As the toll from Cyclone Nargis looks to reach up to 100,000, the situation for the media in a country that already lacked press freedom is also getting no relief. Official news reports cite the death toll at around 22,000, but since all the junta in Myanmar is allowing are the official reports it's hard to tell what the real devastation is. From Reporters Without Borders:

"Burmese TV stations are broadcasting footage of the damage and of the military helping victims. In reality, many Burmese are complaining that they are not getting any help. Journalists working for the Burmese media in exile say they have information that indicates that the regime is underestimating the toll from the cyclone and is trying to show that it is coping with the situation.

'Near Rangoon, a witness told me that soldiers arrived with a state TV crew to film the distribution of clothes to cyclone victims but, in practice, they gave out almost nothing,' a Burmese journalist based in Thailand said.

There is no information about the cyclone on Myanmar.com, a government website, or on the website of the Myanmar Times, a privately-owned weekly.

...Reporters Without Borders and the Burma Media Association also call on the government to explain the circumstances in which the security forces opened fire on inmates in Insein prison during the cyclone. Organisations based in Thailand say more than 30 prisoners were killed. There has been no word of the prisoners of conscience held in Insein such as journalist U Win Tin."

The junta is being urged to grant visas to foreign journalists; BBC journalist Andrew Harding was deported shortly after his arrival from Bangkok on Monday. Reported the official newspaper, New Light of Myanmar:

"A journalist who is working for BBC was deported as he broke visa rules and regulations. ...Journalists from news agencies in Western countries illegally entered the country very often and made fabricated news with the help of anti-government groups."

Translation: Heaven forbid journalists and see the real story of the government not coming to the aid of cyclone victims!

CNN's Dan Rivers made it into the devastated town of Bogalay. Watch his reports here.

A newsie apparently doesn't need to be Clark Kent to be a superhero. Take the case of 9-year-old Ethan Hall, a paperboy who noticed mail piling up on a 92-year-old woman's porch while out on his route Saturday in Sycamore, Ill. From ABC:

"Ethan suspected something was wrong and told his mother, who then called police. The boy's instincts were correct. Three days earlier, the resident of the house had fallen and broken her hip, and she lay stuck and helpless on the floor.

'Other than some clues on the outside of the building, there's nothing that would tell you that somebody was in trouble,' said Sycamore police Officer Mike.

Because of Ethan's keen eye and quick thinking, police found the woman and got her life-saving help.

'They said that if I hadn't found her, or did anything, in a few more hours she would be dead,' Ethan said.

Now the woman is recovering and Ethan has vowed to mow her lawn and collect her mail while she heals."

Evelyn Kikkebush was treated for dehydration, and will probably be renewing her subscription as well.

MyFoxChicago has the video here.

Reporters Without Borders keeps a list of the world's greatest press-freedom offenders, and renovated the listing just in time for this past Saturday's World Press Freedom Day.

Off the list are the now-retired Fidel Castro (his brother Raul is on the list), Pervez Musharraf (now countered by an opposition parliament), Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi (who released imprisoned journalists), Swaziland’s King Mswati III (who's been a good boy), Young Patriots leader Charles Blé Goudé in Côte d’Ivoire (who's stopped calling for journalists' hides).

On the list are:

• Hamas and Fatah armed forces in the Palestinian territories

• Israeli Defense Forces

• Gurbangouly Berdymukhammedov, Turkmenistan president

• Al-Shabaab (Somalia)

• Mogadishu governor and mayor Mohamed Dhere (Somalia)

• Mohamed Warsame Darwish (Somali security director)

• Gotabhaya Rajapakse, secretary of state for defense in Sri Lanka

• Velupillai Prabhakaran, leader of the Tamil Tigers

• Armed groups in Nepal

(Photo of Fatah gunman by Abid Katib/Getty Images)

Who would have pegged Fiji as the latest black hole for press freedom? Evan Hannah, the Australian publisher of the Fiji Times (owned by Rupert Murdoch), was expelled from the country under military escort today (oops -- "escorted from home with courtesy," according to the Fiji government) despite a court order that he be allowed to appeal his deportation. It's part of a trend, too, coming two months after the expulsion of Fiji Sun publisher Russell Hunter.

Today, the Fiji Sun spoke out in an editorial:

"Yesterday was a sad day for Fiji. On the eve of World Press Freedom Day, the interim Prime Minister, Commodore Voreqe Bainimarama announced that his government supported media freedom with the usual qualification that it must be 'responsible' though he was silent on who the media should be responsible to. ...Again we see a regime that considers itself above the law. The best the solicitor-general could do in the High Court yesterday was offer to discover whether the High Court order preventing Mr Hannah’s removal had been served on the people responsible for it.

What nonsense. The whole of Fiji was aware of the existence of the order and, served or not, the solicitor-general and his boss the attorney-general as officers of the court, are morally if not legally obliged to ensure that its orders were carried out. They did nothing of the kind - in fact they did just the opposite.

There are photographs and film of Mr Hannah’s legal advisers serving the order on immigration officials. Air Pacific to its great credit acknowledged the existence of the order and declined to take Mr Hannah to Sydney. Not so the military. A middle ranking soldier, no doubt on orders from higher up, put Mr Hannah on a flight to Korea instead. The officer and his superior should be - but won’t be - brought to account. They are to all intents and purposes beyond the law.

This is today’s Fiji - a land in which a person can lie to parliament, conceal funds overseas, seek to avoid paying tax on them and yet occupy one of the highest of public offices. But woe betide the publishers whose editors and journalists truthfully and fearlessly report such wrongdoings.

For Cdre Bainimarama to pronounce media freedom as guaranteed in the constitution on a day such as yesterday is to say the least unfortunate.

These are dark days for Fiji and we greatly fear that they will soon grow darker still."

How much longer will that editorial writer remain on the island?

Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith called the deportation "a reprehensible attack by the illegal Fiji interim government on human rights and freedom of speech." Reporters Without Borders added, "The government must stop its schizophrenic behaviour, consisting of recognising that press freedom is a constitutional right, on the one hand, while continuing to harass journalists, on the other."

And the headline at the Fiji Times today? "We won't shut up."

The denial of service attack happened in Belarus -- not exactly a beacon of the free press or free speech to begin with -- but also knocked out other websites run by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. More from RFE/RL:

"The attack, which started on April 26, intially targeted the website of RFE/RL's Belarus Service, but quickly spread to other sites. Within hours, eight RFE/RL websites (Belarus, Kosovo, Azerbaijan, Tatar-Bashkir, Radio Farda, South Slavic, Russian, and Tajik) were knocked out or otherwise affected.

The 'denial-of-service' (DOS) attack was intended to make the targeted website unavailable to its users, according to RFE/RL's Director of Technology Luke Springer. ... RFE/RL has taken countermeasures and restored full service to most of its Internet sites. The primary target, the Belarus Service, is still affected.

...RFE/RL Belarus Service Director Alyaksandr Lukashuk said he began getting e-mails from frustrated web visitors about two hours after the attack began on April 26. He noted that the problems began on an important date in Belarus -- the 22nd anniversary of the Chornobyl nuclear catastrophe.

Lukashuk said that a large Internet audience was relying on RFE/RL's Belarus Service to report live on a rally of thousands of people, organized by the Belarusian opposition. The demonstrators were protesting the plight of uncompensated Chornobyl victims and a government decision to build a new nuclear power station.

Other Belarusian websites were also hit, including the Minsk-based nongovernmental organization Charter 97. Since the attacks, many other independent websites in Belarus have carried content from RFE/RL's Belarus Service.

RFE/RL President Jeffrey Gedmin said he is deeply concerned by the attacks. 'If free and independent media existed in these countries where we're working and broadcasting, we would have no reason to exist,' Gedmin said. 'The Belarusians, the Iranians -- they all have basically the same objective. They see free information -- flowing information of ideas and so forth -- as the oxygen of civil society. They'll do anything they can to cut it off. If it means jamming, if it means cyberattacks, that's what they'll do.'"

The annual White House correspondents' dinner rolled around Saturday night, and everyone was anxious about what President Bush would say -- especially since the evening was his swan song. (And since every news outlet's story seems to pretty much have the same few jokes, I'm assuming that those were the only funny bits of the evening.) Here, from The Independent:

"As the Democrat candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama continued to slug it out on the campaign trail, Mr Bush teased them over their most recent gaffes and scandals. 'Hillary Clinton couldn't get in because of sniper fire and Senator Obama's at church,' he said, referring to Mrs Clinton's claim to have arrived in Bosnia under fire and Mr Obama's difficulties over the anti-American views of his pastor, the Rev Jeremiah Wright. As for the Republican candidate John McCain, a long-time rival, who was also not in attendance, Mr Bush said: 'He probably wanted to distance himself from me.'

...'Pamela Anderson and Mitt Romney in one room?' Mr Bush marvelled. 'Isn't that a sign of the apocalypse?'

...The jokes of Scottish-born Craig Ferguson, the host of CBS's The Late Late Show, were little more than a light tickling, but he admitted to being nervous since so many comics bomb at the event. 'That makes me just another foreigner taking jobs Americans don't want,' he said.

The presenter, who became a US citizen earlier this year, mocked George Bush's penchant for long breaks at his Texas ranch, and asked what he might do when he leaves the White House. 'You could look for a job with more vacation time,' he said.

And he joked that Vice-President Dick Cheney, was already preparing to move out of the White House. 'It takes longer than you think to pack up an entire dungeon.'"

In other correspondents' dinner news, Perez Hilton wore Diesel instead of a tux, taking me back to the last time I was in D.C. and wondered where all the people who wore color were hiding. Perez seemed to be impressed, though, by the free-flowing libations among the D.C. elite. (Goodness, why do you think they're so good at getting into scandals??)

(Photo by Kristoffer Tripplaar-Pool/Getty Images)

Ahh, the irony: Beijing hosts the 17th International World Wide Web Conference (wrapping up today) just a few kilometers from where its record number of cyberdissidents sit behind bars. To add to this, one of the conference sponsors is Yahoo, which infamously aided the People's Republic in locating and imprisoning journalist Shi Tao.

Reporters Without Borders condemned the "One World, One Web" meeting -- Beijing's Olympic motto is "One World, One Dream," which has also been used by Tibet protesters -- as a "provocation." The press-freedom organization, which has been pivotal in pre-Olympic protests, said:

“Among other things, the conference is about the importance of Internet users in society, how they are becoming more and more active in creating online virtual communities. But in China, voicing one’s views online is a crime if they do not accord with what the party thinks. Nothing in the programme suggests that online freedom of expression has been tackled. But a minimum of decency and respect for China’s imprisoned cyber-dissidents would have demanded this.”

Well said!!

(Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

As most journalists must at some point or another in their careers, I covered the schools beat for a short time. This mainly consisted of sitting through arduous school-board meetings, watching excruciating school talent shows to write an 8-inch story, or taking large group pictures of students of the month and attempting to get all the names right. Nothing like this:

"A (Baltimore) Examiner photographer, on assignment for a school-violence special report, told police a student assaulted her Thursday morning outside Reginald F. Lewis High School, the same school where art teacher Jolita Berry was viciously attacked by a student earlier this month.

Arianne Starnes, 24, said she was thrown to the ground after a student came out of a group of about 20 other students and accused her of taking his picture.

...The student allegedly grabbed Starnes’ cameras, tugging at the straps and threatening her. After a struggle, Starnes was pushed backward to the ground. She fell on her cameras and immediately stood up but was again confronted by the student, who this time pointed his finger at her head and pretended to shoot her, saying 'I told you not to take a f------ picture.'

Starnes, who repeatedly told the student she did not take his photo, said there were no teachers or school supervisors present, but several students had posed for pictures and had given their names prior to the incident.

'The whole thing was unsettling,' Starnes said. 'They were laughing and joking. No one was trying to stop it.'

After the attack, the student removed a blue bandana from his head and entered the school."

A sobering reminder that, as the journey of the Olympic torch has so ably served to raise consciousness about the plight of Tibet, there are journalists and writers in need of attention as the Beijing flame passes through Ho Chi Minh City on April 29. (This after a stop Pyongyang, a true predator of press freedom and any free expression.)

Father Nguyen Van Ly, editor of Free Expression magazine, remains behind bars -- unable, my sources have told me, to receive visitors. Journalist Truong Minh Duc recently received a five-year sentence. Journalist Nguyen Hoang Hai, who blogs under Dieu Cay, was arrested April 19 -- according to Reporters Without Borders, "He had participated in protests against Chinese policy in Ho Chi Minh City earlier this year and was being closely watched by police, who had threatened to let Chinese agents kill him."

Pham Hông Son, a writer and translator of pro-democracy articles who is currently under house arrest (and was once a cellmate of Father Ly), recently penned a commentary on the Beijing Olympics:

"...There is no doubt that a growing number of people around the world, including several world's powerful politicians and celebrities, are acting against the upcoming Beijing Olympics, from delicate gestures to overt calls for boycott. Many see the recent anti-human rights-conduct of Chinese Authorities as a main cause for the heat in the current protest but a root-cause seems further beyond.

First it needs to be made clear that no one opposes the noble-spirited games of the Olympics. Most people also can agree that the pride and great benefits in hosting Olympics should be shared among people around the world. So it might be welcome when such a big country as China is to host the Olympic Games. But history tells us a case in which a rogue regime took advantage of Olympics to advance a sinister hidden ambition. The 1936 Olympics in Berlin under Hitler's regime was the case. And now consider China's case."

Here's the press release from Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., who acquired Dow Jones after a long and stormy courtship last year:

"Marcus Brauchli, Managing Editor of The Wall Street Journal and Les Hinton, CEO of Dow Jones & Company jointly announced today that Mr. Brauchli is stepping down from his position as Managing Editor of The Wall Street Journal and will become a consultant to News Corporation. The announcement was made after a meeting between the members of the Special Committee designed to protect the editorial integrity of the newspaper, Mr. Brauchli and representatives from Dow Jones and News Corporation.

In his new role, Mr. Brauchli will provide guidance to senior management in a wide range of areas, from advising The Wall Street Journal to exploring the possibility of a business news channel for STAR-TV in Asia. Dow Jones will begin a search for Mr. Brauchli’s replacement immediately."

Brauchli had been on the job for less than a year and a half. The longtime WSJ employee had been seen by many as a buffer between staffers who feared editorial meddling from a Murdoch buyout, and the man himself. WSJ publisher Robert Thomson, who was brought over from Murdoch's Times of London, is considered a favorite for the managing editor post, as well as Money & Investing Section Editor Nik Deogun.

Editor & Publisher has more from the WSJ union boss:

"Steve Yount, president of the Independent Association of Publishers' Employees, said word that Brauchli is planning to step down after less than a year in the top editing post has drawn concern among members who believed he helped keep some newsroom independence under the new News Corp. ownership.

Yount said he had no word on who might be a replacement or how much of a change will occur under a new newsroom leader. 'Anytime you see this kind of change, you will see questions about it,' he said. 'Our bottom line has always been the quality of the Journal and defending our membership.'

He said Brauchli's departure after such a short stint is a concern. 'It is terrible to see him leave after such a short period of time,' Yount declared. 'It is difficult to know how that fight was going. We don't know how many of the changes were his idea, or how many he opposed and how much he fought against them. I would imagine that there is a small handful of people who would know what the truth is.'"