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<strong>DT</strong><br />
8<br />
World<br />
FRIDAY, JANUARY <strong>20</strong>, <strong>20</strong>17<br />
SOUTH ASIA<br />
Afghan journalists face<br />
more threats as violence<br />
spreads<br />
Afghan journalists say they are<br />
facing more risks than ever as<br />
both insurgents and unscrupulous<br />
government officials<br />
increasingly threaten, assault,<br />
and even murder reporters. At<br />
least 13 journalists were killed in<br />
Afghanistan last year, making it<br />
the deadliest year on record for<br />
Afghan media, the Afghan Journalists<br />
Safety Committee (AJSC)<br />
said on Wednesday. REUTERS<br />
INDIA<br />
School bus crash in India<br />
kills 13<br />
A school bus carrying dozens of pupils<br />
collided with a truck in northern<br />
India on Thursday, killing 13 people,<br />
officials said. Twelve of the dead<br />
were children aged between seven<br />
to 14 years, who were seated near<br />
the front of the bus, when an oncoming<br />
truck collided with it in the<br />
state of Uttar Pradesh. AFP<br />
CHINA<br />
China notes progress in<br />
ties under Obama<br />
Sidestepping recent disputes over<br />
Taiwan and regional security, China<br />
said Thursday that important<br />
progress has been made in its relationship<br />
with the US under President<br />
Barack Obama and the two<br />
countries should move forward as<br />
partners rather than competitors.<br />
Asked to sum up relations under<br />
Obama, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman<br />
Hua Chunying recalled the<br />
numerous meetings between the<br />
two powers. AP<br />
ASIA PACIFIC<br />
Vietnam police halt anti-<br />
China protest over islands<br />
Police in Vietnam’s capital stopped<br />
an anti-China protest within<br />
minutes on Thursday at a ceremony<br />
to commemorate a clash<br />
between the two countries in the<br />
South China Sea more than four<br />
decades ago. Vietnam and China<br />
have a long-standing dispute over<br />
the South China Sea, nearly all of<br />
which is claimed by China. REUTERS<br />
MIDDLE EAST<br />
Syria’s Assad: Astana talks<br />
to focus on truce<br />
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad<br />
has said peace talks next week in<br />
the Kazakh capital will focus on<br />
enforcing a cessation of hostilities<br />
to allow aid access across his wartorn<br />
country. The talks sponsored<br />
by regime allies Russia and Iran<br />
and rebel backer Turkey will begin<br />
Monday in Astana and are expected<br />
to last less than a week. AFP<br />
US news media braces for battle<br />
with Trump White House<br />
• AFP, Washington, DC<br />
Donald Trump and the media are<br />
digging in for what could be a long<br />
and bitter war. The president-elect,<br />
whose spent much of his campaign<br />
at loggerheads with the mainstream<br />
press, has been sharpening<br />
his attacks, and the news media<br />
is bracing for what some see as a<br />
looming campaign of intimidation.<br />
Days before moving into the<br />
White House, Trump told Fox News<br />
he plans to keep tweeting his views<br />
as the “only way to counteract”<br />
what he called “a very dishonest<br />
media.” While many US presidents<br />
have had strained relations with the<br />
media, Trump has made maligning<br />
the press a core element of his message,<br />
foreshadowing a stormy relationship<br />
for the years to come.<br />
Journalists and media analysts<br />
expect a White House effort to cow<br />
An open letter to Trump from US press corps<br />
Kyle Pope, the editor in chief and publisher of the Columbia Journalism Review penned an open<br />
letter to Donald Trump on behalf of the US Press Corps on Tuesday, January 17, <strong>20</strong>17<br />
Dear Mr President-elect<br />
In these final days before your inauguration,<br />
we thought it might be helpful<br />
to clarify how we see the relationship<br />
between your administration and the<br />
American press corps.<br />
It will come as no surprise to you<br />
that we see the relationship as strained.<br />
Reports over the last few days that your<br />
press secretary is considering pulling<br />
news media offices out of the White<br />
House are the latest in a pattern of behaviour<br />
that has persisted throughout<br />
the campaign: You’ve banned news organizations<br />
from covering you. You’ve<br />
taken to Twitter to taunt and threaten individual<br />
reporters and encouraged your<br />
supporters to do the same. You’ve advocated<br />
for looser libel laws and threatened<br />
numerous lawsuits of your own, none of<br />
which has materialized. You’ve avoided<br />
the press when you could and flouted<br />
the norms of pool reporting and regular<br />
press conferences. You’ve ridiculed a reporter<br />
who wrote something you didn’t<br />
like because he has a disability.<br />
All of this, of course, is your choice<br />
and, in a way, your right. While the<br />
Constitution protects the freedom of<br />
the press, it doesn’t dictate how the<br />
president must honour that; regular<br />
press conferences aren’t enshrined in<br />
the document.<br />
But while you have every right to<br />
decide your ground rules for engaging<br />
with the press, we have some, too. It is,<br />
Members of the media and others attend the unveiling of the new wax figurine of President-elect Donald Trump at Madame<br />
Tussaud’s wax museum on January 18 in Washington, DC<br />
AFP<br />
feisty news outlets into submission<br />
as the two sides battle to define<br />
the public narrative.<br />
Trump has been on good terms<br />
with some outlets such as the farright<br />
Breitbart News. But he has<br />
been on a rampage against other<br />
after all, our airtime and column inches<br />
that you are seeking to influence.<br />
We, not you, decide how best to serve<br />
our readers, listeners, and viewers. So<br />
think of what follows as a backgrounder<br />
on what to expect from us over the<br />
next four years.<br />
Access is preferable, but not critical.<br />
You may decide that giving reporters<br />
access to your administration has no upside.<br />
We think that would be a mistake<br />
on your part, but again, it’s your choice.<br />
We are very good at finding alternative<br />
ways to get information; indeed, some<br />
of the best reporting during the campaign<br />
came from news organizations<br />
that were banned from your rallies. Telling<br />
reporters that they won’t get access<br />
to something isn’t what we’d prefer, but<br />
it’s a challenge we relish.<br />
Off the record and other ground<br />
rules are ours—not yours—to set. We<br />
may agree to speak to some of your<br />
officials off the record, or we may not.<br />
We may attend background briefings<br />
or off-the-record social events, or we<br />
may skip them. That’s our choice. If you<br />
think reporters who don’t agree to the<br />
rules, and are shut out, won’t get the<br />
story, see above.<br />
We decide how much airtime to<br />
give your spokespeople and surrogates.<br />
We will strive to get your point<br />
of view across, even if you seek to shut<br />
us out. But that does not mean we<br />
are required to turn our airwaves or<br />
news organisations.<br />
In his first news conference since<br />
the election, Trump lashed out at<br />
BuzzFeed News for its controversial<br />
decision to publish an unverified report<br />
suggesting Russia had compromising<br />
information on him.<br />
At the same January 11 news<br />
conference he clashed overtly with<br />
CNN, which covered the same story<br />
minus the lurid details, denying<br />
the cable giant’s White House correspondent<br />
a question and charging:<br />
“You are fake news. •<br />
column inches over to people who repeatedly<br />
distort or bend the truth. We<br />
will call them out when they do, and we<br />
reserve the right, in the most egregious<br />
cases, to ban them from our outlets.<br />
We believe there is an objective<br />
truth, and we will hold you to that.<br />
When you or your surrogates say or<br />
tweet something that is demonstrably<br />
wrong, we will say so, repeatedly. Facts<br />
are what we do, and we have no obligation<br />
to repeat false assertions; the fact<br />
that you or someone on your team said<br />
them is newsworthy, but so is the fact<br />
that they don’t stand up to scrutiny. Both<br />
aspects should receive equal weight.<br />
We’ll obsess over the details of<br />
government. You and your staff sit in<br />
the White House, but the American<br />
government is a sprawling thing. We<br />
will fan reporters out across the government,<br />
embed them in your agencies,<br />
source up those bureaucrats. The<br />
result will be that while you may seek<br />
to control what comes out of the West<br />
Wing, we’ll have the upper hand in covering<br />
how your policies are carried out.<br />
We will set higher standards for<br />
ourselves than ever before. We credit<br />
you with highlighting serious and widespread<br />
distrust in the media across<br />
the political spectrum. Your campaign<br />
tapped into that, and it was a bracing<br />
wake-up call for us. We have to regain<br />
that trust. And we’ll do it through accurate,<br />
fearless reporting, by acknowledging<br />
our errors and abiding by the<br />
most stringent ethical standards we set<br />
for ourselves.<br />
We’re going to work together. You<br />
have tried to divide us and use reporters’<br />
deep competitive streaks to cause<br />
family fights. Those days are ending.<br />
We now recognize that the challenge<br />
of covering you requires that we cooperate<br />
and help one another whenever<br />
possible. So, when you shout down or<br />
ignore a reporter at a press conference<br />
who has said something you don’t like,<br />
you’re going to face a unified front.<br />
We’ll work together on stories when it<br />
makes sense, and make sure the world<br />
hears when our colleagues write stories<br />
of importance. We will, of course,<br />
still have disagreements, and even important<br />
debates, about ethics or taste<br />
or fair comment. But those debates will<br />
be ours to begin and end.<br />
We’re playing the long game. Bestcase<br />
scenario, you’re going to be in this<br />
job for eight years. We’ve been around<br />
since the founding of the republic,<br />
and our role in this great democracy<br />
has been ratified and reinforced again<br />
and again and again. You have forced<br />
us to rethink the most fundamental<br />
questions about who we are and what<br />
we are here for. For that we are most<br />
grateful. •<br />
Enjoy your inauguration.<br />
— THE PRESS CORPS
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