IDEALS

BANGALORE, India, (May 5, 2010) IPS/GIN – The central Indian remote
jungles of Chhattisgarh and the urban technology- savvy node of
Bangalore are now linked by a mobile phone-based information
system, a first in the world, called CGnet Swara.

CGnet Swara (Chhattisgarh Net Voice) – the brainchild of freelance
journalist Shubhranshu Choudhary, formerly with the British
Broadcasting Corporation, and Bill Thies, a Massachusetts Institute
of Technology (MIT) graduate now working at Microsoft in Bangalore
- is essentially an internet-radio-cum- website system, funded by
MIT, Microsoft and the U.S.-based Knight International Journalism,
of which Choudhary is a Fellow. Read the rest of this entry →

BANGKOK, (May 4, 2010) IPS/GIN – In her newspaper-strewn office on
the ground floor of a quiet apartment complex, Chiranuch
Premchaiporn surveys the options before her in case the
government’s censors come calling again.

Her first brush with the censors came when they blocked
‘Prachatai.com, the Thai-language online news site she runs with
an editorial staff of 12. The day after the censors struck, on Apr.
7, Chiranuch’s team in Bangkok was supplying political content via
a new website.

But the second act of the censors – blocking the Facebook fan page
of the six-year-old news organization – has proved more daunting.
“We have to go through a proxy to place information on Facebook,”
says the executive director of ‘Prachatai’. “It is inconvenient but
it is okay.”

Yet Chiranuch, who has come to symbolize the struggle for free
expression in this South-east Asian kingdom, is prepared to make
it difficult for the censors to have their way. “If they block our
domain, we will set up a new domain. We will even send information
on mailing lists, which is more difficult to block,” the
43-year-old reveals. “We will not stop informing our readers.” Read the rest of this entry →