Iranian Journalist/Blogger Sentenced to Prison
The Iranian government has waded into our debate about bloggers and journalists.
According to the BBC (here):
An Iranian weblogger has been jailed for 14 years on charges of spying and aiding foreign counter-revolutionaries.
Arash Sigarchi was arrested last month after using his blog to criticise the arrest of other online journalists.
Mr Sigarchi, who also edits a newspaper in northern Iran, was sentenced by a revolutionary court in the Gilan area.
Also of interest in the article:
Iranian authorities have recently clamped down on the growing popularity of weblogs, restricting access to major blogging sites from within Iran.
While we were mainly debating whether or not bloggers were journalists, and Mr. Sigarchi was both a traditional print journalist and a blogger, it still resonates with me that he was jailed specifically for blogging about government arrests of journalists.
He was arrested, to be clear, for blogging.
I doubt this will create a great stir in any mainstream debate over the place of blogs here in this country. I do wonder though, if Reporters Without Borders is representing and monitoring Mr. Sigarchi's situation because he is a journalist or a blogger, or whether they wouldn't even make that distinction if asked.
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