Iranian student speaks out

During a q&a session, College student Mahmoud Vahidnia told Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei: “I don’t know why in this country it’s not allowed to make any kind of criticism of you.” Now, that takes courage. Read the rest of the story by the AP here.

Brazilian Students deprived from their speech rights

A group of students were arrested for protesting at the Senate House in Brazil. Read the complete story here, or watch this video:

A message to Iranian students

Click to read: Persian Awakening: Using Collective Nonviolence for Achieving Reform in 2009 Post-election Iran

Flickr removes college student Obama/Joker photo art

The increasingly popular picture of Obama with make up “a-la-Joker” was removed from the Flickr service. This story published on Read Write Read explains the details  and poses the question: copyright infrigement or political censorship? Read the story here.

Iranian government shuts down opposition newspaper

The main opposition newspaper in Iran, Etemad-e-Melli, was shut down by the government for publishing what authorities refer to as “illegal” and “criminal” content.  The newspaper editor-in-chief is former presidential candidate and clerical reformist Mehdi Karrubí. To read the rest of the story click here.

Southwestern College newspaper suffers budget cut

The president of Southwestern College at Chula Vista, California has made several budget arrangements throughout the year. However, The Sun student newspaper’s faculty adviser said to the press, the budget cut to student newspaper is not necessarily just an economic issue.  Read the rest of the story here.

Thoughts on student newspaper censorship

Endless Fuel

by Astrid Viveros*

On January 2006, La Catarina, the college newspaper I worked for, was forced to stop publishing accurate, true stories that were labeled as overly critical. I naively thought Mexican media would have an instant uproar for such atrocity. We received support from a couple of local newspapers but were criticized by many others. We were portrayed in stories and articles as young troublemakers looking for attention, students trying to spoil the good name of one of Mexico’s finest universities.

However, we brushed the criticisms away and reminded ourselves we were fighting for a right cause: freedom of speech. After a couple of weeks of reaching out to national and international media, the administration caved in and we were able to publish our newspaper again. After this incident, I can proudly say that La Catarina saw some of the best work in it’s history.

Petition to release two U.S. journalists held in North Korea

Reporters Without Borders 2009

Reporters Without Borders and the International Media Women’s Foundation are collecting signatures to release American reporters Laura Ling and Euna Lee held unjustifiably and unjustly in North Korea.

To read more about this situation go to:

http://www.rsf.org/American-reporters-get-very-severe.html

To sign the petition go to:

http://www.iwmf.org/subcatdetail.aspx?sc=letter#commentblock

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