Supporters of one of Russia’s last independent media outlets have raised enough money to pay a court-imposed penalty widely seen as politically motivated. On Tuesday, ICIJ member Yevgenia Albats said she had received more than $373,000 in donations -- well beyond the fine imposed by a Moscow court in October. The court fined Albats and the online magazine The New Times more than $340,000 for allegedly failing to report donations received from readers submitted via the nonprofit Fund in Support of Freedom of the Press. The fine represents one year’s operating costs. Albats, the publication’s editor-in-chief, told ICIJ she believed most donations came from Russian citizens and were exempt from Russia’s so-called “foreign agents” law that would have required the news organization to disclose foreign donations.
Source: ICIJ
GIJN has partnered with the Bangladesh-based media development group, the Management and Resources Development Initiative, to launch GIJN in Bangla. The latest feed, which will initially launch on Facebook, is GIJN's eighth language edition and the ninth regional edition. It joins the main English language feed and editions in Arabic, Africa, Chinese, French, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish. Bangla (formerly called Bengali) is the sixth most widely spoken language on Earth, with 242 million speakers largely in Bangladesh and eastern India. Nearly 180,000 people worldwide follow GIJN's daily feeds on a dozen digital platforms, bringing journalists news on the latest reporting techniques, major stories, workshops, fellowships, security threats and legal issues affecting the field.
Source: GIJN Bangla
CPJ’s Africa Program coordinator Angela Quintal and the group’s sub-Saharan Africa representative Muthoki Mumo were arrested and detained this week by Tanzanian officials. In a series of social media posts on Wednesday evening, Quintal, who is also a board member of South African GIJN member amaBhungane, informed her followers that she and Mumo were being detained. Quintal and Mumo are in Tanzania as part of a CPJ mission. According to the South African Department of International Relations and Cooperation, the two have today been released back to their hotel in Dar Es Salaam, but without their passports. It is not confirmed whether their release without their passports means charges against them remain in place.
Source: amaBhungane and CPJ
Hundreds of muckrakers will soon gather at the annual conferences of investigative journalists in Latin America and the Middle East. COLPIN -- the Conferencia Latinoamericana de Periodismo de Investigación -- and the 11th Annual Forum for Arab Investigative Reporters will take place in, respectively, Bogota, Colombia on November 8-11 and November 30-December 2 in Jordan, on the Dead Sea. Both events will feature cutting-edge sessions on investigative techniques, workshops, and awards.
Source: ARIJ, COLPIN
When Civil Media Company burst on the media scene earlier this year, it was heralded by some as the key to a new financial platform for the news media. With its own blockchain technology, crypto-currency, internal rules and grants for startups, Civil promised a new era of reader trust and financing. Alas, reports the New York Times. Civil sold few of the tokens it projected and failed to convince many that it will ever be a going concern. "It was as if an Olympic weight lifter said that, at a minimum, he’d be able to clean and jerk 400 pounds," the Times wrote, "and then did not manage to move the bar more than an inch off the ground."
Source: New York Times
Brazil's presidential election is being marred by disinformation and attacks on the press by supporters of far-right candidate and poll leader Jair Bolsonaro. Facebook has shut down over 100,000 WhatsApp accounts for spreading conspiracy theories about Bolsonaro’s opponent, leftist candidate Fernando Haddad. Journalists reporting on the misinformation campaign are being threatened and attacked by Bolsonaro supporters, while reporters for a major media company that supports him are being censored.
Source: Vox
