Libros / Outstanding Books

CIMA/NED, 2017
Pages: 164
ISBN 978-0-9818254-3-4

In this new book, an outstanding group of scholars from around the world explore the rising global trend of threats to media autonomy. Curated by the Center for International Media Assistance (CIMA), the book explores international political and commercial media actors, as well as “prominent leaders of organized crime,” who have seized control of traditional media outlets and oftentimes aligned them with their corporate interests.

This collection of essays looks at the state of the mass media around the world with an emphasis on "media capture", which refers to vested interests, and not just the government, using the media for purposes other than their main function of providing information that can lead to action by other agents in society.

In many countries around the world today, political transitions and the rise of digital technology have changed the way governments influence the media. With some exceptions, pre-publication censorship and pre-approval of news and information is mostly a thing of the past. Political transitions in many countries have changed mechanisms of control.

As CIMA’s book notes, state-sponsored censorship and restrictions on open internet access denies citizens’ their right to alternative sources of information as well. To combat these complex challenges, Mark Nelson, Senior Director of CIMA, calls for an increase in donor funding for independent media, further regulation supporting freedom of expression, and effective governance of the global information technologies that play a crucial role in the dissemination of news online. Click here to read the full book online for free. 

by Jianglin Li (Author), Susan Wilf (Translator)
Hardcover – October 10, 2016
464 pages
30 halftones, 7 maps
ISBN 9780674088894

Chinese scholar Jianglin Li follows in this book, newly translated from the original Chinese, a diverse group of Tibetans through the historic events of the 1959 Tibetan Uprising. She carefully compares Tibetan and Chinese eyewitness accounts of the unfolding crisis, and shows how they contradict official Communist Party naratives.

The Chinese Communist government has twice invoked large-scale military might to crush popular uprisings in capital cities. The second incident―the notorious massacre in Tiananmen Square in 1989―is well known. The first, thirty years earlier in Tibet, remains little understood today. Yet in wages of destruction, bloodshed, and trampling of human rights, the tragic toll of March 1959 surpassed Tiananmen.

Tibet in Agony provides the first clear historical account of the Chinese crackdown in Lhasa. Sifting facts from the distortions of propaganda and partisan politics, Jianglin Li reconstructs a chronology of events that lays to rest lingering questions about what happened in those fate-filled days and why. Her story begins with throngs of Tibetan demonstrators who―fearful that Chinese authorities were planning to abduct the Dalai Lama, their beloved leader―formed a protective ring around his palace. On the night of March 17, he fled in disguise, only to reemerge in India weeks later to set up a government in exile. But no peaceful resolution awaited Tibet. The Chinese army soon began shelling Lhasa, inflicting thousands of casualties and ravaging heritage sites in the bombardment and the infantry onslaught that followed. Unable to resist this show of force, the Tibetans capitulated, putting Mao Zedong in a position to fulfill his long-cherished dream of bringing Tibet under the Communist yoke.

Li’s extensive investigation, including eyewitness interviews and examination of classified government records, tells a gripping story of a crisis whose aftershocks continue to rattle the region today.