YouSaid · the spoken record

Engel

lines on the record: 11
first: 2013-07-17
most recent: 2013-07-17
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: un-security-council

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“We are all part of the same nebulous category, and the guild of professionals is not recognized anymore. I think it should be. Just as the representatives in the diplomatic community need protection to be objective, if the international community wants professionals who are also objective, we need some protection as well. I think it is important to pick one's battles. Perhaps there should be two types of campaigns: one to protect free speech for activists who use the media in order to advance their causes and their beliefs, whatever those causes may be, and the other for a renewed commitment to defend dedicated and trained professionals who take risks to deliver the kind of information Council members need to make their decisions.”
2013-07-17 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7003 (2013) · source
“These days Governments, tyrants, dictators and even democracies seem to be happy with all of this ambiguity because we can all be lumped into the category of troublemakers. We are all bloggers and punks and rebels with cameras. We are all lumped into the same, generally negative, harmful category called the media. There is absolutely no respect for career journalists. We are arrested, we are detained, we are harassed, we are kidnapped. We are killed. Before, if a Government wanted to deport a major correspondent from an American television network or a newspaper or a news agency, it did so knowing there would be consequences. Today, several Governments routinely do that, and worse. I think a big reason why is because we are all just troublemakers.”
2013-07-17 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7003 (2013) · source
“They get good information, and it is usually correct, and this person has some 15,000 followers on Twitter. They have a small audience, but they do have an audience. Then they are arrested. What do we do? Does one consider him or her a journalist, does one offer them the protection ofajournalist? Does one demand his release, perhaps on the grounds of free speech or of political expression? I do not think just because a person knows how to use Twitter he or she is necessarily a journalist, but just because one does use Twitter does not mean one is not a journalist. It is a judgement call, but I think somebody needs to make that call. This is not just a theoretical judgement call. It has real consequences. This why the distinctions are so important.”
2013-07-17 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7003 (2013) · source
“I am not saying that these two people - the rebel with the camera and the State broadcaster - deserve to be mistreated, but they both are fundamentally different from journalists. This is where it gets more complicated. What about the freelancers and activists? Consider this case. It is a hypothetical case, but I have seen many people just like this. There is a young activist who uses Twitter and he gets arrested in Egypt. This theoretical writer-activist is anti-Government, anti-police. His tweets are full of four-letter words telling the police exactly what they should do to themselves. This is his life, this is probably what he does all the time. But this activist - and here is the key difference - is good at what he, or she, does.”
2013-07-17 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7003 (2013) · source
“If one cannot or will not write an article that goes against one's cause, then one is not ajournalist and does not deserve to be treated like one. What one is doing should fall under the protection of free speech, which is a much broader and an important discussion to have. But today we are not talking about just free speech; we are talking about protecting reporters. And the test goes both ways. Consider a reporter who works for a State television station - a Syrian television station, since I used the Syrian rebels as an example. That reporter most likely cannot or will not write against his Government. If he does not, then he probably fails the test as well. He is not a journalist either.”
2013-07-17 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7003 (2013) · source
“Now, let us go back to that scene in Taksim Square. There are bloggers. There are tweeters. There are freelancers who see themselves as activists. There are freelancers who actually join rebel groups, and some of them carry guns. If the discussion today is about protecting journalists, one must first decide who gets that protection. Who deserves it, and who forfeits it? Over the past couple of years, I have often spent quite a bit of time with the opposition - the rebels - in Syria, and many of them carry cameras. The ones who carry the cameras call themselves journalists, but in general they are not journalists; they are rebels with cameras. They are part of the fight. I have a general rule, which I think might be useful for some here.”
2013-07-17 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7003 (2013) · source
“We were guests on the diplomatic scene. We dined with ambassadors in garden courtyards in Cairo and Bombay. I did that myself many times; it was very pleasant. We were considered a league of special people who needed to be protected because ourjobs often upset powerful and dangerous people. We were like diplomats in a way, posted to far-away places, and we needed a kind of special status so we could stay objective. Diplomats such as Council members have immunity so that they cannot be tried in local courts, because they will often tell Governments the kind of information they do not want to hear. Journalists had a more informal but generally understood status so that we could do the same thing for our readers and our viewers. That is the way it worked for over a century, since the Battle of Little Bighorn.”
2013-07-17 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7003 (2013) · source
“They do not know who we all are; we are wearing gas masks. Some people were wearing what looked like professional gas masks, and some people had just painters' masks on. And there were people with cell phones, and some people, as I said, had stones and cell phones in their hands. It was very confusing. What I want to do today is to maybe offer some concrete ideas about protecting journalists. I think in order to do that one has to examine the question of who is a journalist. With that preface, let me go to my prepared remarks. Protecting journalists these days is hard, perhaps harder than ever, because one has the tackle the question of who is a journalist and who is an activist in way that never existed before. If one goes back 50 years or even just 15 years, journalists were well known. We carried badges that identified where we worked.”
2013-07-17 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7003 (2013) · source
“We were there filming the clashes and trying to talk to the activists and to talk to the police, who actually did speak to us, despite all the tear gas. As I stepped back a little bit, I looked around at the scene. There were people with big cameras, there were people with small cameras, and there were people with cell phones. There were some people with cell phones who wore gas masks who were clearly part of the conflict and of the clashes that were ongoing. There must have been a dozen or two dozen people filming the clashes, which involved maybe a few hundred people. As I looked at that very confusing situation, I thought to myself, who are all these people? Are they all journalists? And I thought, from the police's perspective - which is not a perspective one would expect journalists to think from - this must be very confusing.”
2013-07-17 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7003 (2013) · source
“It is really important for freedom and democracy and the spreading of information and knowledge. For the past 17 years, I have been going from place to place. I have had some bad experiences. About six months ago, I was kidnapped in Syria. In a gunfight, we managed to escape. Some of the people who were holding us were killed in that gunfight. I have been detained many times by different Governments, and I have been denied visas. I am therefore familiar with the environment that foreign journalists work in. I had a moment of clarity, if you will - or a moment of confusion, I think I should say - not long ago. I was in Turkey, covering Taksim Square. There were ongoing clashes between the people in the Square and the police.”
2013-07-17 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7003 (2013) · source
“Mr. Engel: My name is Richard Engel. I work for NBC News as the chief foreign correspondent. I have been working in this very bizzarre business of ours for about 17 years. I usually go from one trouble spot to the next. I know several ofthe people who are also speaking today - Ghaith - and I just met Mustafa earlier. I commend him for speaking today, because working in Mogadishu is truly a very dangerous experience. Hopefully, he is not a dead man walking. What I want to talk about today is, who is a journalist. I want to thank the people in the Chamber for taking up this very important cause. I know there are a lot of important issues going on in the world. For us in this business, this is one that is dear to our hearts and something we think about every day.”
2013-07-17 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7003 (2013) · source