LONDON -- Censorship is no abstraction for Babefemi Ojudu. The editor of The News and Tempo spent three years avoiding the police, using his notebook computer as a newsroom where he could edit his weekly magazines in safety. Ojudu spent eight months in a Nigerian prison without being charged after he published reports on government corruption by the former military regime. Since then he has received an official pardon.
Ojudu is one of many journalists throughout the world using the Net to circumvent censors and provide information to audiences traditional media don't reach.
According to Adam Clayton Powell III, vice president for technology and programs at the Freedom Forum, journalists are now able to use the Net to ensure their work reaches as wide an audience as possible. He hosted a Web conference this week on the topic. Ojudu and other journalists participated from their respective countries.
Daoud Kuttab heads the Arabic Media Internet Network (AMIN) and has also spent time in prison for reporting the news. After broadcasting live sessions of the Palestinian legislative council, he was imprisoned for seven days. Kuttab explains the particular difficulties of reporting in the Arab world.
"There are 23 different Arab countries that all use the same language but they have censorship of their own country's news." Uncensored news is hard to obtain in these countries, so readers must look elsewhere.
In Jordan, Kuttab said, government censors filter imported books, newspapers, and magazines. The Internet has rendered this practice ineffective.
Censors once removed an article from 40 print copies of The Economist on sale in Jordan. A subscriber found the article online, made photocopies, and faxed it to 1,000 Jordanians. "The result was much worse for the government" than leaving the print versions intact, Kuttab said.
"We found this very exciting...for the first time the traditional censorship that exists within national borders was bypassed," he said.
Kuttab said AMIN has opened Jordanian journalists to the non-Arab world and led them to the Web as a research tool. "In the Jordanian media, we have been able to detect a much more open outlook to the world as well as to Arab issues," he said.
