Live Blogging about Health

By Angilee Shah | Published: May 28, 2009

This weekend, I’m live blogging the first seminar for California Broadcast Fellows at the California Endowment Health Journalism Fellowships program at the University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communications.

That’s a lot of names, isn’t it?

It’s actually fitting; one of the biggest challenges of broadcast journalism is to take complex topics and tell compelling and often very short stories about them. You can read my posts on The Fellowship Blog at Reporting on Health, and see my tweets at @ReportingHealth. Here’s the first post:

Examining the Craft: Seminar on Broadcast Health Reporting Begins Today

In a world of sound bites, 140-character reports and information overdose on the Internet, news about health often doesn’t get all the airtime it deserves. The first session of a seminar for broadcast journalists will look at ways television, radio and multimedia journalists can boost coverage and depth in their reports.

Tonight’s keynote speech by NBC’s Robert Bazell asks the question, “Is it Possible to Cover Complex Medical Topics in Two Minutes or Less?” Through the weekend, California Broadcast Fellows will examine social media and digital resources, health reform and the black market, and what it takes to get depth of coverage in a media marketplace that demands that writers be editors and producers all at once.

Michelle Levander, director of the California Endowment Health Journalism Fellowships at the USC Annenberg School for Communication, says that the pressures of being in a newsroom and on deadline make it difficult for journalists to feel that they are doing their best work. Specialty topics like health often take a hit when time and resources are short. The broadcast track of the fellowship program began last year to address the particular issues of working with sound and images on tight deadlines. Broadcast journalists have to tell compelling stories and need simple ways to cover complex topics, explains Levander. It’s a tough job, especially now that the business of journalism is in such dire straits.

“In a time of cutbacks and uncertainties, one of the things that helps journalists not become demoralized is a sense of community,” Levander says. “You can’t underestimate the value of exchanges that happen in seminars like this.”

You can join the conversation online throughout the weekend by commenting on posts. I’ll be twittering at ReportingHealth; reply or tweet using the hashtag #cabroadcasthealth. You can also email your comments to me at angshah@gmail.com and I’ll include them in my live blog throughout the weekend.

Posted in California, Los Angeles | Tagged , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

This Week: Singapore in the news

By Angilee Shah | Published: May 9, 2009

When I lived in Singapore I stayed in Bukit Timah, on the west of the island near a large nature reserve and beneath the city-state’s tallest peak, which is not the grandest mountain at just over 530 ft. Bukit Timah is just south of the bridge that crosses into the Malaysian border town of Johor Bahru, in the southern Malaysian state of Johor. At the end of February, 2008, soldiers combed this area and security along the border was tightened in an effort to catch terrorism suspect, Mas Selamat, who had escaped a maximum security prison from an unbarred window in a restroom. Fliers of Selamat with a mustache, without a mustache, every detail of what he was wearing, his alleged limp, his favorite meal (ok, that last one is from an interpretation by Singapore’s most famous satirists) — one by one, the government released more and more details and asked for vigilance.

The big news this week is that Selamat was captured in early April, over one year after his escape. Authorities believe that Selamat, who had been held without charges under Singapore’s Internal Security Act since his first capture in 2006, is  the leader of the Singapore arm of Jemaah Islamiyah, or JI, which is responsible for the 2002 Bali bombings and an alleged plot to attack Singapore’s Changi Airport. News of his arrest came out last week, withheld, say Malayasian officals, to allow for continued investigation into the JI network. According to Singapore’s Deputy Prime Minister Wong Kan Seng, Selamat escaped across the Johor Strait on an improvised flotation device; weaknesses in border security, say Singapore authorities, will be addressed. Perhaps now is a good time to revisit another mr brown show classic, Blame It on Somebody (or perhaps the remix, or the follow-up episode Just Can’t Quit). For a good explanation of the whole story, read the account from AFP.

From FP Passport via International Economy via vesseltracker.com, global trade is taking a hit, and Singapore, the “world’s busiest port for container traffic” according to International Economy, is feeling the pain. Compared to last year, traffic in Singapore dropped almost 20 percent in January and February, 2009. See the short but striking report (and a really startling graphic) on a PDF from International Economy. Other indicators of Singapore’s financial predicament are the central banks’s move to devalue Singapore dollars and Singapore Airline’s move to give people $1 hotel stays.

And not related to Singapore at all, an Asia Pacific Arts story is getting a lot of buzz in the Los Angeles neck-of-the-woods. I’ll let the headline sell it: Hot Asian Actors Hollywood Doesn’t Yet Realize It Needs.

Posted in Asia, Los Angeles, Singapore | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

looking back, looking forward

By Angilee Shah | Published: May 8, 2009

It’s the closing night at the Los Angeles Asian Pacific American Film Festival and one film — not a new film — really caught my eye this year.

On Saturday, the festival showed the 1987 documentary Who Killed Vincent Chin? The documentary is a powerful staple of Asian American history which I had never gotten around to seeing. It is the story of the beginnings of Asian American activism, which came about on the heels of the end of a man’s life. In 1982, Detroit, Vincent Chin got in a barroom brawl with Robert Ebens. Ebens and his stepson then pursued Chin outside the bar; while his stepson held him down, Ebens beat Chin over the head with a baseball bat. Chin went into a coma and died four days later in the hospital.

Vicent Chin

Vicent Chin

Ebens was charged with manslaughter in a plea bargain and was given a $3000 fine and three years probation. He and his stepson did not have to spend a single day in jail, and people were angry enough to organize. That time in Detroit was a flush with anti-Japan sentiment; Japanese carmakers were taking a big chunk out of business for the big American companies. Ebens, it turns out, had just lost his job as a supervisor when the Chrysler plant where he worked was shut down. Chin was a Chinese American, but according to witnesses, Ebens said to him at the bar, “”It’s because of you little motherfuckers that we’re out of work.” The case was taken to federal court where Ebens was accused of violating Chin’s civil rights (there were no hate crimes laws on the books yet).  Ebens was acquitted on all counts, but by then, Chin’s story and the struggle of his mother, Lily Chin, had galvanized a generation of Asian Americans to demand rights as “real Americans”.

Fast forward to 2009, and Chrysler is in even bigger trouble. How have things changed for immigrants and minorities in America? Even director Renee Tajima-Pena, who gave a Q&A after the screening, did not quite have an answer. But she did say that there has certainly been progress; violence and the racism that fueled anger against Asian immigrants is not as prevalent as it was when Vincent Chin was murdered. But immigrants are still facing very big hurdles in this recession. A Center for Immigration Studies survey shows that immigrants have higher rates of unemployment than the general population; even well-educated immigrants have an unemployment rate of 6.3% compared to 4% of American-born degree-holders. A Committee of 100 survey (PDF) shows that “China fear” is alive and well in America. Concerns about protectionism and potential immigration policies are growing. As the discussions about how best to deal with growing unemployment and economic challenges get heated, the story of Vincent Chin is a timely reminder of the perils of xenophobia.

Posted in United States | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

website update: the big switch

By Angilee Shah | Published: May 7, 2009

Ok, maybe not so big to you, but big to me.

After struggling with bugginess and hand-coding for years, I finally made the switch from Movable Type to WordPress. Let me know what you think and if you find any broken links. RSS feeds and permalinks should still work properly (fingers crossed).

Posted in world | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Is Hong Kong free?

By Angilee Shah | Published: May 1, 2009

I’ve had many conversations with different people about how Hong Kong has changed since becoming a territory of China in 1997. There are a lot of different camps: Some say the changes have been subtle but significant, others that the changes have actually been surprisingly minimal. Some decry what they see as a cultural shift in the island territory, a dulling of what used to be a vibrant civil society. Many applaud the opportunities being part of China have afforded them, financially and otherwise. Here are points of view in some interesting reports:

Freedom House takes on the question in an appraisal of the media. In their annual report (PDF) on press freedom, released today, they downgraded Hong Kong’s status from “Free” to “Partly Free” for 2008. Here’s how they explain it:

In terms of status changes, Hong Kong’s status declined to Partly Free to reflect the growing influence of Beijing over media and free expression in the territory. Of particular concern were the appointment of 10 owners of Hong Kong media outlets to a mainland Chinese political advisory body, increased restrictions on film releases in the period surrounding the Olympics, and reports that critics of Beijing encountered growing difficulty in gaining access to Hong Kong media platforms.

At the same time, the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation and the Wall Street Journal gave Hong Kong its top rank in their annual Index of Economic Freedom which was released in January. They explain:

Hong Kong has an impressive record of openness to global trade and investment. Despite a lack of natural resources, the economy’s institutional strengths have allowed it to achieve high levels of prosperity reinforced by vibrant entrepreneurial activity. The small island is one of the world’s leading financial centers, and regulation of banking and financial services is transparent and efficient. Income and corporate tax rates are very competitive, and overall taxation is relatively small as a percentage of GDP. Business regulation is straightforward, and the labor market is flexible. Property rights are well protected by an independent and corruption-free judiciary.

Anthony Y.H. Fung and Chin-Chuan Lee predicted 15 years ago that integration with China would prove to be a dilemma for Hong Kong’s traditionally free and vibrant press. They introduce a 1994 paper (PDF) in the International Communication Gazette this way:

Hong Kong’s media are undergoing an unprecedented rate of ownership change as the British colony sails toward the transfer of sovereignty to the People’s Republic of China in 1997. The fate of Hong Kong was decided by the Sino-British Joint Declaration of 1984. Since then, China has attempted to coopt the Hong Kong media and journalists by conferring prestige, legitimacy, interests, and information upon them. This strategy has reaped unusual success despite temporary setbacks in the wake of the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown. In this final phase of the transition, however, foreign corporations have started to raid on Hong Kong’s media, with which they hope to capitalize on a growing market in China. Equally important, China seems intent on managing political effect of the transition through media acquisition by pro-China or China-affiliated capitalists. All these new owners must cope with the dilemma of ingratiating themselves with China without impeding media legitimacy in Hong Kong’s market environment.

legislative building

Hong Kong’s landscape is changing as well. The coastline used to come right up to the edge of the Legislative Council Building (formerly the Supreme Court).

Posted in Hong Kong | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Global Lives #2: Anil Kapoor

By Angilee Shah | Published: April 29, 2009

Anil Kapoor told me I have a “lovely smile.” My mother was pretty excited.

Anil Kapoor

And that says a lot. This 30-year Bollywood veteran is now the kind of star in America who draws attention on a red carpet in Hollywood. Kapoor made his international debut as the dubious host of India’s version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire in Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire.

In this, my second Global Lives podcast, I’m examining Kapoor’s take on “going global.” Since the success of Slumdog, he has found a willing international audience. He’s traveled with the film to the Golden Globes and the Oscars, and recently was cast in the eighth season of the Fox series 24. But Mr. Kapoor was thinking about the global film marketplace long before Slumdog‘s success. Last weekend at the Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles he debuted an English-language version of a Hindi film he produced called Gandhi, My Father.

This episode of Global Lives was co-produced by Asia Pacific Arts, with insight and recordings from Ada Tseng.

You can easily  subscribe to this podcast or share it on your own blog or website.

Global Lives #2: Anil Kapoor

 
Posted in India, Los Angeles, United States | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

free culture on 35mm

By Angilee Shah | Published: April 26, 2009

I had the good fortune last night to see Sita Sings the Blues on honest-to-goodness film at the Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles. I had heard about the movie a while ago; director Nina Paley offered her seven-year project up for free in many forms on the Internet. She writes:

I hereby give Sita Sings the Blues to you. Like all culture, it belongs to you already, but I am making it explicit with a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike License. Please distribute, copy, share, archive, and show Sita Sings the Blues. From the shared culture it came, and back into the shared culture it goes.

You don’t need my permission to copy, share, publish, archive, show, sell, broadcast, or remix Sita Sings the Blues.

Certainly, Sita is a reflection on what shared culture means. Every faith seems to have “the virtuous woman,” the one who is exceedling pure and loyal and often makes great sacrifices for the sake of the family. In the Hindu epic the Ramayana, Sita is that kind of heroine, a paradigm of what womanhood and being a wife means.

Her image is pervasive, and for those of us who have grown up both in and outside of Indian culture, it’s really problematic as well. She was the wife of Rama, an extremely popular king-deity, an incarnation of Vishnu, the perfect man and perfect son. Paley’s remix of the story, incorparting uncertainties, and simultaneously romanticizing and de-romanticizing Sita’s womanhood, is a breath of fresh air.

And while Paley’s film and how she has released it raises a lot of big questions about film distribution in the digital age, it begs the larger question, who owns Sita’s story? Who gets to decide its lessons?

If you follow go to the embedded YouTube video’s page, posted by World Film Festival of Bangkok, you get a feel for the debate. The comments range from, “It is, simply put, glorious,” to “How can a person who has so much reverence to Ram & Sita can keep silent on this.Why did not she make any movie on Jesus and his wife Mary Magdalene?Will the Church allow that?”

You can download the film from the Sita Sings the Blues website, or even watch the whole thing on YouTube if you don’t mind the buffering. But there’s nothing like thinking about shared cultures in a space that represents shared culture. Catch it on a big screen if you can.

Posted in India, United States | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Clinton on Pakistan

By Angilee Shah | Published: April 24, 2009

A quick post — I was really surprised to hear Secretary of State Hillary Clinton being very forthright about America’s errors in Pakistan and Afghanistan. “Let’s remember here,” she told a congressional hearing, “the people we are fighting today, we funded 20 years ago.” She links the problems in the region now, in part, to America’s policies in fighting the Soviet Union. “Let’s be careful what we sow, because we will harvest,” she said. Here’s the clip from CNN:

Front page, DawnThe major English-language daily in Pakistan, Dawn, highlighted her comments: US created Taliban and abandoned Pakistan: Clinton. Reporter Anwar Iqbal writes the lead, “Two days of continuous congressional hearings on the Obama administration’s foreign policy brought a rare concession from US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who acknowledged that the United States too had a share in creating the problem that plagues Pakistan today.”

While it is significant for Clinton to have made such a blatant statement, the U.S. policy on Pakistan is still problematic, according to a Saturday editorial. Dawn writes: “Secretary Clinton may well be right in saying that the Pakistani people ‘need to speak out forcefully’ against the government’s policy of appeasement in Swat. But this amounts to going over the head of the government it claims is an ally and undermining its authority among the people. And all the tough talk against Pakistan cannot conceal that the Americans are themselves puzzled about how exactly to approach Pakistan.”

Update: Turns out, the State Department is looking for suggestions.

Posted in Pakistan, United States | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

This Week: Follow-ups to terrorist attacks in India and the earthquake in China, perspectives on Iraq and North Korea

By Angilee Shah | Published: April 18, 2009

I’m starting a weekly post that rehashes some of the most interesting and unusual reports on Asia (in English) and the world. Let me know what you think, and if you find this kind of feature useful. For more interesting things on the web, from newspapers and blogs, see my shared stories page.

First, two Saturday features by two great reporters. Babara Demick for the Los Angeles Times writes a follow-up to stories about the Sichuan earthquake last May. Families there are still waiting for the official death toll and results of DNA testing to confirm the identities of the victims: China quake survivors still wait for word.

Emily Wax in South Asia for the Washington Post writes about discrimination against Muslims in Mumbai following the terror attacks last year: Muslims Find Bias Growing In Mumbai’s Rental Market.

And two from the BBC: First, a piece featuring the voices of American female soldiers serving in Iraq: Women at war face sexual violence. Army specialist Mickiela Montoya and others are explicit about the treatment of women in the army. She says:

A lot of the men didn’t want us there. One guy told me the military sends women soldiers over to give the guys eye-candy to keep them sane.

He told me in Vietnam they had prostitutes, but they don’t have those in Iraq, so they have women soldiers instead.

The BBC also ran this week an article that is quickly making the rounds on the web: Iraqi gay men face ‘lives of hell’.

And one more, from the Christian Science Monitor: American journalists could be bargaining chips for North Korea. It’s a well-reported piece that complicates the story of the two Current TV journalists who have be held by Pyongyang for a month.

Posted in Asia, China, India, United States | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

yellow shirts see red

By Angilee Shah | Published: April 17, 2009

Sondhi Limthongkul

When people ask me about Thailand — particularly, if it is safe to visit — I tell them that the political turmoil that has plagued the country for several years has not amounted to violence.

That story has, of course, changed. A friend told me that on her way to the airport in Bangkok on Tuesday, a group of people put shopping carts in the road, blocking the taxi in front of hers. They beat the driver with wooden bats as her own taxi driver swerved out of the way. Certainly, the time of peaceful demonstration, where power changes hands in bloodless coups and elections is over.

Thailand’s protester-in-chief, Sondhi Limthongkul (above), was attacked by gunmen today. The Bangkok Post reports that the media mogul has survived the attack. He was injured by shrapnel to the head from over 100 rounds that were shot at his vehicle. Images of his injuries (left) were published in the Manager Daily, a newspaper Sondhi owns.

Sondhi is a former journalist and owner of the major media company Manager Group. Once a close friend to former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, he is now  the leader the People’s Alliance for Democracy, the principal group that staged huge protests and agitated for Thaksin’s ousting in a 2006 military coup. When Thaksin-aligned leaders were elected in 2007, Sondhi took centerstage again and led yellow-shirted protests that shut down Bangkok’s major airports. Sondhi’s agitation ended when the current Prime Minister, Abhisit Vejjajiva, was apointed, but Abhisit is now the target of pro-Thaksin red shirt protests which have devolved into riots and confrontations with soldiers at Bangkok’s busiest intersections.

I interviewed Sondhi for AsiaMedia in 2006 and I can remember vividly his outspoken confidence about his place in Thai history. He used his money and influence and media company to publish boldly on Thaksin’s alleged corruption, calling his work “new time journalism” which required a certain amount of activism in the face of serious threats. From the transcript:

AM: What do you say to people who say that this new time journalism isn’t really journalism?

SL: What makes them think that they are real journalism? Time changes, things change. New factors — how do you report news in a country which is completely non-transparent, in a country where semi- or unofficial censorship happens? How do you do it? How do you get the other side of the story?

Let’s say you’re doing a story on corruption, all right? You’re doing a story on corruption and then you pose a question to the people involved, in charge, and they deny it. They say, ‘That’s not true.’ Are you going to believe in what they say, or are you going to go and dig in more? And once you go and dig in more, you’re going to find a lot of sources. And all of those sources are scared to death. They say, ‘Don’t quote me.’ Give me a reliable source who wants to withhold the name. Once those reliable sources who want to withhold the names happens more than two, three, four, five times, you begin to question, are they really your source? You see? So this is the dilemma.

So each society, each country has different ways of doing things. People who are actually critical of what I’m doing are getting too used the way Western media has been displayed. Right here, you can go to the computer and punch some name on it. There’s some basic background or in-depth background coming up. Or you want to talk to the mayor on official record, the mayor will speak to you. But you want to talk to the mayor of Bangkok on official record, and they will say that’s not true. So it literally shut the door. So you have to go on your own. When you go on your own, you are acting like Spartacus because you have to roam around with no direction. You find somebody and you talk to them, and they look around, they look up, look down.

Literally, when I fought Thaksin, my phones have been tapped. I’ve been using five phones. I mean, how could a prime minister tap my bloody phone? This is not happening here [in the United States]. Even though the Bush administration has asked Congress to give him the freedom to tap suspected terrorists — even at that statute, you guys were making a hue and cry.

Look at me. My life has been threatened. There were literally assassination attempts on me. How do you explain this to some guy who is sitting by the Hudson River and writing a story? You guys are used to the rule of law. But there seems to be a rule of law, but only in names, in words, but not in action in Thailand.

Thailand’s army chief has said that he believes no protesters have been killed as soldiers cracked down to end the current unrest. But the state of emergency continues in Thailand and reactions to the attempt on Sondhi’s life are still coming.

Posted in Thailand | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Switch to our mobile site