Breaking: An Ethiopian court has declared Swedish photojournalist Johan Persson and reporter Martin Schibbye guilty of supporting terrorism and entering the country illegally, according to an AFP report.

“Guilty as charged, period, unanimous vote,” the judge declared, according to the AFP story. The judge added that just because Persson and Schibbye are journalists doesn’t mean they didn’t engage in “criminal acts.”

“They have not been able to prove that they did not support terrorism,” the judge reportedly said.

Prosecutors are calling for 18-year jail terms, and sentencing is scheduled for December 27. (Editor’s note: See update, below.)

Persson and Schibye were arrested last July in the Ogaden region of the country. Ethiopian troops are currently fighting rebels in the oil-rich region and the government has barred journalists from the area. Schibbye and Persson, who is represented by the Swedish photo agency Kontinent, gained access to Ogaden with the help of a group of rebels that the Ethiopian government classifies as terrorists. Persson and Schibbye admitted at trial they had entered the country illegally, but vehemently denied they were aiding the rebels.

More on this disturbing developing story here…

Most cemeteries replace the illusion of life’s permanence with another illusion: the permanence of a name carved in stone.
Not so May Pen Cemetery, in Kingston, Jamaica, where bodies are buried on top of bodies, weeds grow over the old markers, and time humbles even a rich man’s grave.

The most forsaken burial places lie at the end of a dirt path that follows a fetid gully across two bridges and through an open meadow, far enough south to hear the white noise coming off the harbor and the highway. Fifty-two concrete posts are set into the earth in haphazard groups of two and three.

Each bears a small disk of black metal and a stencilled number. The majority of these mark the unclaimed dead from the last days of May, 2010, when the police and the Army assaulted the neighborhood of Tivoli Gardens, in West Kingston. The rest mark the graves of paupers. The trouble that led to the Tivoli Gardens deaths began in August, 2009, when the United States government requested the extradition of Christopher (Dudus) Coke

Read more of this disturbing piece here…

According to Gawker it is. Here’s an interested snippet on the “rise” of “Celebukid Reporters and News-ertainment”

“Even after the rise of cable news and online news, network “news” broadcasts are still the biggest single unified source of news. Far more Americans get their “news” from a TV network “news” operation than from any other particular outlet. Network “news” is, therefore, still quite important.

There are a very limited number of jobs for network “news” journalists. Logic, then, would dictate that those jobs should go to the very best TV journalists in America. Instead, those jobs go to political celebrity children like Chelsea Clinton and Jenna Bush, media celebrity children like Luke Russert, and—perhaps most egregiously—to open political operatives like George Stephanopolous.

Nothing whatsoever can disqualify someone from being hired as a network “news” journalist, except perhaps ugliness.”
More here…

And the Atlantic is asking why…

“The Occupy Wall Street protests that began in New York City a month ago gained worldwide momentum over the weekend, as hundreds of thousands of demonstrators in nine hundred cities protested corporate greed and wealth inequality. Protesters from London to Sydney echoed the anti-capitalist, populist rhetoric of the Occupy movement in what was deemed a “global day of protest”.

“The unrest comes amid a mounting European sovereign debt crisis, which has contributed to ongoing market volatility and fears of another global economic recession. Governments around the world–particularly in the indebted eurozone periphery–have implemented harsh austerity programs, making economic growth all but impossible. In the United States, anger at Wall Street bankers seen as responsible for the global financial crisis–and at the government, for bailing out the banks with taxpayer money–is exacerbated by a persistently dismal job market.” more here…

(Picture via UPI.com)

It seems that Jeffrey Heller, Douglas Hamilton, Andrew Heavens of Reuters.org have an interesting way of reporting a simple news item that’s been covered by other organizations with a bit more objectivity. Here’s two of the opening paragraphs of (what should have been) a simple news item. The problem is with the words in bold below, which are used out of context to the reality of what has actually transpired in this case:

“JERUSALEM/GAZA (Reuters) – Israel and Gaza’s Hamas Islamist rulers agreed on Tuesday to swap more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners for Israeli captive soldier Gilad Shalit, resolving one of the most emotive and intractable issues between them.”

Problem with words in bold in the above paragraph: “Islamist rulers” is an intentionally mis-leading use of words that doesn’t apply to the case. “Hamas” is the accurate description of the political party that actually brokered the deal with Israel. (Correct terminology on Hamas can be found on Wikipedia)/. They are simply refered to as a political party, not “Islamic Rulers”, as Palestine (last time we checked) can hardly be defined as an “Islamic Kingdom”.

Palestinians in the Gaza Strip greeted the agreement, brokered by Egypt and a German mediator, with celebratory gunfire. Hamas confirmed that it only remained to conclude technical arrangements for the exchange. The breakthrough pact, after many false dawns in years of secret efforts to free Shalit since he was captured in 2006, has no direct bearing on Middle East peace negotiations.

Problem with first set of words in bold in the above paragraph: where is the evidence of there being celebratory gunfire? Did all of the Palestinians celebrate with gunfire? Or a handful of individuals? Thanks to Reuters, we’ll never know because the article doesn’t address this observation.

Problem with second set of words in bold in the above paragraph:
“The breakthrough pact, after many false dawns in years of secret efforts to free Shalit since he was captured in 2006, has no direct bearing on Middle East peace negotiations.” – This statement is 100% false. This agreement DOES have a direct bearing on Middle East peace negotiations, otherwise it wouldn’t be news. A prisoner swap has been achieved after five years of failed negotiations by both parties, and REUTERS doesn’t think this is a “Direct bearing on Middle East Peace Negotiations”? Little wonder the Middle East conflict is never-ending. News agencies like REUTERS refuse to accept any sort of peace brokering by either side, or bother to report it as such.

The rest of the news item leaves the reader subjected to the un-informed, and un-educated opinions of the writers of the story: “Prospects for peacemaking have been clouded by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s request for UN recognition of a Palestinian state and Israeli settlement expansion which Abbas has said must stop if negotiations are to begin again.”

Problem with the above statement – there’s multiple factors behind the prospects for peacemaking. Abbas’ UN bid is only one out of seven factors according to Middle East experts and academics. The other main issue is Israeli settlement expansion in the West bank, which both the United States and Europe have condemned as the “main obstacle to peace”. (Past quotes from Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and countless US politicians can be referenced saying such statements all over the internet in countless news items on the Middle East.)

For more information, and a better sourced objective pieces, click on the link below courtesy of the NY Times:

NY Times

(Please note – in this story we learn what accurate Middle East reporting is):

“Khaled Meshal, the Hamas leader based in Syria, confirmed in a broadcast from Damascus that an agreement had been reached, setting off wild celebrations and cheering in Gaza and Palestinian communities elsewhere as word spread that hundreds of Palestinian prisoners languishing in Israeli jails would soon be coming home. Mr. Meshal said the Israelis had agreed to turn over 1,027 Palestinians, among them 315 sentenced to life in prison and 27 women. He called the agreement “a national accomplishment.”

Note in the above paragraph – there is no mention of “Islamic Rulers”, “Gunfire”, and the leader of Hamas Khaled Meshal, (who isn’t referenced as a nameless “Islamic Ruler” – he’s referenced simply as “the Hamas leader based in Syria”), called the agreement “a national accomplishment”.

Good thing Reuters isn’t responsible for brokering peace in the Middle East, for irresponsible reporting like this from them and other news agencies, we can count on a Middle East conflict for years to come.

The Shalit family for one, deserves more accurate reporting on such a case, and Noam Shalit (the father of Gilad Shalit) does as well, being as he spent 1,934 days of their son’s captivity outside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s residence in Jerusalem protesting the lack of progress by both parties. He recently thanked U.S. Muslim Leaders for assisting in his release.

(Pic of Gilad Shalit via NY Times)

A busy weekend in the Middle East for Israeli radicals. According to the AFP:

“Israeli settlers invaded Palestinian olive groves in the West Bank on Saturday and uprooted 200 trees, Palestinian witnesses said. The settlers from Yitzhar, near the northern city of Nablus, attacked the groves around the villages of Hawwara and Ein Nabus, the sources said. Late on Wednesday, dozens of Palestinian olive trees were destroyed in an attack near the city of Hebron in what local residents called an act of revenge carried out by settlers. Controversially, the Israeli military is only claiming “about 40″ trees were burnt and uprooted in the village of Shuweikeh, south of Hebron. The military and local residents said the attackers left Hebrew-language graffiti at the scene, including a spray-painted Star of David and the slogan “price tag”. More on this developing story here…

In more news, via Huffington Post, potentially the same group of radicalls torched a mosque in an Arab village in northern Israel early Monday:

“Graffiti spray-painted on the mosque’s walls suggested Jewish radicals were involved. About 200 residents of the village of Tuba-Zangria, Arab citizens of Israel, marched to a major intersection nearby with the intention of blocking the road in protest, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said. Some of the demonstrators set tires on fire and threw stones at police officers, who dispersed the crowd with tear gas, Rosenfeld said. No one was injured. Police were mobilized in the area to prevent further disturbances and were meeting with village leaders in an effort to defuse tensions, he added. No unrest was reported inside the village. Rosenfeld said a carpet was burned inside the mosque and interior walls were damaged. Copies of the Quran, the Muslim holy book, were also burned, Israeli media reported. Rosenfeld said the words “price tag” were spray painted on the building – reference to a settler practice of attacking Palestinians and their property in retaliation for Palestinian attacks and government operations against settlements.

More here…

According to the PEJ News Coverage Index: August 15-21, 2011

Barack Obama and Rick Perry Drive the Week’s News. Here’s the official breakdown:

The economy and presidential election led the news agenda last week as two men vying for the same job played a dominant role in those narratives — President Barack Obama and Texas Governor Rick Perry.

From August 15-21, the economy was the top story, accounting for 25% of the newshole according to the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. That marked the ninth straight week the subject has topped the news even as the level of economic coverage dropped for the third consecutive week. More here…

The Los Angeles Times won a Pulitzer Prize for public service Monday for revealing that politicians in a small, working-class California city were paying themselves exorbitant salaries. But for the first time in the Pulitzers’ 95-year history, no award was given in the category of breaking news — the bread and butter of daily journalism.

In a year when the big stories included the devastating earthquake in Haiti and the Gulf oil spill, the Pulitzer Board didn’t like the entries in the breaking news category enough to honor any of them with the most prestigious award in journalism.

The Los Angeles Times won for its series revealing that politicians in Bell, Calif., were drawing salaries well into six figures. The newspaper’s reporting that officials in the struggling city of 37,000 people were raising property taxes and other fees in part to cover the huge salaries led to arrests and the ouster of some of Bell’s top officials. Read more here…

Peter Hart of Fair.org wrote a detailed account of right-wing activist/would-be criminal James O’Keefe’s latest “undercover video” that shows representatives from a fake Muslim charity trying to make a $5 million donation to NPR. Here’s his account:

“The “Muslim” donors-to-be meet with two NPR development officers. In the ensuing conversation, as all the media coverage explains, one of the two–Ron Schiller–expresses critical views of Republicans and the far-right Tea Party.”

“Schiller is an NPR fundraiser, with no journalistic role there. While it wasn’t wise to share his personal views at a lunch, it is the sort of thing that people do all the time. So why does anyone care about this? Because O’Keefe–and countless other right-wing critics–want to show that NPR is a bastion of left-wing propaganda. They can’t do that by studying the content of NPR’s broadcasts, but they can get a fundraiser to make disparaging comments about Tea Party conservatism- and, in so doing, force out NPR CEO Vivian Schiller.”

“The political motivation behind the hidden camera sting is clear enough–to spark more discussion about NPR’s supposed bias, at a time when Republican politicians are looking to eliminate funding for public media. As an L.A. Times editorial put it (3/11/11): “National Public Radio long has attracted complaints from conservatives that it has a liberal tilt. By seeming to confirm that view, a senior NPR fundraising official has provided the network’s critics with undreamed-of ammunition. More than ever, NPR needs to remember its obligation as a recipient of government funds to be balanced and nonpartisan.”

Here’s a photo of James O’Keefe’s mugshot below from his January 2010 arrest , which was funded (in-directly) by US Taxpayer money…

As someone who’s been in and out of the US tax-payer funded criminal justice system, O’Keefe knows first-hand what kind of benefits US tax payers’ money provides, maybe he can enlighten us about the ins and outs of the US tax-funded criminal justice system before his next arrest? Read more of Hart’s report here…

Details are murky, but reports have emerged that veteran CBS News correspondent Lara Logan is recovering in an American hospital this week after being sexually assaulted and beaten by a mob in Egypt’s Tahrir Square late on Friday.

The same day that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak stepped down, Logan was surveying the mood of anti-Mubarak protesters for a “60 Minutes” story when she and her team “were surrounded by a dangerous element amidst the celebration,” CBS said in a statement Tuesday. The network said that a group of 200 people were then “whipped into a frenzy,” pulling Logan away from her crew and attacking her until a group of women and Egyptian soldiers intervened.

Why CBS waited four days to release the news is a mystery, but we’ll post more news as it’s available…This is a report from Reuters…