The other day I posted a couple of notes about the new Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism report on new and old media.

• Pew report shows gap in international views of old and new media
• Pew Report: Old Media/New Media

I saw in that two key issues that journalists and their bosses should be paying attention to.

1. New media depends on old media — or at least good old fashioned journalism.
2. People are interested in international news but are getting it from non-US sources.

Without good old fashioned journalism — multiple sources, checking facts, providing context — the news content of the Internet becomes opinion pieces instead of journalism.

The numbers speak for themselves. U.S. newspapers and broadcasts make up three-quarters of the items linked by American bloggers.

Web only generated material being passed on accounts for less than 1 percent.

So there is a value to professional journalism. The issue is finding a way to get paid for it. And that is what has to be addressed quickly.

On the other point — international news — the survey showed that foreign news — actual non-USA news items, rather than US foreign policy or military issues — was the second most blogged item. And yet people largely depended on non-US media outlets for this news.

There is an interest in news from other countries. Some of it frivolous. But most of it useful to understanding what is going on in the world.

The interconnection of local and global economies and societies no longer gives us the option of remaining isolated between two oceans. There are always local links in an international story and an international link to a local story. It just takes a reporter and editor with a view that extends beyond the city limits to see the connections.

There are always plenty of stories on campus for student journalists to cover. And a few of those stories can be pretty exciting. But they are still campus-centered and often have little impact beyond the campus.

And yet there are many campus organizations that deal with issues that are beyond the campus borders and even beyond our national borders. Maybe these groups will get a write up for a publicity campaign about this issue or that. And that is all well and good.

But why not look into some of the issues raised by these groups and see if there is a town-gown connection or even a larger global connection?

When people think about trafficking in persons (TIP), the most common view is most likely people tied to sweat shops or child prostitution. And usually the images are of this happening in some other country.

Sadly enough, trafficking takes place in the USA and it affects people on a very local level.

This morning I got a Tweet from Adam Savage (of Mythbusters fame. I am a follower. Wish I was a friend.) about a case in Washington, D.C., of two women obviously caught up in a trafficking situation.

(Here is my discussion at my personal blog site: Trafficking is a local and international issue

What struck me in the responses to the initial query was the number of places in the States designed to help people IN the States trapped in this practice.

I am sure there is a group on the Mason campus dedicated to helping people trapped in a trafficking situation. Maybe instead of just talking to the campus activists, the campus reporter could go out of his/her way and talk to some of the local groups in DC and NoVa also involved in the issue. I will bet that reporter will find that trafficking is not just something happening someplace else.

(Full disclosure: My wife spends a lot of time on this issue in her role as the #2 in the US embassy in Brazil. And she has directed the embassy staff to pay close attention to the issue.)

p.s. The issue is so important, that even the Armed Forces Network — the broadcaster service for the US military — runs PSAs educating members of the US military how to identify a trafficking situation and what to do about it.

Google and other online services regularly gets requests to provide information about users or to take items off their servers. Google, however, has decided to release information about where these requests are coming from.

This month Google has started to publicize what countries have asked to have material taken down.

The number one country with requests? No, it’s not China. (I’ll get back to that in a bit.) It’s Brazil with 291 removal requests and 3,663 requests for data.

Of the removal requests, 155 were because of court orders. Google says it complied — fully or partially — with 82.5 percent of the total requests.

FYI, number 2 in data requests is the United States with 3,580. Requests to take down material puts the States at number four with 123 requests.

Germany (188) and India (142) fill in the numbers two and three slots for requests to remove material from the Google system.

As I said, we’ll get back to China.

Here is the Google note about China:

Chinese officials consider censorship demands as state secrets, so we cannot disclose that information at this time.”

A lot of the requests in India and Brazil are to remove material from Orkut. It seems that 51 percent of all Orkut users are from Brazil. India accounts for 20 percent of all Orkut users. The united States is third at just about 18 percent.

Orkut is Google’s response to Facebook and MySpace. It has about 100 million active members as of Februaryy 2010 and ranks 61st in social network usage.

The large Brazilian user base prompted Google to move its Orkut operation from California to Belo Horizonte in Brazil about a year and a half ago.

No one really knows why Orkut took off in Brazil but it did. And, in response to the slow Internet connections in the country, Google developed a lite version. (Hello, Facebook. You listening?)

And now it seems Orkut is number one in Estonia as well.

So, if you want to know more about Brazil, India and Estonia from social network denizens, get an Orkut account.

Some extra reading:

• Google releases list of government censorship requests – Telegraph of London
• Google will provide more data about government requests for user data – Boing Boing
• Brazil tops world asking Google to remove content – Reuters
• US, Brazil lead Google’s Top 10 censorship list; China off the chart – Christian Science Monitor

First posted at Journalism, Journalists and the World

The Beeb has a great program — Over to You — that is about the state of media around the world.

This weekend they had a story about the changes in Zimbabwe.

In Zimbabwe there is only state-run broadcasting. This year the government created the Zimbabwe Media Commission with the declared intention to promote and protect the media.

The guest this week was Gerry Jackson, a Zimbabwe exile who runs a radio station aimed at Zimbabwe from England, says the only difference between the policies of the Mugabe government before and after the unity government came to power and the new media commission is that the overt violence against free media has subsided.

Private news outlets are still banned. It is still against the law to call the 86-year-old Mugabe “an old man.”

Other discussions included the use of labels such as “left wing” and “right wing” to groups.

This is a good radio program that is available live and on podcasts from the BBC web site.