This week, a dispatch from FRONTLINE/World investigates a silent epidemic in Afghanistan—opium addiction among women and children.
A web-exclusive report by award-winning reporter Nadene Ghouri profiles young mothers at the Sanga Amaj treatment center for women in Kabul. In a country where few trained doctors remain—many have fled or prefer higher-paying work as translators—the clinic struggles to shelter female addicts from the crippling shame they experience in a restrictive, patriarchal society. The clinic can't provide heroin substitutes, such as methadone, but can offer a safe environment where women go through a slow withdrawal process with support and counseling.
An excerpt of Ghouri's report:
The story of Khadija, who has been in and out of the clinic, shows how easy it is for entire families to fall into addiction. She lost her husband and all but one of her brothers to war. "My last brother came to my house one day and I was so depressed I couldn't move," Khadija said. "He asked me to try his opium and I did. I forgot my pain."
To fund her habit, Khadija started to beg. While she was out of the house, her two children stole her drugs and began using too, she told me. Soon after, all of them were begging on the streets.
"We made a couple of dollars a day but we didn't buy food, just drugs," she said.
Khadija and her son and daughter were all treated at Sanga Amaj last year. But the children ran away and Khadija relapsed. Only her 12-year-old daughter, Gul Pari—which means flower fairy—came back to the clinic and is now drug free.
"She weighed 40 kilos when she first came in," said Hakeem. She was a little nothing."
The young girl didn't know that what she was doing was wrong; she just remembers the warm comfortable feeling the drugs gave her. When she stopped, first her feet hurt, then she began to hurt all over. "I couldn't eat and I was vomiting all the time. I was very scared," she said.
A new European journalists network launched a trifecta of stories last week investigating the pharmaceutical industry. The stories reveal how European pharmaceutical companies have put the lid on disquieting information about potential side effects from an array of commonly used medicines, the power of the pharmaceutical lobby in influencing European legislation, and the new policies which permit drug advertising. The series suggests that the pharmaceutical industry in Europe is wielding its influence in much the same ways as it has been revealed to be doing in the United States, through connections with university researchers and asserting confidentiality on basic medicinal information.
The stories represent the debut effort of the new network, IRENE—Investigative Reporters Network, Europe—which now has journalists working in Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and Denmark. The authors of the jointly bylined stories are Brigitte Alfter, Joop Bouma, and Marleen Teugels, each of them award-winning journalists in their home countries of Denmark, Belgium and the Netherlands, respectively. The stories were published simultaneously in the Danish magazine Samvirke, the Dutch newspaper Trouw and the Belgian magazine KNACK. An English-language translation of the series appears here. The team also wrote an original English-language condensation of the series for the Brussels-based newspaper EU Observer. In that story, they explain their pioneering use of the EU freedom of information law, which enabled them to gain access to pharmaceutical industry and government documents from the EU capital in Brussels and from each of their three countries. The group works closely with the Belgian journalism foundation, Pascal deCroos Fund for Investigative Reporting, which promotes the use of the Europe’s freedom of information laws through a website called, simply, wobbing—a Flemish slang word adopted by European journalists and interpreted to mean: Getting documents out of the government which they’d rather not provide.
We will keep you posted on IRENE’’s latest revelations on The Muckraker blog.
An extraordinary series of short videos were launched onto the web last week revealing, side by side, glimpses into the life of Israelis and Palestinians living within twenty miles of one another. The series, Gaza: Sderot: Life In Spite of Everything features new films daily from the Palestinian territory of Gaza and the Israeli town of Sderot, just over the border. Each two-minute film in the series (in Hebrew and Arabic, with English subtitles) features profiles of residents who, despite being the target of bombings and rocket attacks, "never stop working, loving and dreaming," in the words of the filmmakers.
The show originated with ARTE television in France, and was produced in cooperation with Israeli and Palestinian filmmakers. The website encourages virtual interaction between Israelis and Palestinians as well as the general public. On October 25, the series was awarded the Prix Europa for Emerging Media.
The point of the series is to offer a glimpse to non-Middle Easterners of how the routine elements of life continue, even amidst the heavy stresses of conflict. But the audience is also those in the region: "We wanted to offer a chance for reflection and engagement between those who are the 'other' to each other," one of the producers, Alex Szalat, commented to the French website Journalisme.com. "We evoke a difficult situation, but also the reality of Israelis and Palestinians who never rub shoulders but who live almost side by side."
A recent video from Gaza:
And one from Sderot:
While the Bush administration has gone to extraordinary efforts to prevent grisly realities of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan from making it into the U.S. press, photographers have not stopped doing their work. People in other countries frequently view photographs from those wars that are far more explicit than those viewed by Americans.
On display this month in the French town of Bayeux is a powerful exhibit of photos as part of the annual Bayeux-Calvados Prize for photo-journalism. This year, special recognition is being paid to war correspondents, and to the Dutch photo agency, Noor, whose photographers—including Stanley Greene, Francesco Zizola, and others—have contributed photos from the conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, post-election Kenya, the Niger Delta, Somalia and other conflict zones. The photos are arrayed around the ancient town of Bayeux, the first French town liberated from the Nazis in 1944.
Key participants at the festival—including Anthony Lappe, author of the recently published graphic novel Shooting War, and photographer Catherine Wyatt, jury president for the Bayeux-Calvados Prize—discuss their work in interviews hosted by Journalisme.com, a French association attempting to promote a vigorous and independent press in France and elsewhere around the world.
The San Francisco International Film Festival is now accepting submissions for the 2009 festival, which will be April 23-May 7, 2009. Cash prizes total nearly $100,000.
Entries can be narrative, documentary, animation, experimental, youth-produced, television works on film, video or digital media. Submissions can be of any length. For the 2009 festival, SFFIFF is also creating a new, juried cash prize of $25,000 for best investigative documentary.
>> Visit the San Francisco Film Society website for more information.
This week YouTube and the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting launched Project: Report, a journalism contest (sponspred by Sony VAIO and Intel) for citizen journalists to tell stories that might not otherwise be told.
The contest will take place over three rounds. The first round will be judged by the Pulitzer Center and will narrow the field down to the top ten reporters. The YouTube community will then vote to select the top five finalists and the ultimate winner. The winner will receive a $10,000 grant for travel abroad and the opportunity to work with the Pulitzer Center on a story of global importance. The finalists will also receive high-end video and editing equipment from Sony and be featured on the YouTube homepage. Additional prizes will be given to the top ten and top five participants as the contest progresses.
Assignment for Round One: Create and submit a video profile of an individual of significance in your community. The submission should be three minutes or less. Deadline for uploading is October 5.
>> For more information, visit The Pulitzer Center website: www.pulitzercenter.org.
A Dutch journalist writes about philanthropy and journalism in the U.S. for The Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting:
Although American philanthropists historically have not shown much interest in journalism, non-profits see an increasing interest among donors wanting to support quality journalism. “More and more donors are concerned about what is going on with media,” says Robert Rosenthal, executive director of the Center for Investigative Reporting. “If journalists all go away, who will provide information? Where is the watchdog role? That is a real issue for democracy.”
>> Read "Non-Profit Journalism: Is Philanthropy the Answer?" online.
In a new episode of iWitness, FRONTLINE/World's web series, curator Joe Rubin talks to Gigi Ugulava, the mayor of Georgia's capital Tbilisi and a confidant of President Mikhail Saakashvili.
Ugulava describes the mounting refugee crisis facing his city as Georgians flood in from Gori and other towns bombed by the Russian army, and how the city is reacting as Russian tanks remain less than 40 miles from the capital. Ugulava tells FRONTLINE/World that when it comes to Tbilisi, Georgians are drawing a red line. "If Russia will succeed here, they will be halfway to reestablishing the Soviet Union and nobody can stop them then."
This week, the Online News Association announced the finalists for its Online Journalism Awards, honoring excellence in digital journalism. Among them were nine investigative reports, many of which used multimedia tools to get behind the story with powerful visuals, databases and original documents.
Investigative, Large Site
> Unequal Justice | DallasNews.com, The Dallas Morning News
Five-part series uses video, print and interactive features to probe why so many Dallas County murderers are on probation. Also nominated for the Knight Award for Public Service.
> Talking to the Taliban | TheGlobeandMail.com
Provides a portrait of Taliban foot soldiers in their own words, based on interviews conducted by a single researcher with a video camera and standardized questionnaire. All 42 transcribed, raw videos are included in the six-part series, along with graphics, maps and discussions with reporter Graeme Smith. Also nominated in the Multimedia Feature, Large Site category.
> Inside the CIA's Notorious "Black Sites" | Salon.com, Mark Benjamin
The "first in-depth, first-person account from inside the secret U.S. prisons," given by Mohamed Farag Ahmad Bashmilah, a Yemeni held for 19 months without being charged.
> Big Phat Liar | TheSmokingGun.com
Print story unravels how "a federal inmate duped the Los Angeles Times, fabricated FBI reports, and linked Sean 'Diddy' Combs to 1994 ambush of Tupac Shakur."
Investigative, Small Site
> Schools Promote Students Despite Widespread Failure | Azstarnet.com, Arizona Daily Star
Three-part series uses print and video storytelling to uncover social promotion of failing students in Tucson-area schools, then provides original documents and a database of local school performance to dig deeper.
> Blood and Money | EastValleyTribune.com, East Valley (Ariz.) Tribune
Traces the path of human smuggling from Mexico to Arizona using a three-part print series, videos in both Spanish and English, and interactive route maps.
> Coincidence or Cluster | NWHerald.com, The Northwest (Ill.) Herald
Six-part series on the McCullom Lake brain cancer lawsuits and the stories behind them, told through videos, interactive maps and original documents gathered over a six-month investigation.
> The Permanent Republican Majority | RawStory.com, The Raw Story
Five-part investigation into the "architects and the execution of backroom Republican politics," starting with the jailing of Don Siegelman, former Democratic governor of Alabama.
> 'I Didn't Do That Murder': Lebrew Jones and the death of Micki Hall | RecordOnline.com, The Times Herald Record (Middletown, N.Y.)
Uses videos, graphics and original case files to investigate the 20-year-old murder case of a New York City prostitute, and the man who says he was wrongly convicted.
The winners will be announced at the 2008 ONA Conference Awards Banquet on Sept. 13 at the Capital Hilton in Washington, D.C.
A type of "safe" pesticide found in household products—from lice shampoo to Raid bug spray—is responsible for a surge in injuries and deaths over the past decade, according to Environmental Protection Agency data acquired by the Center for Public Integrity. In a new report, "Perils of the New Pesticides," CPI reveals that "the number of reported human health problems, including severe reactions, attributed to pyrethrins and pyrethroids increased by about 300 percent over the past decade ... [the chemicals] accounted for more than 26 percent of all fatal, 'major,' and 'moderate' human incidents in the United States in 2007, up from 15 percent in 1998."
Pyrethrins, extracted from the chrysanthemum plant, and their synthetic relatives, pyrethroids, have exploded in popularity over the last decade. They are now used in thousands of consumer products from Hartz Dog Flea & Tick Killer to Raid Ant and Roach Killer. These chemicals are found in bug-repellant clothing, flea collars, automatic misting devices, lawn-care products, and carpet sprays. Manufacturers developed them as safer alternatives to a class of compounds, derived from Nazi nerve gases, called organophosphates, found in products such as Dursban. The chemicals were widely used in American homes as recently as the late 1990s but are no longer approved by the Environmental Protection Agency for indoor use.
The EPA released its pesticide incident-reporting database in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from CPI earlier this year. The database was called one of the “Ten Most Wanted Government Documents” by the Center for Democracy and Technology.
>> Read "Perils of the New Pesticides" by the Center for Public Integrity.