Al Jazeera English will air an hour-long special, "Journalism is Not a Crime," on Dec. 29, part of the news organization's press freedom campaign urging the release of three of its journalists incarcerated in Egypt for the past year.
Al Jazeera anchor John Seigenthaler will host the program -- 9 p.m. ET on Al Jazeera America -- to mark the one-year anniversary of the reporters, the network said.
Peter Greste, a Latvian-Australian reporter who is one of the three imprisoned, penned a letter published in Australian media Dec. 22 in which he cheered the coalition of political, diplomatic and media figures that have "reignited public discussion and awareness of the vital role that unfettered journalism plays in any healthy, functioning democracy."
He writes:
"Sometimes it is easy to forget why we need it at all. Journalism can, at times, look pretty sordid, and few of us who work in it can claim to have never succumbed to the more base instincts of our trade. And in the wired world of the internet, with its citizen reporters and millions of sources, it is tempting to wonder why we need professional journalists at all.
But that noise is the reason itself. Never has cleared-eyed, critical, sceptical journalism been more necessary to help make sense of a world overloaded with information."
The three journalists, incarcerated since Dec. 29, 2013, were sentenced last year to jail terms from seven to 10 years for allegedly publishing false news and aiding a so-called terrorist organization.
The Committee to Protect Journalists reported this week that 60 journalists were killed in connection to their work this year.
Trump Media & Technology Group today reported a $58.2M net loss on $4.1M in 2023 revenues, a disclosure that drove its stock price down 22.6 percent to $47.96.
Barry Pollack, an attorney at Wall Street’s Harris St. Laurent & Wechsler, has registered Julian Assange as a client with the Justice Dept. “out of an abundance of caution.”
Paramount Global to slash 800 jobs in what chief executive Bob Bakish calls part of an effort to “return the company to earnings growth"... Rolling Stone editor-in-chief Noah Shachtman is exiting at the end of the month due to disagreements with chief executive Gus Wenner over the direction the magazine is taking... The New York Times broke the $1 billion barrier in annual revenue from digital subscriptions in 2023... Press Forward is investing more than $500 million to strengthen local newsrooms.
The majority of news articles are read within the first three days of publication, according to a recent report.
The Los Angeles Times gives pink slips to 115 people or 20 percent of its newsroom staff... TIME is also laying off about 30 employees, which is approximately 15 percent of its editorial staff... The Baltimore Banner, which was launched by Stewart Bainum in 2022 after he failed to buy the Baltimore Sun, added 500 subscribers per day in the three days following Sinclair Broadcast Group's deal to purchase the Sun.
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