20_ Canadian Journalists for Free Expression

http://www.cjfe.org/eng/about/about.html

Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE) is a Canadian non-governmental organisation. It is supported by Canadian journalists and advocates of free expression. The organization’s aim to defend journalists’ rights and to participate to the improvement of press freedom around the world.  In addition, the organization acknowledges that these rights are not confined to journalists only. It strongly defends and supports the broader objective of freedom of expression in Canada and worldwide.

The organization operates the “Journalists in Distress Fund”. It is for the benefit of journalists, reporters working to defend human rights, justice, freedom of expression and democracy. This fund mainly exists to promote freedom of expression and the practice of journalism, as well as to give humanitarian assistance to journalists whose lives are in danger.

At a first look, in my opinion, the organization’s website is quit repulsive.  It fails in the criteria of nice looking website.  The content is good, but its display is not nice looking because of the colors that had been used, the fonts, the fonts size and style, and the fact that all the content is sort of stuck on the left side of the screen. It looks unfinished to me.

19_ International Media Support

http://www.i-m-s.dk/content/media-conflict

Based in Denmark, International Media Support (IMS) is an international non-governmental organisation.

Its mission is to promote stability, dialogue, peace, democracy, freedom of expression and pluralism of the press in places affected by conflicts, political transitions…etc.

The IMS work is done in a cooperative and collaborative way, to encourage coordination with existing local and international initiative to the maximum.

As for its website, the IMS played the interactivity card. Short movies can be watch, and while doing so viewers have access to control buttons for example.  Flash must have been used for this. The fact of adding its own movies is a great way to attract viewers. Indeed, people always want more interactivity, they do not want to be bored. They want to access information easily and interestingly. Therefore associating images and sound gives energy to the site. People are more likely to come back to it again.

18_ International PEN

http://www.internationalpen.org.uk/go/freedom-of-expression

International PEN is a worldwide association of writers, created in 1921.  It is the world’s oldest human rights organization and international literacy group. It was founded in order to promote friendship and intellectual cooperation between writers from all over the world.

Even though PEN originally stood for “Poets, Essayists and Novelists”, it now includes writers from any literature background such as historians and journalists.

Its goals has now evolved and include emphasise on the role of the role of literature in the development of mutual understanding and world culture as well as the fight for freedom of expression. It also acts as a voice on behalf of harassed, imprisoned and killed writers.

17_ The National Coalition Against Censorship

http://www.ncac.org/what-we-do

The National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) was created in 1974. It is made of nearly 50 national non-profit organisations. These 50 organisations are groups representing literacy, artistic, civil, religious liberties…etc.

They all share the belief that freedom of thoughts, inquiry and expression has to be defended. Therefore, they work to the education of their members and public about the dangers of censorship and how to fights them.

The website displays reports of censorship events, investigations and debates on issues related to freedom of expression, as well as a database of legal cases in arts and archives of NCAS’s quarterly newsletters.

The website designed was made using Javascript, and html codes (by looking at the sources). The designers used tables to display the content. The site is “refreshing”, probably due to its interactivity. For example, there is a map displaying information boxes when the mouse cursor hovers a hot spot like on the menu bar,  so that the viewer does not have to go to another page to once again select what he wants to look for. This is a great tool. Indeed people spend on average 30 to 40 seconds on a page. If the content is not accessible, or too complicate to access, it is very likely that they will navigate to another site.

16_ The Media Legal Defence Initiative

http://www.mediadefence.org/about.html

The Media Legal Defence Initiative (MLDI) is a non-governmental organization.

It was created in 2008 and is registered as a charity in the United Kingdom. The organisation is London based. It works on cases and projects with a global network of media lawyers and media freedom activists.

It aims to support training in media law. In addition, promotes the exchange of information, litigation tools and strategies for lawyers working on media freedom cases.

The organisation’s official website is designed on a very simple templates. Few colours, very little use of images…however it looks really professional. It has a strict, serious and sober look, which coincides very well with the matter of the information presented.  When people, for example, access the site in order to get help from the organisation, it surely gives them a feeling of security and reliability, which is what they are looking for.  The designers of this site certainly did a great job by creating such “atmosphere”.

15_ The Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility

http://www.cmfr-phil.org/flagship-programs/media-monitoring-and-review/

The Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility (CMFR) is a private, non-stock, non-profit foundation.

Its main objectives are to protect and strengthen the press as a pillar of democracy (the Fourth Estate), to promote journalistic excellence, and to engage different sectors of society in the growth of a quality press in the Philippines.

What the CMFR does is that it monitors attacks and threats against the press in the Philippines. In addition, it keeps a database of all the journalists that had been killed during their lines of duty.

However, even if its intentions are great, its website fails to appeal to the viewers for couple reasons.

First of all, all the fonts used are very small and difficult to read. Secondly, the readers have to scroll down for a while to read something. Thirdly, the pages are overcrowded with texts. By viewing the sources we can see that the designers of this site have used some Javascript here and there. It works well, however it is really not entertaining, maybe because of the colours used. In my opinion, even if the viewer is interested in the topic, he will get bored very quickly and look for anther website instead.

14_ International Press Institute

http://www.freemedia.at/our-activities/

International Press Institute (IPI) is a global organisation, which aims to promote and protect press freedom and the improvement of press practices. It was created 59 years ago. Its members are mainly editors and media executives working for some of the most respected media outlets over 120 different countries.

IPI plays a role of consultative with the UN, UNESCO and the Council of Europe. It role is to monitor press freedom worldwide and to respond to threats and attacks against journalist and media outlets.

In addition, the organisation has an affiliate named the South East Europe Media Organisation (SEEMO). The SEEMO monitors media freedom in the southeast Europe and facilitates journalism exchanges and workshops.

Its website differs in some ways from the ones I looked at before. It uses a background image rather than a plain colour, with variation of colours going from light blue to dark blue. Some links are illustrated by images rather than by words (at the bottom of the main page), so the viewer has to go to the image to actually realise it is a link. This is a bit confusing. Other than that, it has a link to its own blog, which is good as people tend to be more and more interested in reading blogs. In addition, it has a Twitter link, very popular these days (a good way to get more people to visit the site).

13_ World Press Freedom Committee

http://www.wpfc.org/index.php?q=node/11

For more than 30 years, the World Press Freedom Committee (WPFC) provides leadership in the fight against licensing journalists, mandatory codes of conduct and many other news controls.

It was first created to wage an eventually successful global struggle in and around intergovernmental organizations to beat back authoritarian proposals for a restrictive “new world information and communication order”. Since then it has also conduct major international conferences to combat controls on news content in the media and to expose press censorship by repressive regimes like China for example. It also has presented a groundbreaking exposition of the case that press freedom is a motor for economic development.

As for the website by itself, it is really interactive. Indeed for example,  a sound is made when clicking on the options present in the menu bar.  It must have been done by using Flash. In addition, down the menu bar, the viewers can see a large image of two men with lockers on their mouths facing the world. This picture is very powerful, and it was really well thought as well as strategic to put it at this emplacement. We really get the tone of the website just on a first look.

12_ International Freedom of Expression Exchange

http://www.ifex.org/russia/2009/12/02/broadcast_killed/vhttp://www.ifex.org/russia/2009/12/02/broadcast_killed/

The International Freedom of Expression Exchange (IFEX) was founded in 1992. It is a global network of 81 non-governmental organisations. Its aims are to promote and defend the right of freedom of expression.

Through the Internet, IFEX exchanges information and mobilises actions on many issues like press freedom, media concentration and attacks on journalists, human rights defenders or freedom of information legislation.

Its website is multilingual. Indeed it is available in French, Spanish, English, Russian and Arabic.  It contains the largest searchable online archive of information on free expression violation.

The article displayed on this page (available in French, English and Spanish) for example is on a Russian journalist who allegedly committed suicide according to the Russian authorities, when obviously she was murdered. It illustrates very well what the whole website is about and how it reaches its goals.  The page is not overcrowded with distracting images. The colours used emphasise on the serious tone to the site (red, black and white). The site is easy to access; the important links are in bold fonts so that people can distinguish them.

11_ The New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/

The New York Times is an American daily newspaper published in New York City and is the largest metropolitan newspaper in the United States.

The online Times’ version has been ranked one of the top Web sites due to its dominant presence on the web since 1996.

Viewers have access to most of the articles. However, sometimes access requires registration, though this can be bypassed in some cases through Times RSS feed.

The reason this website is successful is because it has a clear picture of how it is pitching at. The design is subtle, endeavoring to communicate clearly, and drawing the attention where appropriate. The navigation is made easy; it takes only few clicks to find the information wanted.  Its homepage is the source of the information. The site structure is visible on every page.  Because all pages share the same predictable design structure, the viewer is not lost, he or she understand how each piece of information on the site are related to the rest of the site.