World Press Freedom Day

How will you celebrate?

Panel discussions seem to be a popular method: Columbia University got a head start on the 13th annual event Thursday with its panel discussion: Freedom of Expression in Cyberspace.

The United Nations held its panel discussion, The Media and Armed Conflict, yesterday (World Press Freedom Day Eve), beginning on an appropriately somber note with a moment of silence to honor the 14 journalists from 8 nations who died covering the invasion of Iraq. It also issued an annual statement on the topic.

For organizations that work for world press freedom every day, it's business as usual on May 3. The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press will keep doing what it has done since 1970, providing free legal assistance to journalists (the group's 24-hour hotline for journalists and media lawyers is (800)-336-4243) and publishing regular updates from the press freedom front lines, which now include the New York City Subway.  This year the group added a blog, Behind the Homefront. The Committee to Protect Journalists is marking the day with a new report, The World's Worst Places to be a Journalist.

If you need ideas on how to commemorate the occasion, The United Nations Association of Canada has posted a list of suggested activities.

The International Federation of Journalists isn't just issuing statements and holding panel discussions; it's taking action, spearheading the founding of a new organization, the International News Safety Institute to make the world safer for journalists.

Reporters Without Borders published its annual report on press freedom violations in advance of the day, naming 42 predators of press freedom, and today it will publish its annual press freedom photo album.

The blogging community, also known as the blogosphere, is speaking up for the day as well, calling for the release of Iranian blogger Sina Motallebi, who was arrested for blogging last month. Sina is one of an estimated 10,000 bloggers in Iran.

Human Rights Watch launched an online campaign on the rights, and violations thereof, of Internet dissidents.

And the Israeli army added one more name yesterday to the list of journalists who died in action, killing British freelance journalist James Miller, who was filming the army as it demolished homes in the Rafah refugee camp in Gaza.

In addition to the links above, The Dagley Dagley Daily offers this link to the document that led to World Press Freedom Day, more popularly known as the Windhoek Declaration, which was originally directed at Africa but which applies wherever and whenever freedom of the press is threatened: anywhere, anytime.

Defend yours today, and every day, and remember: not everybody who defends freedom wears a uniform. Some are armed with nothing but a pen, a camera, a microphone, a blog, or just their own voices. Our own voices, that is.

Boat-acious

By popular demand, more boats. How many? If you can't see them all, click here for a larger image. The yellow one in the background is the Staten Island Ferry, and behind that, the Verrazano Narrows Bridge (the world's second-largest suspension bridge), linking Fort Hamilton, Brooklyn, with Fort Wadsworth, Staten Island. And in the lower right-hand corner, the edge of Pier A in Hoboken.

A lot of pull

Nobody has complained about all the waterfront photos this week, so here's another one, a hard-working tugboat tugging 12 barges at once, upstream. Behind it, lower Manhattan. That empty space just past the pyramid-topped building, and just in front of the black building, is where the World Trade Center towers were. Meanwhile, about a mile up the Hudson, another tugboat was pulling just a single barge, but a very, very big one, past midtown Manhattan. To learn more about the tugboats of New York Harbor, check out this 2002 article by Columbia University student Bryan McShane. And to hear for yourself how New York's tugboat fleet, as well as other boats, helped out on the day the towers fell, tune in online to the documentary "All Available Boats" at Jay Allison's Transom.org.

Seafaring in the city

You never know what you might see from the Hoboken waterfront. Here's what was out there yesterday. Click here for a larger view.

Oncoming traffic?

Hudson County, New Jersey, has long been known for its active political scene, and the scandals associated therewith. A few months ago, it seemed the least intelligent politician in the county was a guy who allegedly demanded Viagra as a bribe, apparently unaware of the free samples available at most every doctor's office. Then there was the Democrat who turned Republican, only to discover a few days later that he and all the other candidates from his new party had failed to qualify for the ballot because of problems with their nominating petitions. But now we have a new achievement in not-very-smartness, would-be Hoboken councilman John Corea, one of a field of five running for the second ward seat. Corea, who takes pride in having lived in the second ward his whole life, claims he has the answers to the mile-square city's parking and traffic woes: In an interview with the Hoboken Reporter, he claimed that "there is an existing road from Weehawken that runs behind the Hudson Tea Building" and that using that alleged road would "'unclog' traffic in the city's interior roads."

For a person who's spent the past 39 years in a very small part of a small town, Corea seems a remarkably uncurious fellow. If he had gone to the effort of looking for that alleged miracle road, he would have discovered that the only thing behind the Tea Building, except for the Hudson River, is a narrow, but very nice and almost brand-new, waterfront walkway (pictured above). Mr. Corea, how many lanes of traffic would you divert onto that waterfront walkway, and would you leave the nice park benches there or replace them with parking meters? Apparently Corea believes that pedestrians in general are part of the problem: he and his political allies, who call themselves "Hoboken First," are offering residents $100 rebates on scooters. Though nobody is offering a rebate on them, we prefer the use of another means of transportation: feet.

We'll be putting "Hoboken First" last when we go to the polls a few weeks from now. Our choice is Beth Mason, the "Hoboken Alliance" candidate.

Ho-boat-ken

Even more boats have settled in for the season at the Shipyard Marina, though the sailing school fleet has yet to arrive. If you get the impression the whole marina is rocking and rolling in this photo, you're right: look what's just on the other side of the pier: a ferry traffic jam, with the uptown ferry (the Sen. Frank Lautenberg) jockeying for position with the new downtown ferry (the Congressman Robert A. Roe). Ferries may be a handy (and even fun) way to get around the New York metro area, but they're also leaving some problems in their wakes for boat and marina owners.

At the end of the day

This is it: the "end of the day" politicians and pundits are always talking about. Specifically, the line between daylight and darkness is right in the middle of the Hudson River in this photo: it's already dark in Hoboken, but the Manhattan skyline is still in the sunshine. Hope it's sunny and warm where you are.