Important information

Maria Niles — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 22:55:36 -0500

Thank you for these updates, Kim. This information is important not just for journalists and colleagues but for us as readers and citizens as well. It is crucial that journalists are able to find and report the truth to us.

BlogHer Contributing Editor
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Journalists push investigations into deaths of martyred reporters

Kim Pearson — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 21:17:53 -0500

I was planning to write another post related to the election, and then this news crossed my inbox:

The lead detective assigned to investigate journalist Chauncey Bailey's
killing ignored evidence linking Yusuf Bey IV, former leader of Your
Black Muslim Bakery, to a role in the killing and interfered in two
other unrelated felony cases involving Bey IV, according to an
investigation by the Chauncey Bailey Project.

That alarming message places the Chauncey Bailey case alongside the
questionable probes of the murders of journalists in countries that
lack our tradition of the rule of law and press freedom. So today, I
want to brief Blogher readers on the current status of the Bailey case,
along with the cases of fellow American journalist Brad Will and
Chechen reporter Anna Politkovskaya. These unresolved murders are just
three cases in which journalists appear to have been killed for seeking
to expose by powerful people.

First, some background. Chauncey Bailey, a veteran newspaperman
based in Oakland California, was gunned down on the street on August 2,
2007, on his way to work at the Oakland Post, where the intrepid editor
was completing an investigation of allegations of criminal conduct and
financial mismanagement at Your Black Muslim Bakery. (Here's the post I
wrote at the time of his murder.) A 19-year-old handyman at the Bakery,
Devaughndre Broussard, was arrested. Broussard initially confessed, but
has since recanted.

At one time, YBMB was a respected
neighborhood business with a reputation for hiring ex-offenders and
helping them redirect their lives. It had also become politically
powerful, even winning lucrative government contracts. Its founder, who
died in 2003, even ran for Mayor in 1994. However, investigations
largely instigated by Bailey's reporting reveal a serious dark side.
People associated with the now-closed bakery have been accused and/or
convicted of crimes including kidnapping, child molestation, and
torture, as well as murder, stretching back over the last 40 years.

In the wake of Bailey's murder, a group of Bay area journalists founded the Chauncey Bailey Project to finish his work and ensure a thorough investigation of his killing. Their reporting revealed the existence of a jailhouse videotape in which YBMB's young CEO, Yusuf Bey IV, joked about Bailey's murder and made other remarks that gave the clear impression that he was at least a co-conspirator. In the tape, Bey says that a friend on the Oakland police force, Sgt. Derwin Longmire, is making sure that Bey isn't charged in the case.

In a story published this weekend, experts interviewed by CB Project reporters criticized Longmire, the lead investigator on the case for failing to document evidence of a conspiracy. According to this report from New American Media, Longmire now faces an internal affairs investigation.

Meanwhile, an international advocacy group for journalists expressed concerns this week about the course of the investigation of the October 27, 2006 murder of Brad Will, an American multimedia journalists who died while filiming a protest in Oaxaca, Mexico. (Blogher CE Liz Henry's 2006 roundup of tributes to Will and background on the conflict in Oaxaca is an invaluable introduction to this tragic case.)

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, Mexican authorities charged a member of a leftist opposition group, the Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca. However, CPJ's investigation uncovered evidence that the Mexican police might actually have fired the shots that killed Will. In an October 24, 2008 letter to Mexico's Attorney General, Eduardo Medina Mora, CPJ registered its concerns about the prosecution of the case:

The absence of specific, supporting evidence against the defendants and
the apparent failure to pursue other lines of investigation have
dismayed the Will family and independent teams that have investigated
the case, including Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission.

Meanwhile, Will's supporters in in New York embarked on a four day "dry hunger strike" in front of the Manhattan office of Sen. Hillary Clinton to urge her to demand action in the case, according to a story at Guerilla News Network.

Finally, this month marked the second anniversary of the murder of Anna Politkovskaya, a Russian journalist whose reporting on human rights abuses raised the ire of the Putin administration. In early October, the Russian government announced that three men would be tried for the murder; one of them is a former Moscow police officer, according to a story on the CPJ website. The trial began on October 15; the next day, the attorney for the Politkovskaya family took ill and was rushed to the hospital in France. Doctors and police there believe someone put poison in her car.

In her round-up on the anniversary of Politskovskaya's murder, Global Voices blogger Veronica Kohlklova posted this reflection by another blogger on the value of the slain journalist's work:

It is patriotic to tell the truth, to expose the liars among officials,
to fight for world peace, to walk alone through a mob of crazed thugs
who have small and great power, and, the main thing, not to be scared
of them. The bullet was the only thing that they could stop her with.
Because she didn't need to make a career, nor did she need the regime's
favors, the status of a courtier or a pocket [tamed] journalist, all
she needed was just to tell the truth. And it was impossible to ask her
to be silent, impossible to bribe or intimidate her.

In a contemporary media culture, it's worth remembering that this willingness to seek truth and speak it, without fear or favor - this, above all, is what it means to be a journalist.

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Journalists push investigations into deaths of martyred reporters