A Day Without News

The Without News profile picture the Newseum is asking people to download and use Monday.

(Courtesy Newseum)

Via WTOP

WASHINGTON — The Newseum will look very different Monday as part of an annual campaign called “Without News.”

“It’s a day when we black out the front pages of the newspapers that we display here at the Newseum, and also on our Today’s Front Pages website,” the museum’s Sonya Gavankar told WTOP.

She said the idea is to reflect on what the world would be like without the people who bring us the news.

“It’s an important time for us to really talk about the crisis of journalists in peril, and also the attacks on freedom of the press, not only in this country, but also around the world,” says Gavankar.

Supporters are asked to use #WithoutNews on social media, and download a special profile picture from the Newseum website.
            
Also Monday, at 10 a.m., the Newseum will rededicate its Journalists Memorial, adding the names of 14 members of the media who died on the job in 2016.

The ceremony is free and open to the public with advance registration, or you can watch it live online.

The event will be held on the anniversary of the death of NPR photojournalist David Gilkey, who was killed by the Taliban while covering the war in Afghanistan.

Several items belonging to Gilkey will go on display at the museum, including a camera lens that was hit by a rubber bullet as Gilkey documented clashes between Palestinian demonstrators and Israeli soldiers in the West Bank.

A day to raise awareness of the risks faced by journalists and photojournalists in war zones on a daily basis

An awareness campaign to highlight the risks faced by journalists covering major international news is set to launch on the anniversary of the deaths of American war correspondent Marie Colvin and photographer Remi Ochlik, killed in the Syrian city of Homs last year.

 

The idea for A Day Without News? arose within the journalism and media industry, by those that too often find themselves targeted by belligerents whilst reporting critical news to the world and that have lost too many friends who did not survive their last assignment.

On August 15, 2012, at United Nations headquarters, in New York City, a panel discussion, “The Cost of Truth,” was held to introduce that year’s winners of the World Press Photo Awards, the largest and most prestigious annual photojournalism prizes. Several hundred were in attendance.

Speakers included photographers Lynsey Addario and Michael Kamber; photo agency representatives Stephen Mayes and Aidan Sullivan; David Marshall, representative of the New York Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR); and Maarten Koets, deputy managing director of World Press Photo.

The panel discussed the alarming increase in the number of injuries, kidnappings and deaths of journalists – who seem not only to be more often the direct target of perpetrators, but also more vulnerable to such attacks due to advanced technology. Aidan posed the question whether there is a better way to legally protect journalists and make the world aware of the critical importance to do so. Despite the fact that it is officially a war crime to target journalists, there has been little respect for or enforcement of the international human rights laws when applied to journalists. And it doesn’t seem that the public recognizes the risk in governments failing to do so.

That night, over drinks at photographer Steve Pyke’s New York bar, Kingston Hall, Aidan recalled a conversation he had had recently with the director general of the ICRC, Yves Daccord, about raising awareness of the dangers faced by journalists in conflict, starting from within the journalism and media community. Photographer Lynsey Addario, who was abducted in Libya in 2011, immediately warmed to the idea. She also mentioned that such an effort might help remind people of the recent losses of journalists such as Colvin, Hetherington, Hondros, and Ochlik. Also on hand that day was Vanity Fair’s David Friend, who would coin the phrase, “A Day Without News?”.

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