the junta has stepped up its strict censorship policies.
Only positive stories are allowed. Photos about refugees, victims and children are always rejected..The censorship board will only allow propaganda stories and photos, such as reconstruction projects, to be published.
The censorship has led to the growth of “cyclone DVDs,” which show images of dead bodies and destroyed villages - scenes the government has tried to control.
This is reminiscent of last fall when the junta tried to control news on the nation-wide protests and subsequent military crackdown on democracy demonstrators. Then people also responded to the censorship by producing illegal DVDs featuring the protests and ones showing monks - symbols of resistance - giving sermons.
The difference between last fall and now is that this time there are 2.5 million people in need of food, water, housing and medicine. Thousands of corpses remain in the delta water. Save the Children warns that thousands of children could starve to death in the next two to three weeks if they don’t receive aid. People in Western Burma were safe from the cyclone but now struggle to pay for basic food that has tripled in price because the storm destroyed rice fields and killed livestock and farmers.
The junta should be coordinating aid and relief, not arresting beggars or looking for sneaky reporters.
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Problems With ‘Citizen Journalism’
Posted on May 15, 2008, by Hanna Ingber Win, under International, Media.
The inability of foreign correspondents to enter Burma and the government’s strict censorship of the local media make the country a perfect breeding ground for citizen journalism. Burmese and foreigners living there take photographs, write stories and engage in acts of journalism. Without the presence of many professionals, such citizen journalism has been crucial to spreading information on what happens in the closed, isolated land of Burma. But there can also be pitfalls.
Burmanet, which disseminates a daily collection of international articles and commentaries on Burma, put out an alert to its readers to beware of false photographs of the cyclone and its aftermath. It says that while many photographs are legitimate, people have been sending around images that might have come from the Tsunami. Burmanet says this is worrisome because it will affect the relief efforts.
This could have serious consequences, compounding the difficulty of the already complicated efforts to coax the Burmese regime to let in aid and aid workers. Therefore, we encourage you to be vigilant and practice caution when attributing anonymous photos about Cyclone Nargis. Be sure to examine the photo accreditation in order to ensure that the images you are viewing have come from a trusted source. If in doubt, don’t send it.
Inaccurate news and photographs can also affect the credibility of all information coming out of Burma.
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Blog from Burma
Posted on May 13, 2008, by Hanna Ingber Win, under International, Media.
An American friend living in Rangoon recently started a blog to chronicle his experiences there during and after the cyclone.
Needless to say, most residents of southern Myanmar were entirely unprepared for the resulting devastation. For nearly 15 hours the storm terrorized Yangon’s population of more than 5 million people, uprooting trees, knocking down billboards and power lines, tearing the metal sheeting from rooftops and flooding low-lying areas.
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Facebook and Burma
Posted on May 11, 2008, by Hanna Ingber Win, under International, Media.
A number of groups have been formed on Facebook that address Cyclone Nargis. At least 13 different ones seem to be about raising money for victims of the disaster. A particularly poignant group is called, “Waiting to Hear From Family in Burma.” It has 87 95 members so far. One message, apparently from David Khin in New York, reads “waiting, waiting and still waiting…”
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Listen Tomorrow
Posted on May 7, 2008, by Hanna Ingber Win, under Media.
Check out NPR’s Day to Day tomorrow to hear my commentary on the cyclone. You can find a broadcast schedule here for stations across the U.S. Or you can always listen from the Day to Day website. Thanks.
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NYT Journo Tells His Jail Story
Posted on April 26, 2008, by Hanna Ingber Win, under International, Media, Uncategorized.
The New York Times has an excellent piece in tomorrow’s paper by Barry Bearak, its Johannesburg co-bureau chief who was arrested and jailed while reporting in Zimbabwe earlier this month.
The floor was filthy. The odor of human waste infected the air. More bothersome were the bugs. “Cockroaches the size of skateboards,” I quipped. This was hyperbole. The insects were mostly tiny and black, others short, white and wormy. We were soon sharing our clothes with them.
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Facebook Joins the Fight
Posted on April 23, 2008, by Hanna Ingber Win, under International, Media.
There is even a Facebook group - with close to 1,000 members - to organize a campaign against the ship sending 77 tons of arms from China to Zimbabwe (see recent post).
A Facebook member named Joseph Nicholas Katongole, who says he’s from South Africa, wrote on the group wall:
thanks to all u guys that are opposed to this “death ship”. we africans are simply tired of countries that continue to ‘feed’ war/torture/genocide on our continent. China and its like, we are not stupid. we know the roles u have played in rwanda, darfur and now u aim to pour fuel onto the fire that is zimbabwe. oh sorry!.. as long as u get paid its fine with u. just another bunch of africans killing each other. with the political background of china i still truly wonder how it is that the IOC chose china to host the olympics. dont mix politics with sports?? ….give me a break. in this global village that we live in… everything is connected, whether one likes it or not
The group, called STOP Zimbabwe’s Weapons Ship, has links to recent articles and video clips on the controversy.
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