Online citizen journalism seen as threat

By Michael Fraase

Tuesday, 17 June 2008 07:55PM CST

Section: Media

ArrestedRepressive governments arrested three times more webloggers last year than in 2006. So says the University of Washington’s World Information Access (WIA) 2008 report. “Since 2003,” says the report, “64 citizens unaffiliated with news organizations have been arrested for their blogging activities.” Most of the arrests occurred in the Middle East and Asia, with Egypt, China, and Iran accounting for more than half of all arrests.

In 2007 alone, 36 bloggers were arrested.

Another telling statistic is the amount of time spent in jail. The times reported varied from a few hours to eight years. The average time spent in jail for those online citizen journalists that had been arrested was found to be 15 months.

The WIA report considered only arrests that were reported. The number of unreported arrests remains unknown.

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