Jamal Khashoggi's call to action - Wikimedia-l

18 Oct 2018

Up until recently, Saudi Arabian journalist Jamal Khashoggi worked for
the Washington Post. What happened to him? I couldn't say it better
than Wikipedia: [1]

(begin quote)

  On 2 October 2018, Khashoggi entered the Saudi Arabian consulate in
  Istanbul to obtain documents related to his marriage; he never left the
  building and was subsequently declared a missing person.
  Anonymous Turkish police sources have alleged that he was murdered
  and dismembered inside the consulate.

(end quote)

The Washington Post has now published Khashoggi's last column, titled
appropriately, "What the Arab world needs most is free expression".
[2] In it, he writes of the need for translation efforts and platforms
for free expression:

(begin quote)

  Arabs need to read in their own language so they can understand
  and discuss the various aspects and complications of democracy
  in the United States and the West. If an Egyptian reads an article
  exposing the actual cost of a construction project in Washington,
  then he or she would be able to better understand the implications
  of similar projects in his or her community.

  The Arab world needs a modern version of the old transnational
  media so citizens can be informed about global events. More
  important, we need to provide a platform for Arab voices. We
  suffer from poverty, mismanagement and poor education.
  Through the creation of an independent international forum,
  isolated from the influence of nationalist governments
  spreading hate through propaganda, ordinary people in the
  Arab world would be able to address the structural problems
  their societies face.

(end quote)

I'm wondering what folks in the Wikimedia community and movement make
of this call to action. Is there more that Wikimedia can do, for
example, to support translation of news articles into many languages?

There is nothing in Jamal's own op-ed that indicates that it would be
legally permissible to translate it. This is, unfortunately, the norm
for news; there are few outlets that use a Creative Commons license,
and those that do, typically tend to choose the most restrictive
variants.

Perhaps there would be value in an organized community effort that
would pick up news articles [3] that _are_ licensed under free
licenses, and translate them into as many languages as possible. If
launched under a prominent umbrella -- e.g., Wikimedia --, this might
then also help incentivize more outlets to selectively license content
openly, permitting translation. Beyond its intrinsic value, such an
effort would also help the Wikimedia projects by expanding the reach
of impacted citations into more languages.

Thoughts? Does Jamal's call to action resonate in other ways with
Wikimedia's mission?

Sincerely,

Erik

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamal_Khashoggi -- written by
multiple authors and distributed under Creative Commons Attribution
ShareAlike-License 3.0 Unported

[2]
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/jamal-khashoggi-wha…
-- quoted as fair use

[3] Likely restricted to some subset of outlets, e.g., sources most
Wikipedia editions would accept as citations