Burton Benjamin Memorial Award recipient Christiane Amanpour with IPFA honorees Malini Subramaniam, Óscar Martínez, and Can Dündar at the International Press Freedom Awards. Nov. 22, 2016, New York. Credit: CPJ/Barbara Nitke.

By Tharanga Yakupitiyage
NEW YORK, Nov 30 2016 (IPS)

Journalism has become one of the world’s most dangerous professions, making the courageous achievements of this year’s four International Press Freedom Award winners particularly meaningful.

The four winners from El Salvador, India, Turkey and Egypt were honoured for their courageous achievements by the Committee to Protect Journalists at the 26^th International Press Freedom Awards on November 21.

“These awardees are truly remarkable journalists, all of whom have carried out their work with the knowledge that doing so puts them in real danger,” said CPJ’s Board Chairman Sandra Mims Rowe.

“It is heartening to see such resolve, and to know that even under the most threatening conditions, journalists will always find a way to do their job,” she continued.

Since 1992, CPJ found that 1220 journalists have been killed, the majority of whom were murdered with complete impunity. In 2015 alone, nearly 200 journalists were also imprisoned worldwide.

Can Dündar, one of the awardees and chief editor of Turkish daily newspaper Cumhuriyet, was arrested in November 2015 and sentenced to 6 years in prison after publishing a report claiming Turkey’s intelligence service’s plans to send weapons to Syrian rebel groups.

Dündar, who was arrested on charges of disclosing state secrets, espionage and aiding a terrorist group, told IPS of the importance of press freedom.

“It is our right to write, and the people’s right to know. We are not only defending a profession, but we are defending the people’s right to be informed,” he said.

“This award is a kind of message from the world to us that they are aware of our struggle,” Dündar continued.

According to Reporters Without Borders (RSF)’s Press Freedom Index, Turkey is ranked 151^st out of 180 countries. Since the election of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in 2014, more than 1800 cases were opened against journalists and cartoonists for insulting the leader.

The country’s media crackdown has only deepened since the coup attempt in July as the Turkish government has allegedly used its state of emergency and anti-terror laws to shut down over 100 news agencies and imprison approximately 120 journalists.

Óscar Martínez, another awardee and investigative reporter from El Salvador, also highlighted the important role of media to IPS, stating: “Only in countries where the press can exercise its right to freely inform is it possible to illuminate those dark corners [of societies] that would otherwise stay in the dark.”

One such dark corner is the ongoing violence in El Salvador. The Central American nation is now the world’s most violent country that is not at war, with over 6,500 murders in 2015 alone. After reporting on extrajudicial killings by police, Martínez received death threats and was forced to temporarily flee the country.

Though CPJ’s award can help the press freedom cause, Martínez added that governments must ensure and provide real protection for journalists.

Malini Subramaniam similarly reports on abuses by police and security forces and extrajudicial killings, but in India’s “Red Corridor” where a five-decade long conflict between Maoists and the government has persisted.

Working in the Indian State of Chhattisgarh, first as a development worker then as a journalist, Subramaniam told IPS that she saw indigenous residents, known as adivasis, caught in the crossfire without essential services or a voice.

“These stories were not coming out…I realised that these stories need to be told,” Subramaniam told IPS, adding that the dangers of telling the story did not matter to her.

Due to her critical reports on human rights abuses, Subramaniam has had to cope with numerous instances of police interrogation and harassment, eventually forcing Subramaniam to leave the Bastar district of Chhattisgarh.

However, Subramaniam noted that she is just one of the journalists that faced such perils there. According to CPJ, at least four journalists are imprisoned in the Central Indian state, and other journalists including a BBC correspondent have been forced to flee the area for fear of reprisal.

“It’s not just about an individual, it is about the larger field,” Subramaniam told IPS.

“This award will sort of amplify the situation that is there in Bastar as far as reporting is concerned, what’s happening to the journalists that are there and as a message to the government of India to wake up,” she continued.

CPJ also honoured Mahmoud Abou Zeid, an Egyptian photojournalist who has been in prison since August 2013.

Zeid, who is also known as Shawkan, was arrested while covering clashes between Egyptian security forces and supporters of ousted President Mohamed Morsi. Among the charges he faces is weapons possession, illegal assembly and murder.

Egypt is the second largest jailer of journalists in the world, only second to China, CPJ found.

Attending the awards ceremony on behalf of Shawkan was his childhood friend Ahmed Abu Seif.

“I still sometimes want to wake up and for somebody to tell me that it is just a dream,” Seif told IPS, adding that it hurts him that Shawkan is not there himself to receive CPJ’s award.

“This award means a lot for recognising a journalist behind bars. It’s also a sign to tell the Egyptian government that…even if you don’t recognise him as a journalist, we do,” he continued.

The fight for press freedom is not limited to countries like Egypt and Turkey, but also continues to remain an issue in the United States.

Receiving the Burton Benjamin Memorial award was Christiane Amanpour who pointed to the perils American journalists face and may continue to face after President-elect Trump assumes office.

“I never in a million years thought I would be up here on stage appealing for the freedom and safety of American journalists at home,” she told attendees, pointing to a tweet by President-elect Trump that said “professional protesters” were “incited by the media.”

She particularly noted the issues U.S. media faced while reporting the presidential campaigns in balancing neutrality and truth, but said that this cannot continue.

“I learned long ago, covering the ethnic cleansing and genocide in Bosnia, never to equate victim with aggressor, never to create a false moral or factual equivalence, because then you are an accomplice to the most unspeakable crimes and consequences. I believe in being truthful, not neutral and I believe we must stop banalising the truth,” she said.

She added that the media can either contribute to a more functional system or to deepen the political dysfunction.

“This above all is an appeal to protect journalism itself…we have to stand up together–for divided we will all fall,” she concluded.

The Hasht-e Sobh newspaper is now offering cheap SMS news-alerts to over 15,000 subscribers across Afghanistan. Credit: Shelly Kittleson/IPS

By Shelly Kittleson
KABUL, May 31 2013 (IPS)

As Afghanistan prepares for the 2014 withdrawal of foreign forces that have occupied this country for over a decade, investors are already beginning to bid a hasty retreat amid rumours that “chaos” and civil war will replace NATO’s boots on the ground late next year.

Among those most fearful of this approaching financial drought are journalists and media organisations who have long relied on international support to stay afloat.

Najiba Ayubi, director of the independent Afghan media group known as The Killid Group (TKG), described the last 10 years as the “golden decade for Afghan media”, which saw the establishment of 175 FM radio stations, 75 television stations and hundreds of print publications that have taken up the cudgels on everything from rural girls’ right to education to the public’s right to information.

The radio stations in particular have been very effective in developing a strong civil society and there is “a serious danger of losing all that if funding dries up,” Ayubi told IPS.

But fear breeds innovation, and as the drawdown approaches, media practitioners are finding creative solutions to the post-NATO quandary, including the creation of a new journalists’ federation, efforts to build a culture of investigative journalism and the drafting of a “code of conduct” for the press.

Media practitioners close ranks

One of the first responses to the threat of a funding shortage has been a heightened sense of solidarity in times of distress.

When the independent daily Hasht-e Sobh decided to take the Afghan ministry of mines to task in a special edition in late March for “irregular tender procedures” and the squandering of resources on so-called advisors who were paid as much as 107,000 dollars per month, the paper’s editor-in-chief Parwiz Kawa was promptly summoned to the attorney general’s office.

This raised fears that he might be fated to a similar end as the many Afghan journalists who have been killed on the job in the last decade, including two in the past few weeks.

But local media organisations just as promptly issued statements denouncing the violation of the right to free speech. Hasht-e Sobh, winner of Reporters Without Borders (RSF)’s 2012 Press Freedom Award, says the matter is currently on hold.

This spontaneous reaction came partly in response to the paper’s daily struggle for survival: while in 2011 it was able to employ some 125 staff across the country, its bureau has since dwindled to 70, axing crucial correspondents in the eastern city of Jalalabad and the southern Kandahar province.

“We had to let them go when donors cut the funding,” Kawa told IPS, adding that 50 percent of Hasht-e Sobh’s budget comes from international donors, with less than 30 percent coming in from advertising, sales and subscriptions.

The group is now scrambling to secure loans from supporters and began offering a low-cost SMS news alert service through an agreement with telecommunications provider Etisalat two months ago.

The service has already attracted 15,000 subscribers and hopes to eventually reach at least 100,000 of Afghanistan’s estimated 30 million inhabitants, according to Kawa.

Ayubi is similarly concerned about the future of TKG, which achieved full self-sufficiency in 2005 but took a hit after the announcement of the 2014 military pullout. With advertisers’ pockets growing shallower, Killid has once again resorted to seeking grants in order to maintain its operations.

According to Ayubi, it is particularly important for media organisations to remain functional in the lead up to the April 2014 presidential elections so that the population can make informed decisions.

Nader Nadery, former human rights commissioner of Afghanistan and current executive chairman of the Free and Fair Elections Foundation, highlighted the crucial role the media plays in nurturing a vital society, pointing out that news sources have become much more critical of the government’s failure to deliver on its promises.

This initially caused the government to dig in its heels and adamantly refuse to release even the most innocuous information on the grounds that it is classified and that releasing it would pose a “national security risk.”

But after extensive lobbying by media and civil society groups, the government published a draft Access to Information law earlier this year.

Though the Centre for Law and Democracy has criticised the draft on a number of points – such as the restricting of access to “information that serves a right or brings ease to performing of the relevant duties’’ – Nadery believes the government’s overture to civil society represents an “important step forward” for press freedom and the right to information.

With these newly won rights come responsibilities, Afghan National Journalists’ Union (ANJU) Chief Fahim Dashti noted, drawing attention to the recent collaboration between more than 30 media organisations over a seven-month period that resulted in a draft Code of Practice, designed to ensure media quality.

The code calls for journalists to pay greater attention to the psychological and social impact of news reports, especially those covering delicate issues like child abuse and rape, and aims to “sensitise” the public by, for example, refraining from using the word “criminal” for those not yet convicted of crimes. Dashti believes this will also strengthen the public’s trust in media outlets.

Though his own widely respected publication ‘Kabul Weekly’ folded in 2011 due to financial difficulties, Dashti is hopeful about the overall future of journalism.

Meanwhile, the newly established Afghan Journalists’ Safety Committee has embarked on efforts to alleviate some of the risks journalists incur in their work, offering first aid training, medical treatment, and legal advice. A 24-hour hotline offers a lifeline to distressed journalists by connecting media practitioners with a vast network of civil society activists, as well as local and international media.

In a country where the literacy rate is estimated to be hovering close to 28 percent, though, print publications will find it the hardest to survive.