 Ayla Albayrak |
Turkey convicted Wall Street Journal reporter Ayla Albayrak Oct. 10 for engaging in terrorist propaganda and sentenced her to two years and a month in jail as part of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s war on the free press.
Albayrak was charged for her coverage of Turkey’s military campaign against the banned Kuridish separatist party PKK.
Currently in New York, Albayrak plans to appeal the decision.
Gerard Baker, WSJ editor-in-chief, blasted the “unfounded criminal charge and wildly inappropriate conviction” that wrongly singled out a balanced WSJ report. “The sole purpose of the article was to provide objective and independent reportings on events in Turkey and it succeeded," he said.
The Committee to Protect Journalists calls Turkey, which has 81 journalists behind bars, the “leading jailer of the press.”
"We call on Turkish authorities not to contest Ayla Albayrak's appeal and to drop all charges against her," said Nina Ognianova, CPJ Europe & Central Asia program coordinator. "Dozens of journalists are imprisoned for their work in Turkey and this conviction is a signal that conditions for the press are continuing to deteriorate. Rather than dispensing justice, Turkey's judicial system has become an instrument of persecution."
WNET, the nation’s largest public media company, names Edward O’Keefe its next president and CEO, effective September 21. O’Keefe succeeds Neal Shapiro, who becomes president emeritus and will retire at the end of the year... The Stealth Bot Prohibition Act, which would empower news publishers and other content providers to defend themselves by mandating transparency for all bots crawling their sites, in introduced in the House by Rep. Laurel Lee (R-FL) and Rep. Valerie Foushee (D-NC)... Google gets socked by European Union regulators with a $1 billion fine for using the platform’s dominance as a search engine to illegally undercut competition.
Boston Globe Media acquires InstaTrac, a company that provides subscription-based services aimed at making government information easier to find, track, and understand... AARP names former New Republic CEO and publisher Michael Caruso as its SVP and chief content officer, unifying the organization's portfolio of media, live events and digital platforms... The Fund for American Studies, an educational nonprofit, awards its inaugural Journalism Excellence Fellowships.
Trump Media and Technology Group Corp. has replaced CEO and former California Congressman Devin Nunes with Kevin McGurn, a seasoned media sales executive.
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is being bought by the Venetoulis Institute for Local Journalism, a nonprofit that is the parent organization of the Baltimore Banner... The British Broadcasting Corporation is axing approximately 2,000 jobs, about 10 percent of its work force... Snap, the company behind Snapchat, is also succumbing to layoff fever, announcing plans to lay off 16 percent of its employees, about 1,000 people.
CBS News Radio will go off the air on May 22, part of the axe-swinging managerial plan put into play by CBS editor-in-chief Bari Weiss... The Economist, which was first published in 1843, is changing hands. Canadian billionaire Stephen Smith has agreed to acquire a 26.9 percent stake in the publication from Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild, her family and family foundation... Nexstar Media Group says it has closed its acquisition of TEGNA, the broadcast, digital media and marketing services company that was formed in 2015, when the Gannett Company split into two publicly traded companies.
