Being a journalist has its perks... like having friends that take photos and that are willing to share with you some unpublished or unsold materials for your website or blog.
Sorry for the mean watermark, but due to the nature of the Internet and the Andercommunity, we don't want them to go uncredited.
And To My Dear Freak, THANKYOU FOR THE ARCHIVE!
From The Quills Award
Hoy me percaté de que tenemos hermanos hispanos visitando este humilde "blog". Ha sido un esfuerzo titánico, particularmente por la dificultad del idioma. Pero en eso estamos y a eso vamos. Espero les agrade este espacio, y siéntanse en total libertad de dejarnos saber su opinión. Aquí el español es bienvenido. Si les interesa que exploremos algunos temas en específicos, no duden en sugerirlos, ya sea por medio de la sección de comentarios o por nuestros correos electrónicos.
Bono and Oprah hit the Magnificent Mile.
CHICAGO, Illinois (AP) -- Talk show host Oprah Winfrey and humanitarian rocker Bono hit the city's "Magnificent Mile" on Thursday for a shopping spree to promote a new line of clothing, accessories and gadgets, including a special-edition iPod, that will raise money to fight AIDS in Africa.
Dozens of "(Product) Red" items will go on sale in the coming weeks by Gap Inc., Apple Computer Inc., Motorola Inc., Converse Inc. and Emporio Armani.
Portions of the product sales will go to The Global Fund, an organization that fights AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.
"Some people won't put on marching boots, so we've got to get to people where they are at, and they're in the shopping malls," Bono said in a phone interview. "Now you're buying jeans and T-shirts, and you're paying for 10 women in Africa to get medication for their children with HIV."
The Gap, which will debut its Red line in stores on Friday, will donate half the profits to The Global Fund.
Apple will contribute $10 from the sale of each new red-colored iPod nano. The model, priced the same as its $199 cousins, goes on sale Friday.
The celebrities, who arrived at the downtown Chicago Gap store in a red Ford Thunderbird, got a sneak peak at the products during a private shopping stint that will be broadcast Friday on Winfrey's show.
After visiting the Gap, the duo walked along Michigan Avenue to an Apple store and picked up the red iPod, the first music product from the Cupertino, California-based company designed to raise money for charity.
The two also stopped at Armani and Motorola stores.
"Shop 'till it stops," said Bono as he walked out of the Apple store clutching bulging shopping bags.
So far, the (Product) Red initiative, which began this spring in Britain, has raised more than $12 million for African AIDS programs, said Doug Piwinski, a spokesman for (Product) Red.
With Apple's iPod alone, The Global Fund stands to raise millions of dollars. During the holiday quarter in 2005, Apple sold 14 million iPods. The iPod maker also plans to donate some proceeds from a $25 iTunes Red gift card to the organization.
"I love the fact that Bono is trying to do something about this problem," Apple's CEO Steve Jobs said in a phone interview. "I've never been to Africa, but you don't have to go there to know there are a lot of people dying of AIDS there. In a small way, this is something we could do about it."
Bono, who knows the difficulties of raising awareness for social causes, was thrilled with the retailers' efforts for the campaign.
Gap had its four-story store in Chicago decked out in red banners. Apple planned to light up its flagship 5th Avenue store in New York in red on Thursday night.
"We've moved from the philanthropy budgets to the marketing budgets, and guess what, there's no comparison in size," Bono said. "We now have some of the most creative people in commerce -- Steve Jobs, the marketing people at Gap and Motorola -- all working for the world's poor. That is so so cool."
*****
And Bono will be on Larry King Live tonight, talking about his efforts to raise awareness in the fight against AIDS. Tune in to CNN at 9pm ET.
Visit the (RED) website for more information.
Anderson Cooper did a phone interview Thursday morning with Tom Joyner on his radio broadcast. Cooper spoke about the situation in the Congo, as well as, Wednesday's plane crash in New York City. As usual, Cooper is much more articulate and stumbles less when the prompter and the camera are off.
Here is a little bit of background on Tom Joyner.
Tom Joyner was born in Tuskegee, Alabama and received a bachelor’s degree in sociology from the Tuskegee Institute. Upon graduating, Joyner took a job reading news on WRMA/Montgomery. Subsequent jobs at WLOK/Memphis, KWK/St. Louis and KKDA/Dallas followed.
Joyner’s success led him to Chicago, where he worked at stations WJPC, WVON and WBMX before hitting it big at WGCI.
Joyner made headlines in 1985 as “The Hardest Working Man in Radio,” when he accepted a morning position at KKDA/Dallas while simultaneously taking an afternoon show at WGCI/Chicago. His daily commute between the two cities led to high ratings in both markets while earning Joyner a new nickname: “The Fly Jock.”
In January of 1994, Joyner began syndicating The Tom Joyner Morning Show to 29 stations. Joyner’s new show offered a mix of music, comedy, guests—ranging from Stevie Wonder to Tipper Gore—and occasional discussions of social or political issues. Today, Joyner’s show is heard on over 110 stations.
Perhaps Joyner’s most unique honor comes from Impact magazine, who awarded their “Best DJ of the Year” award to Joyner so many times over the years that they finally renamed it “The Tom Joyner Award.”
Tom Joyner was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in 1998.
Hear Anderson HERE
Nick Robertson, one of the original Boys From Baghdad gives us his take about the evolution of newsgathering.
By NIC ROBERTSON
CNN’s Nic Robertson on assignment in Pakistan: “We are breaking the mould. It has been exciting to be at the heart of this, smashing conventions in broadcasting.” Back in 1991 when I had just joined CNN as a satellite flyaway engineer, I was lucky enough to be part of the crew in Baghdad, Iraq, as the allied forces started their assault on the country. At the start of the war, I was in charge of the technology that gave CNN the now world-famous communications advantage. We were not allowed to bring our satellite-TV transmitter into Iraq, so I smuggled in a massive satellite telephone and had to keep our technical gear running during the war. Initially, this involved running a dedicated four-wire communications circuit that gave us the unique ability to broadcast live from Iraq without relying on Baghdad TV’s transmission facilities. When the telephone exchange which the signal relied on was bombed, we resorted to my smuggled satellite telephone. Five days after the war broke out, we received permission to bring our satellite dish into the country. I returned to Jordan and came back a week later with a satellite TV transmitter. This was no small feat. The kit was so substantial that we could only bring it into the country by driving a truck up the main road between Amman and Baghdad — a sitting target for allied bombers. Without that technology, CNN’s historic coverage of the Gulf war would never have been possible. The satellite dish had enabled us to cover the Amaria shelter bombing, where hundreds of civilians were killed — a defining moment in the war for many people. But it was John Holliman’s, Bernard Shaw’s and Peter Arnett’s reporting on the fourwire on the first night of the war that really captured people’s imagination. We were completely cut off in Baghdad with no idea of the impact we had on the outside world, particularly in the early days of the war. It was not until I left Iraq that I began to fully appreciate what we had achieved. Since then, changes in newsgathering technology have transformed the way we work. As I progress from engineer to cameraman, producer and correspondent, I have been on the frontline working with emerging new technology, particularly the new digital newsgathering (DNG) technology that is now shaping the way we operate. We have come a long way from the days of the 30kg suitcase sized satellite telephone that I had smuggled into Baghdad in 1991. We now work with a handheld battery-powered device, only slightly larger than a cell phone. You can fit everything you need to go live in a small backpack. You can now file from remote locations with difficult communications and limited power sources. It is a liberating feeling. DNG really puts us into the heart of a story, and allows us to broadcast live pictures within minutes of changes in a story without having to go back to base. It somehow seems to personify what CNN is about. The network’s founder, Ted Turner, started pushing boundaries when he launched the revolutionary idea of a 24-hour news channel. We pushed the boundaries with our four-wire in Baghdad and, now, we are doing it with our live reporting from the core of a story. Transmission quality today is great using the Apple G4 laptop, and will only get better. Last year, using the latest version of our live software on the G4 and a hotel Internet connection in Riyadh, we did a live hit for CNN which everyone thought was broadcast by satellite because the quality was so good. We expect to go even further this year with the Apple G5, which is equipped with a faster processor, and, very importantly, much wider bandwidth satellite phone and satellite modems almost equivalent to broadband. The future is really good. We are breaking the mould. It has been exciting to be at the heart of this, smashing conventions in broadcasting. Nic Robertson is CNN’s senior international correspondent.
From a concerned fashionista...
Coop, don’t wear pinstripes two nights in a row. Your ties are divine, the shirts wonderful, but please, vary the pinstriped suit. I know they’re your favorite, but for those of us who pay attention to every detail, and you know we do, give us another selection from the Ralph Lauren or Prada lines.
Wearing the pinstripes two days in a row is a like a woman wearing the same color or even the same blouse two days in a row. You just can’t get away with it…trust me on this from personal experience. Remember, CNN NY is not the middle of Africa, Afrghanistan or New Orleans and the rumpled A&F shirt just won't cut it here (even though I love the look). I know you missed NY Fashion Week while on assignment, so if you need help shopping, give me a call. You know where to find me.
One more little thing, don’t cross your legs on national television. I dig your shoes and at least you wore dark socks. Just remember, we can see what’s really going on under the desk as things are pretty transparent these days.
Thanks to liberation337 at Anderloads for the great caps.
It's always an odd sensation to be reporting on a tragedy like this in your own city. We've all seen accident scenes before, either up close or on TV. There's a pattern to them, a routine, but it's always a shock to see one up close.I think that's why so many people stand around and stare, watching police and firefighters do the jobs they've trained for.We saw the smoke from our offices, and I jumped in a cab as soon as I could. CNN already had reporters and producers on the scene, and they had found eyewitnesses willing to talk to us on camera.It's raining hard right now and that's driven away most of the curious onlookers. CNN reports two people dead, including Cory Lidle, who owned the crashed plane. Lidle had a wife and a 6-year-old son. Tonight, let's all say a prayer for them and anyone else affected by this accident.
Give us your take on this... but keep it clean!
Journalism is a serious matter. Good
journalism is e
ssential and dangerous. Tonight HBO airs the documentary The Journalist and the Jihadi, the murder of Daniel Pearl.
As you might have read in our previos posts, 35 journalist have been killed to date. The numbers are increasing with the conflicts. And the search for truth is in some cases are death sentences. We hope you might tune in. There are a lot more things about journalists than their ties or sexual preferences. They risk their life for the information. So please don't trivialize their lives nor their sacrifices.
Narrated by acclaimed journalist Christiane Amanpour, THE JOURNALIST AND THE JIHADI: THE MURDER OF DANIEL PEARL was directed and produced by Ahmed A. Jamal and Ramesh Sharma, who gained unprecedented access to many of the key figures in the kidnapping and subsequent murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in early 2002. Anant Singh ("Sarafina!," "Cry, The Beloved Country," HBO's Oscar®- nominated "Yesterday") also produced. The debut of THE JOURNALIST AND THE JIHADI: THE MURDER OF DANIEL PEARL coincides with events taking place around the globe between Oct. 6 and 15, and organized by the Daniel Pearl Foundation, which battles cultural and religious intolerance through journalism, music and dialogue. Through the words of Pearl's family, friends and colleagues, as well as FBI agents and State Department employees involved in negotiations for Pearl's release, and those who knew Sheikh best, including former schoolmates and associates, the documentary explores the forces that led to the tragedy. Interviewees also include noted philosopher and author Bernard-Henri Levy; Pakistani police officials; Khalid Khawaja, a retired squadron leader of the Pakistani air force and a former Pakistan Intelligence Officer, known for his links with extreme religious organizations; and Maulana Shamszai, a noted Islamic scholar and the leading source of inspiration for the Taliban, and head of a madrassa (Islamic religious school) in Pakistan. Ahmed A. Jamal has received numerous awards for his films, including "Who Will Cast the First Stone?" and "The Beach Boys of Sri Lanka." Through the independent production company First Take Ltd., he has made several groundbreaking documentaries, including "Dead Man Talking," "The Bounty Hunter," "The Dancing Girls of Lahore," "Camel Kids," "Iran - The Other Story" and "The Fundamental Question." Ramesh Sharma is an award-winning feature film and TV producer-director. His Moving Picture Company India Ltd. is among the leading production houses in India. Sharma's list of credits includes the feature film "New Delhi Times," an award winner at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, as well as numerous acclaimed documentaries, including "Rumtek," "Drikung - A Faith in Exile," "Afghanistan - The Taliban Years and Beyond" and "Jihad - The Sword of Islam." THE JOURNALIST AND THE JIHADI: THE MURDER OF DANIEL PEARL is an HBO Documentary Films presentation, co-produced by Moving Picture, First Take Ltd. and Distant Horizon. Directed and produced by Ahmed A. Jamal and Ramesh Sharma; producer, Anant Singh; narrated by Christiane Amanpour; written by Amit Roy; edited by Tony Appleton; music by David Heath. For HBO: executive producers, Sheila Nevins and Lisa Heller. 
I am sick of all the speculation over the private life of Anderson Cooper. Maybe those obsessed with it are more "sick" than me. Other than mine, I don't really care much about who sleeps with whom. That kind of American Obssesion only help to distract public focus of the things that really matter. Just check today's most popular news... Nicole Richie and Paris Hilton eating together wins over a landslide to the North Korea story.
Today I was censored, again, by a blog administrator. Me and my big mouth! In no way I'm re-printing the original post of that site because its content goes against the editorial lines of THIS blog, but the money quote was:
"Today is a free comment day. Only one rule, it's gotta be about Andy and only Andy or at least closely related to Andy, 'cause all I want today is Andy, Andy and more Andy. (P.S. I've been listening to Ta-Dah while writing this post.... She's my man, And we got all the balls we need....)"
Talking about Hezbollah and media manipulations...
My deleted answer:
"Do you have any proof, other than rumors, speculation, and unreliable sources or a direct answer from him that can prove your statement?I think the speculation is completely rude and out of order. It is nobody business. It is not news or for public consumption. Unless he is a pedophile or a rapist. His sexual orientation, whatever it is, is for his own pleasure and with whom he wish to share it. Two's company three is a crowd. And the last time I checked, the privacy of a bedroom was still protected constitutionally. It is very sad that after all the kudos he received for the Congo coverage, particularly for the stories of the rapes, he has to tolerate the RAPE OF HIS PRIVACY. Again and again. What does people gain with this? How this affect the world? Are people sleeping better and more safetly after Thomas Roberts announced he was gay? The world is still the same. And we are not making it better violating Constitutional or Human Rights."
At our website: www.freakspeaker.com we did an indepth analyis over censorship and blogs. When The Search For Entertainment Crashes Against Constitutional Rights, in where we explore different angles of the blog business, In Gossip Blogs: Freedom of Speech or Blunt Opportunism, we profile Nick Denton and his blogosphere empire, the product of Appreciation vs Obsession, Stalking and the Dan Rather case, where his assaultant was convicted for murdering a NBC stagehand in 1994.
Being a blogger or a webmaster doesn't give you a free pass for publishing everything. It is ruled by the same responsibilities that other media outlets have.
In order to help the blog community we have two important resources at our website ( www.freakspeaker.com) the
Legal Guidelines For Bloggers And Webmasters, the BBC's guide, How to Avoid Libel and Defamation and SHOULD I BELIEVE IT?: A GUIDE TO CRITICAL EVALUATION OF BLOGS, IMAGES AND NEWS.
Some quick FACTS:
Do blogs have the same constitutional protections and responsibilities as mainstream media?
Yes. The US Supreme Court has said that "in the context of defamation law, the rights of the institutional media are no greater and no less than those enjoyed by other individuals and organizations engaged in the same activities."
What are private facts?
Private facts are personal details about someone that have not been disclosed to the public. A person's sexual orientation, a sex-change operation, and a private romantic encounter could all be private facts. Once PUBLICLY DISCLOSED BY THAT PERSON, however, they move into the public domain.
What is defamation?
Generally, defamation is a false and unprivileged statement of fact that is harmful to someone's reputation, and published "with fault," meaning as a result of negligence or malice. State laws often define defamation in specific ways. Libel is a written defamation; slander is a spoken defamation.
What is a statement of verifiable fact?
A statement of verifiable fact is a statement that conveys a provably false factual assertion, such as someone has committed murder or has cheated on his spouse.
What is "Libel Per Se"?
What is a "false light" claim?
Information presented in a "false light" is portrayed as factual, but creates a false impression about the plaintiff (i.e., a photograph of plaintiffs in an article about sexual abuse, because it creates the impression that the depicted persons are victims of sexual abuse). False light claims are subject to the constitutional protections discussed above.
We would really like to know your opinion about this. Do you really think it is cool to invade Anderson Cooper's private life, if it is fair game... or are me on the right track.
This weekend technology betrayed me. But in a leap of faith, I catch a movie I always recommend to my students: Live from Baghdad. It is based on CNN’s breakthrough coverage of First Gulf War or commonly known as Operation Desert Storm. That movie always takes me back to the early 1990’s. And it is a quite accurate of the things that goes behind the scenes of what you watch on the news in your TV set. But it also saddened me to recognize how the edge or hunger for news innovation that that generation had, has diminished trough the years. News people have softened their voices afraid to loose their access to official sources. And those who were brave enough to face authorities, like Anna Politkovskaya, are silenced by cowards. 
Ingrid Formanek
But Formanek says that what is most important to her is maintaining integrity, and resisting the trend of what she calls "more style than substance" in the media. She believes that the American media she so admired as child is in peril.
Mark Biello 
After riding out the storm in a French Quarter hotel, Biello met CNN correspondent Jeanne Meserve at the Superdome. A distraught city councilman drove up and said his Ninth Ward neighborhood was submerged. The CNN team jumped in their car and followed him there.Biello, 44, has worked for CNN since 1983 and been to 81 countries, recording famine, disaster and the bombs that flew over Baghdad in the first Gulf War. But even he was shocked by what he saw from a New Orleans highway overpass."We did not know the extent of how many people were trapped," he said. "Nobody did ... As far as we could see in all directions you could hear people screaming and yelling, waving, some were drowning."Three men pulled up in a boat. Biello asked if he could come along.Their first rescue was a husband and wife plucked from a roof, arguing with each other as they stepped onto the boat."I was just recording and witnessing what they were doing," he said. "It wasn't until there were people submerged in the water that they asked for my help in pulling people onto the boat ... they needed the physical strength to pull people up." The filthy New Orleans water gave Biello a serious chest infection. But he was back in Louisiana for Hurricane Rita. 
Bernard Shaw
Bernard Shaw and Tom Johnson
January 1991, Shaw stayed behind -- with Peter Arnett and the late John Holliman -- after other Western reporters had deserted the city. As bombs rained down on the city outside their hotel window, the three, reporting by phone, coolly brought those images into living rooms across the world during the first attacks of the Persian Gulf War.
"All kinds of ordnance was being dropped, all kinds of bombs, and I made my peace with myself that I could die at any moment," Shaw told CNN recently. "We knew the dangers around us. I always believed that two major forces -- one of them supreme -- saved us that night: God and some extremely well trained and well disciplined American pilots."
Throughout his career, Shaw -- a history major in college -- was often an eyewitness to some of the biggest events of the last quarter-century, a position he did not take lightly.
"Whenever I found myself with a box seat on a historic story, the one thing I always strove to do was realize I had a responsibility ... It made me focus even more on the disciplines of journalism -- being fair, being accurate." "[You also need to have] regard for viewers, listeners and readers," he continued. "If people are depending on you, if you are the only source of accurate information, you have a dreadful responsibility. I say dreadful because it's so awesome."Shaw went on to become a household name with his reports from Baghdad, Iraq, in 1991 at the start of the Persian Gulf War. As bombs exploded outside his hotel window, Shaw coolly brought those images into living rooms across the world.
Peter Arnett
LEFT TO RIGHT PETER ARNETT 1997 CNN REPORTER, OSAMA BIN LADEN, PETER BERGEN CNN PRODUCER, SINCE WRITTEN BEST SELLING BOOK ON BIN LADEN, PETER JUVENAL CNN CAMERA MAN
John Holliman
Holliman joined CNN in 1980 as part of the network's original reporting team and was the first correspondent hired for the Washington, D.C., bureau.He was one of only three journalists reporting from Baghdad in January 1991 when the allied air attack began on Iraq's capital during the Gulf War. He and colleagues Peter Arnett and Bernard Shaw played critical roles in CNN's coverage of the crisis, which won a National Headliner Award, the George Foster Peabody Award and a Golden Microphone Award.
"When the bombing started, we immediately lost power, so we thought we wouldn't be able to broadcast," Peter Arnett said. "But then Holliman went to our equipment and just switched out the batteries, and we were able to communicate for several days like that with the hounds of hell falling on our heads."
"He's the one who made that first broadcast possible. He had a real knowledge of broadcasting," Arnett said.
Nic Robertson
His first role on joining the network in January 1990 was as an engineer, and during the 1991 Gulf War, he was the only CNN engineer in Baghdad. He was also responsible for the first live satellite links out of Iran, Ethiopia and Iraq. His knowledge of technology has been beneficial both as a producer and a reporter. In the remotest of regions without electricity and telephones, such as Afghanistan, he has been able to file reports via the latest in technological advancements such as TOKO receivers and digital videophones.
Based in the network's Chicago bureau from 1991-1993, Robertson was producer for CNN's award-winning Bosnian War team from 1992-1995 and was also part of CNN's Emmy Award-winning team for the live coverage from the shores of Mogadishu, Somalia, as the U.S. troops launched operation Restore Hope in 1992. In 2002, Robertson won an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia Award for his reporting for the 2001 CNN Presents' "Northern Ireland: Dying for Peace" documentary.
In 2003, Robertson reported live from Baghdad until officials expelled the CNN group just hours before the coalition bombed the city. Robertson taped the bombings as they were fleeing and that footage later aired on CNN as an exclusive. After leaving Baghdad, Robertson reported from Jordan, often offering insight into the latest reports coming from Baghdad. He later returned to Baghdad to report on the latter stages of coalition movement into the city.
Eason Jordan 
Jordan worked for 23 years with CNN, where he rose through the ranks to become the network's Chief News Executive and President of Newsgathering and International Networks. Jordan oversaw CNN's news coverage, global expansion, and international relations. He orchestrated CNN's award-winning reporting of the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, former Yugoslavia, and Somalia. He also directed CNN's coverage of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the 1989 crackdown in Tiananmen Square. After two of his CNN colleagues were killed by insurgents in Iraq in 2004, Jordan co-founded and co-chaired the Iraq News Safety Group, and on behalf of the Group met senior U.S.and Iraqi officials to address the safety concerns of news organizations whose journalists report from Iraq.
CNN News Group President Jim Walton said that under Jordan's leadership, the news group "literally circled the globe with bureaus, from Baghdad to Johannesburg to Havana to Sydney to Hong Kong." 10 of his CNN colleagues were killed in Iraq and Somalia. Jordan felt a top-notch news and safety tip service produced for employers and their employees in war zones would empower those at risk to make more enlightened judgments about their movements and actions—perhaps saving lives. "The regard in which he is held by people from every walk of life in virtually every corner of the world has added incalculably to our ability to cover such historic events as the Gulf War and the war in Iraq, the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe, the crackdown in Tiananmen Square and the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon," Walton said in a written statement to colleagues.
He resigned to CNN due to a controversy that exploded after his remarks about the deaths of journalists in Iraq threatened to tarnish the network he helped build. Several participants said he told the audience that U.S. forces had deliberately targeted some journalists. The Center to Protect Journalist has stated that journalist are indeed target of the USA forces in Iraq. For more information: HERE
Iraqui former minister of Information and alleged CIA mole that gave the USA assurance of the existence of Weapons of Mass Destruction... we know how that ended.
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Speaking from the White House, President Bush on Monday called North Korea's claim of a nuclear test "a provocative act" and said the United States is working to confirm that such a test was carried out.
"Once again North Korea has defied the will of the international community and the international community will respond," Bush said.
After speaking with the leaders of South Korea, Russia, China and Japan, Bush said the nations agree on an "immediate response by the United Nations Security Council."
The council will consider the matter during its session on Monday. (Posted on CNN 10:12 a.m.)
