Given the tough financial times the media have been struggling with this past year -- editorial staffs eviscerated, foreign bureaus shuttered, staffers and stringers abroad sacked -- it’s remarkable how much the Overseas Press Club has to cheer about from the viewpoint of quality and professionalism. Journalism at its very best has never been better than right now -- and if you want still more tangible evidence of that reality, just leaf through this annual copy of OPC’s Dateline magazine with its impressive array of award-winning international stories and photography produced during 2007.
Earlier this year, around a nighttime fire at Joint Security Station Tarmiya, near Baghdad, a young soldier turned to Paul McLeary, then a reporter for my magazine, Columbia Journalism Review, and said, "Man, you must be making a lot of money to be here." Paul told him that he would get the same paycheck walking around Iraq as he would sitting at his desk in New York, and that it wasn't an impressive amount anyway, as reporters don't make much.
Shortly after China was picked to host the 2008 summer Olympics there was optimism that, by seeking an international spotlight, the country's ruling interests would be compelled to open up to journalists, Chinese journalists especially. Nothing like that happened. With the games just months away one is left with the impression that in our age the characteristics of a great nation need not include free expression.
In the nine years since he seized power, the general has fostered the growth of a vigorously independent group of private TV stations that have done their best to undermine his rule and restore democracy.
It's been six years since The Wall Street Journal's Daniel Pearl was kidnapped and murdered in Pakistan. Today most of the dozen men who carried out the crime are in prison or dead.
Covering the war in the frontier regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan presents formidable challenges -- not least of which is overcoming some dangerous preconceptions.
2007 OPC Award WinnersThursday, 24 April 2008 | Kathleen Hunt
As always with the Overseas Press Club awards, the map of world conflict is a predictor of where the winning journalists find their inspiration. This year the list includes all the countries where... Read More>
Coming soon, online bill payment where you can sign up and pay for membership, OPC events and more.
Press Freedom
United StatesThursday, 01 May 2008The Overseas Press Club of America regularly speaks up on behalf of
journalists in jeopardy around the world. Now we write to ask your
help on behalf of a New York journalist who serves the South Asian
community.
Read more...
ZimbabweFriday, 25 April 2008
We are shocked and dismayed by the recent attacks and restrictions imposed on journalists covering the recent national elections in Zimbabwe. Heavily armed riot police surrounded the York Lodge, the hotel in Harare popular with foreign correspondents, and arrested six individuals on April 3.
Read more...
ChinaMonday, 21 April 2008
We add our determined voices to those of our colleagues to protest your government’s repression of media freedom in China. You deprive your own journalists, the foreign press, and above all, your citizens of the right to know.
Read more...