Protestors gathered in Bratislava on May 2, 2024 to protest against changes to the public broadcaster, RTVS. The placard in the picture reads: RTVS on a flat-screen TV; STVR about a flat earth. Credit: Ed Holt/IPS

By Ed Holt
BRATISLAVA, May 3 2024 (IPS)

A new report has warned media freedom in the EU is close to “breaking point” in many states amid rising authoritarianism across the continent.

In its latest annual report covering 2023, the Berlin-based Civil Liberties Union for Europe (Liberties) highlighted widespread threats, intimidation and violence against journalists and attacks on the independence of public broadcasters in the EU, with roll backs in media freedom down to “deliberate harm or neglect by national governments”.

The group says its research confirms a continuation of alarming trends seen in the previous year, including heavy media ownership concentration, insufficient ownership transparency rules, and threats to the independence and finances of public service media,

And it warns the decline in media freedom seen in a number of EU member states has the potential to pose a direct threat to democracy.

“Media freedom is falling across Europe, and what we see, not just in Europe but in many places around the world, is that where media freedom declines, the rule of law declines too,” Eva Simon, Senior Advocacy Officer at Liberties, told IPS.

The Slovak Radio building in Bratislava, part of the RTVS public broadcaster. Credit: Ed Holt/IPS

The Liberties report, compiled with 37 rights groups in 19 countries, comes as other media freedom watchdogs and rights groups warn of growing  concentration of media ownership, lack of ownership transparency, surveillance and violence against journalists in EU countries, government capture of public broadcasters, and rising restrictions on freedom of expression.

Press freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) released its annual World Press Freedom Index today (April 3, 2024), warning that politicians in some EU countries are trying to crack down on independent journalism. They single out a number of leaders as being “at the forefront of this dangerous trend,” including Hungary’s pro-Kremlin prime minister, Viktor Orban, and his counterpart in Slovakia, Robert Fico.

It also highlights concerns for press freedom in other places, such as Malta, Greece, and Italy, pointing out that in the latter—which fell in the Index’s rankings this year—a member of the ruling parliamentary coalition is trying to acquire the second biggest news agency (AGI), raising fears for future independence of media.

“One of the main themes of this year is that the institutions that should be protecting media freedom, for example, governments, have been undermining it,” Pavol Szalai, head of the EU/Balkans desk at RSF, told IPS.

Like Liberties, RSF has cited particular concern about media freedom in Hungary and Slovakia among EU states.

Media freedom has been on the decline in Hungary for more than a decade, as autocratic leader Orban has, critics say, steadily cracked down on independent journalism. His party, Fidesz, has de facto control of 80 percent of the country’s media, and while independent media outlets still exist, their sustainable funding is under threat as state advertising is funneled to pro-government outlets.

The government’s effective control of Hungary’s public broadcaster is another major concern.

“Capturing public broadcasters limits access to information and that can have a huge impact on formulating political opinions and then how people vote,” said Simon.

Hungary is also suspected of having arbitrarily monitored journalists using the controversial Pegasus software.

RSF and Liberties both say their worry is not just what is happening to media freedom in Hungary, but that what Orban has done has provided a blueprint for other autocratic leaders to follow.

“Leaders in Europe are being inspired by Orban in his war against independent media. Just look at Fico in Slovakia, who has declared war on independent media,” said Szalai.

For years, Fico has repeatedly attacked and denigrated independent media and journalists.

In 2018, investigative journalist Jan Kuciak—who had been looking into alleged corruption by people close to Fico’s government— and his fiancée Martina Kusnirova were murdered. Critics said Fico’s rhetoric against journalists had contributed to creating an atmosphere in society that allowed those behind the killings to believe they could act with impunity.

Independent journalists continue to face harassment and abuse from Smer MPs today.

Since being elected Prime Minister for the fourth time last autumn, Fico and the governing coalition led by his Smer party have continued their attacks. They also refuse to communicate with critical media, claiming they are biased.

It has also approved legislation—which is expected to be passed in parliament within weeks—that will see the country’s public broadcaster, RTVS, completely overhauled and, critics say, effectively under the control of the government.

“If the bill is passed and signed into law in its current form, RTVS will become a mouthpiece for government propaganda,” said Szalai.

The government has rejected criticism over the bill and argued changes to RTVS are necessary because it is no longer objective, is persistently critical of the government, and is not fulfilling its remit as a public broadcaster to provide balanced and objective information and a plurality of opinions. A senior official at the Slovak Culture Ministry who is among the favorites to take over as head of the public broadcaster in its new form has since suggested that people who support the flat-earth theory should be invited onto shows to air their opinions on the broadcaster.

The bill has led to public protests and threats of a mass strike from current RTVS employees.

However, against this grim backdrop, media watchdogs say new EU legislation provides hope for an improvement in media freedom.

The recently-passed European Media Freedom Act (EMFA), which takes full effect across the EU in August next year,  will, among others, ban governments from pursuing journalists to reveal their sources by deploying spyware, force media to disclose full ownership information, introduce transparency measures for state advertising, and checks on media concentration. It also provides a mechanism to prevent very big online platforms from arbitrarily restricting press freedom.

Another key measure in the legislation is that it enshrines the editorial independence of public service media, setting out that leaders and board members of public media organizations be selected through “transparent and non-discriminatory procedures for sufficiently long terms of office.”

“It is a good law that creates a very important base [for ensuring media freedom], which can be built on in the future. More safeguards [to media freedom] could be added to it in the future,” said Simon.

Szalai agreed, highlighting that the legislation was legally binding for member states. He admitted it had some shortcomings—for example, under some exceptions, journalists could be forced to reveal sources—but emphasized that it would take precedence over any national legislation, “and so governments cannot ignore it or try to get around it.”

But its implementation will be down to individual governments and authorities—something, that media freedom organizations have said must be closely watched.

A new EU body, the European Board for Media Services, is to be set up to oversee the implementation of the laws.

“It is important to make sure that the forces attacking media freedom are held back by this law. It will be up to the European Commission to hold governments to account on its implementation, and the Commission needs to consider press freedom as a priority after the European Parliament elections [in June] and to check on the EMFA’s implementation and take measures against any countries that violate it,” said Szalai.

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World Press Freedom Day 2024

A strange situation has emerged in Finland where some people feel that the press freedom is currently jeopardised. The small Nordic country is a press freedom celebrity leading the index kept by Reporters Without Borders since 2009 and hosting the UNESCO World Press Freedom Day on May 3.

The case is related to the so-called Panama Papers that were recently leaked by The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). The papers originate from the Panama based law company Mossack Fonseca and include information about over 210,000 companies that operate in fiscal paradises.

The Finnish Broadcasting Company (YLE) was involved in publishing the leak and fiscal authorities of Finland now insist that the company has to hand the material over to them. The dead line expired on Friday but YLE has refused.

The company is appealing the tax authorities’ decision and stating that it’s basic freedom is to protect the news sources. Besides YLE emphasised that it does not possess the material but a few journalists just have access to it.

What has most surprised both journalists and the public here is the fact that this happens in Finland while no other country whose media is involved in the Panama case has experienced same kind of threat from the authorities.

“We understand very well about why the tax office and politicians are interested in the documents leaked from Mossack Fonseca”, the responsible editors of YLE investigative group, Ville Vilén and Marit af Björkesten, said in their statement referring to the possible tax evasions and their social consequences.

They admit having partly shared purposes with the authorities but refuse to violate old principles that have been followed for decades in the European countries that respect press freedom.

“Despite their wideness the Panama papers are not a reason to endanger the protection of the news source and the possibilities of Finnish journalists to practice influential investigative journalism on a longer run,” they continue.

“Surprisingly we are not here to celebrate press freedom but instead to ponder an amazing situation”, the president on the Finnish Council of Mass Media, Elina Grundström, said Monday on YLE’s morning television.
The Council of Mass Media is an organ of the Finnish media’s self-regulation meant to supervise the ethics of the press from all stakeholders’ angle. Grundström gave her support to YLE’s decision not to give up the Panama papers to the tax authorities.
Susanna Reinboth, the law reporter of the biggest national daily, agreed while Pekka Mervola, editor-in-chief of the regional paper Keskisuomalainen, thinking that the material could be delivered with certain reservations that are meant to protect the sources.
The problem may be at least partly solved on May 9th when the ICIJ has promised to publish part of the Panama material.

Journalists in Zambia protest against attacks on the media. Credit: Kelvin Kachingwe/IPS

By Zubair Sayed
JOHANNESBURG, Apr 30 2016 (IPS)

Imagine a world without the media, where we have no verified information about what’s going on around us. Where everything is hearsay and gossip, where there are no trusted sources of information. It would be hard to operate in a world like that: to make decisions about what to do about the things that affect our lives.

Think for a minute too about what it would mean for those in power; they would be able to act as if we, the people, did not exist. It would be impossible to hold them to account, to know that they’re keeping the election promises they made in their wordy manifestos, and it would be impossible for our voices to be heard. Similarly, it would be difficult to know how companies are behaving, how they are treating their workers and the environment, and whether they are colluding to extract ever more from our pockets.

The role of the media in providing credible information, of giving voice to the people and holding those in power to account is fundamental to the realisation of our freedom and human rights. Whilst there are differences of opinion about whether the media are part of civil society, what is undisputed is the key role that they play in social and economic development, democracy, human rights and the pursuit of justice. Organisations and activists that work on social issues and help articulate public opinion need the media to disseminate the voices they represent. Without a plurality of voices, ideas are diminished, debate is stifled and tolerance is weakened.

Yet, or perhaps because of their role in giving voice and speaking truth to power, the media are increasingly under attack from both governments and corporate interests.

In its recently released World Press Freedom Index, Reporters Without Borders say that there has been a “deep and disturbing decline in respect for media freedom at both the global and regional levels” and that there is a “climate of fear and tension combined with increasing control over newsrooms by governments and private-sector interests.”

This assault on journalistic freedom takes many forms, including regular harassment of journalists, censorship, confiscation of equipment, closure of media outlets, arrests and in some cases direct and dire attack. Research by the Committee to Protect Journalists is quite chilling: 72 journalists were murdered in 2015 and a further 199 imprisoned.

In Africa, the situation for media varies in different countries across the continent. Alongside Eritrea and Ethiopia as two of the most censored countries in the world – in first and fourth place respectively – there are countries like Namibia, Ghana, Cape Verde and South Africa that score highly when it comes to freedom of information (even though those countries too experience challenges to media freedom). However, in far too many African countries the media come under regular attack and freedom of information remains a distant right.
                              
There is perhaps no clearer indication of both the importance of the media and the assault it faces than when governments crackdown on journalists and media houses in the run up to and during elections. In January this year, Ugandan officials shutdown an independent radio station after it broadcast an interview with a leading opposition candidate. A few months earlier, police shot and injured radio journalist Ivan Vincent as he covered squabbles between supporters of the leading opposition candidate and the police. Between October 2015 and January 2016, the Human Rights Network for Journalists–Uganda documented about “40 election-related incidents in which journalists have been shot at, assaulted, their gadgets damaged, detained and released without charge and blocked from accessing news scenes.”

The situation for media in Burundi following the violence and repression that started ahead of last year’s election has not improved, and some say that the country has seen the near complete destruction of independent media with journalists and civil society being targeted. Facing shutdowns and direct attacks, many journalists have fled the country out of fear for their lives.

Similarly, during the last year in Djibouti and the Republic of Congo, the desire of leaders to hold onto power and to silence voices opposing them, contributed to election-related violence and media repression.

Of course, the media don’t only face attack during elections. In Angola, the government has kept a decades-long close watch on the media, frequently arresting and harassing those it disagrees with. Currently, journalist Domingos da Cruz is one of 17 activists in prison for his participation in a private gathering to discuss non-violent strategies for civil disobedience.

An Ethiopian human rights advocate that spoke with CIVICUS recently reiterated that “Ethiopia has for a long time severely restricted press freedom and the work of civil society. It is one of the top countries when it comes to jailing journalists, many of whom it charges under the 2009 anti-terrorism law.”

This attack on the media is itself part of a broader attack on the fundamental freedoms of expression, association and assembly that CIVICUS has been documenting during the last few years (in 2015 there were serious violations of these freedoms in more than 100 countries). Attacks on the media often go hand in hand with those on activists and organisations that challenge or question the powers that be. In many countries, this crackdown happens with impunity and attacks often go unpunished.

While governments are the main culprits when it comes curtailing media freedom, the private sector also often seeks to control or manipulate media outputs in ways that favour them and their narrow interests: putting profit before people. This takes place in multiple ways, from the concentration of media ownership and the power that allows corporates to yield, to bribing journalists and influencing editorial content in exchange for paid advertising.

Often caught between state repression and corporate influence, media in many African countries face huge challenges. While there is no one-size-fits-all solution to these challenges a key part of the solution must be to support independent media, including citizen-journalism; for regional governance institutions to hold African countries accountable and for African countries to hold each other accountable; and for education and awareness about rights related to freedom of information and expression.

With regard to the latter, recent research shows that there is widespread support for media freedom and freedom of expression in Africa but that support for these rights is not universal.  In some contexts, journalistic ethics need to be strengthened; media outlets need to invest more in their journalists and support for independent media amongst civil society and the general public needs to be amplified. We need to look towards innovation too, to think of ways to use inexpensive technology to produce people-powered information and data.

Media that is accurate, credible, ethical and impartial is crucial to development, freedom, human rights and justice in Africa – as it is elsewhere. A study on freedom of expression across 34 African countries in 2013 showed the link between this most basic right and a range of factors, stating that “freedom of expression is also consistently linked to better ratings of government performance, especially with respect to government effectiveness in fighting corruption, but also in other sectors such as maintaining roads and managing the economy.”

Given the challenges we face on the continent, the current media crackdown is untenable and dangerous, and does nothing to facilitate the progress so many are working hard to achieve. As citizens of Africa, we need to increase our efforts to protect those that give us voice and help us realise the full scope of our rights.

Zubair Sayed is the Head of Communication and Campaigns at CIVICUS, a global alliance of civil society organisations.

Follow him on Twitter @zubairsay

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A journalist from Radio Bundelkhand in India conducts an interview. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

By Tharanga Yakupitiyage
NEW YORK, Apr 28 2016 (IPS)

For women journalists, violence and intimidation don’t just happen in conflict zones, they are every day experiences.

“You don’t even have to be in a conflict zone to be violated anymore,” New York Times reporter and author of the Taliban Shuffle Kim Barker said Wednesday at the launch of a new book documenting the daily violence and harassment which women journalists experience.

After writing an opinion-editorial on her experience of sexual harassment in the field, Barker said that an online commenter called her “fat” and “unattractive” and told her that “nobody would want to rape you.”

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) chose to focus its 2016 edition of the Attacks on the Press book series on the gender-based online harassment, sexual violence and physical assault experienced by women journalists, because of the impact of this violence on press freedom.

“In societies where women have to fight to have control over their own bodies, have to fight to reassert their right in the public space—being a woman journalist is almost a form of activism,” said Egyptian broadcast journalist Rawya Rageh who also spoke at the launch.

Much of the abuse takes place online where attackers can hide behind the anonymity of online comments.

According to the Pew Research Center, 40 percent of Internet users have experienced some form of online harassment. Though men are also subject to harassment, online abuse towards women tends to be more severe, including sexual harassment and threats of violence.

For example, one journalist reported to the The International Women’s Media Foundation (IWMF) that a troll had threatened to “human flesh hunt” her.

Alessandria Masi, a Middle East correspondent for the International Business Times, recalled the comments she received in an essay in CPJ’s book: “I have been hacked by the Syrian Electronic Army for writing an article that was critical of Syrian President Bashar Assad and asked how many people I have to have sexual relations with to get my article published.”

Online abuse is a symptom of deep-seated and pervasive sexism, many note. University of Maryland Law Professor and Author of “Hate Crimes in Cyberspace” Danielle Keats Citron stated that online gender harassment “reinforce(s) gendered stereotypes” where men are perceived as dominant in the workplace while women are sexual objects who have no place in online spaces.

But the threats do not just stay online, they also often manifest in the real world.

Deputy Editor of a Colombian Newspaper Jineth Bedoya Lima was kidnapped and raped in 2000 after exposing an underground network of arms trafficking in the country.

In 2012, after reporting on the dangers of female genital mutilation, Liberian journalist Mae Azongo received death threats including that she will be caught and cut if she does not “shut up.” She was forced to go into hiding with her nine-year-old daughter.

A year later, Libyan journalist Khawlija al-Amami was shot at by gunmen who pulled up to her car. Though she survived, she later received a text message warning her to “stop your journalism” or be killed.

Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) journalists also face similar threats, CPJ added. Most recently, Xulhaz Mannan, editor of Bangladesh’s only LGBT magazine, was hacked to death in his home.

However, many do not report their cases.

“It was almost like this dirty little secret, you didn’t talk about it…because you had to seem like you were just like one of the guys,” Barker said. She pointed to Lara Logan’s case as the dividing point.

While covering the Egyptian Revolution for CBS, Logan was violently sexually assaulted by a mob of men. During an interview on “60 Minutes,” she described how she was pulled away from her crew, her clothes ripped off, beaten with sticks and raped.

When asked why she spoke out, Logan said that she wanted to break the silence “on what all of us have experienced but never talk about.”

One key reason that many journalists do not speak out is the fear of being pulled out of reporting because of their gender or sexual orientation.

“It’s a catch-22,” said Rageh to participants. “I don’t want to reinforce this idea of who I am or what I am is going to curtail my ability to cover the story, but of course there’s an issue that needs to be addressed,” she continued.

CPJ’s Vice Chair and Executive Editor of the Associated Press Kathleen Carroll noted that the threat of sexual violence has long kept women out of the field of journalism. But there are ways to handle such threats that do not lead to the exclusion of women, she said.

Carroll stated that good tools and training should be provided to journalists, both women and men alike. IWMF established a gender-specific security training, preparing women to be in hostile environments. This includes role-play scenarios, risk assessments and communication plans.

Effective, knowledgeable and compassionate leaders are also needed in news agencies in order to help staff minimize threats, Carroll added.

Panelists urged for reform, noting that women are needed in the field.

“The more women you have out there covering those stories, the more those stories get told,” Barker said.

In an essay, Lima also reflected on the importance of women’s voices, stating: “Our words, our will, can prevent the silencing of voices, the violation of our freedom of expression…and we, as journalists, have a huge responsibility in this regard. Our words can stir a fight or bury the hope of change forever.”

By Jan Lundius
Helsinki, Jan 11 2016 (IPS)

The year 2015 was a sad one for journalists around the world, with approximately 60 journalists killed, more than 200 imprisoned and more than 400 exiled.

In many countries, people speaking up against abuse and violations have a rational fear for their lives and wellbeing. To address this issue, UNESCO and the Government of Finland will co-host a conference on journalists´ safety the week of International Press Freedom Day, 3 May 2016.

The choice of Finland to organize such an event is no mere coincidence. When Reporters Without Borders presented its World Press Freedom Index for 2015, Finland topped the list for the fifth year in a row. And Finland´s government has taken its commitment further by making transparency and information an institutional concern, for example by making broadband access a legal right and easing the way for citizens to participate in the legislative process through online means.

Is freedom of speech determined by culture? And, if so, did cultural forces help mold the Finnish government´s liberal attitude toward press freedom?
Often when rulers silence the media they do it in the name of security or preserving national culture or unity. So is freedom of speech determined by culture? And, if so, did cultural forces help mold the Finnish government´s liberal attitude toward press freedom?

Until 1809, Finland was part of Sweden, a country that in 1766 was the first nation in the world to abolish censorship and guarantee freedom of the press. But after subsequent conquest by the Russian Empire, growing Russian patriotism demanded a closer integration of Finland and, by the end of the 19th century, harsh censorship of the press was introduced. This and other measures, including Russian promotion of the Finnish language as a way to sever the country’s longstanding cultural ties with Sweden, fueled an already growing Finnish nationalism.

When the Russian tsar abdicated in 1917, the Finnish legislature declared independence, leading to a civil war between the country’s “Reds”, led by Social Democrats, and “Whites”, led by the conservatives in the Senate. Thirty-six thousand out of a population of 3 million died. The Reds executed 1,650 civilians, while the triumphant Whites executed approximately 9,000. The war resulted in an official ban on Communism, censorship of the socialist press and an increasing integration to the Western world economy. The new constitution established that the country would be bi-lingual, with both Finnish and Swedish taught in schools and at universities.

During World War II, harsh press censorship was introduced – this time by the Finnish government itself – as the country fought two wars against the Soviet Union and the subsequently fought to drive out its former German allies in those conflicts.

The development of the current Finnish freedom of speech probably has to be considered in relation to this arduous history, particularly the difficult aftermath of the wars with the Soviet Union and, through all of it, the Finnish people´s struggle to maintain their freedom and unique character as a nation.

Today, Finland has a lively press and a thriving culture production in both languages, even if Finnish people with Swedish as a mother tongue constitute only about 5 per cent of a population of 5.4 million. Even in the Internet Age, Finns remain avid newspaper readers, ranking first in the EU with almost 500 copies sold per day per 1, 000 inhabitants, surpassed only by Japan and Norway.

During the Cold War years, Finland’s efforts to cope with is proximity to Soviet Russia had grave repercussions on freedom of speech in the country. Due to Soviet pressure, some books were withdrawn from public libraries and Finnish publishers avoided literature that could cause Soviet displeasure. For example, the Finnish translation of Solzhenitsyn´s The Gulag Archipelago was published in Sweden. On several occasions, Moscow restricted Finnish politics and vetoed its participation in the Marshall Plan.

The dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 led to Finland’s expanded participation in Western political and economic structures. Finland joined the EU in 1994 and the euro was introduced in 1999. Restrictions on the media were relaxed and today, probably in reaction to its previous experiences with censorship, Finland is widely recognized having the most extensive press freedom of any country.

However, the rise of anti-immigrant political sentiment, as evidenced by the rise of the Finns´ Party, has cast a pall over popular media. Now the country’s second largest party after success in this year’s elections, the Finns´ Party combines left-wing economic policies with conservative social values, as well as a heavy dose of xenophobia, euro scepticism and Islamophobia, leading it to attract nationalistic fringe groups that are vociferous in public media.

One example is the group Suomen Sisu, which has an openly crude racial approach, disguised as “ethnopluralism,” an ideology stating that ethnic groups have to be kept separated and that Swedish speaking Finns’ influence on politics and culture has to be limited and that immigration has to be radically restricted, or even halted completely.

Finland´s most popular web site Homma is spreading this message, which also accuses Finnish media of being left-leaning and eroding Finnish national pride. The Finns’ Party´s leader, Timo Soini, is currently the country´s foreign minister and vice prime minister. While the party occasionally reacts harshly to criticism in media it states that it honors freedom of the press. Even when Soini was recently was attacked by the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, he stated that it was quite OK since it was an expression of the press freedom.

Nevertheless, with Finland now scheduled to host an international conference on press freedom, we should be watchful of the dangers to free expression that lurk in uninhibited nationalism and xenophobia. Nordic people often take their excellent record in human rights for granted and, in so doing, dismiss these dangers. Let’s hope that the May conference will serve as a reminder to us all that freedom of the press and of expression is something that has to be jealously guarded and vigorously protected through thick and thin.

(End)

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As civil disputes, societal destruction and political unrest swept through the world last year, about 92 journalists were killed in the line of duty. Reporting from war zones—often without proper protection, journalists have continued to risk their lives to inform the general public.

In 1993, the General Assembly declared 3 May ‘World Press Freedom Day’, an initiative aimed at upholding the safety and integrity of both journalists and their profession.

“Free media, traditional and new are indispensable,” said Secretary General Ban Ki-moon while addressing an audience at a pre-World Press Freedom event on Thursday.

Journalists repeatedly face discrimination, violence, prison sentences and even death for their work, according to the Committee to Project Journalists (CPJ) whose Executive Director Joel Simon said: “Intolerant, repressive societies are using anti-state charges and ‘terrorist’ labels to intimidate, detain, and imprison journalists.”

During Thursday’s event, a number of practicing journalists joined the stage to share their stories, some horrific and others inspirational—but all a testament to the risks journalists take on a daily basis.

Since 1992, over 1,000 journalists have been killed yearly—nearly one a week.

CPJ also reports that September 11 had a great impact on the mistreatment of journalists with governments passing laws that focused on anti-terrorism and national security. The scrutiny towards journalists increased as they continued to ask hard questions and cover sensitive issues such as insurgencies, ethnic minorities and political opposition.

In 2013, 200 journalists were jailed, and according to CPJ, China, Turkey, Eritrea, Iran and Syria remain notorious for imprisoning journalists.

Panelists at the event included speakers such as President of the General Assembly, John Ashe and CBS News Correspondent and President of the UN Correspondents Association (UNCA) Pamela Falk, drew attention to the work of journalists far and beyond conflict reportage — and towards the role of media in the post 2015 development agenda.

The marginalized are the ones who stand to benefit from press freedom , and as Vibeke Jensen, Director at UNESCO Liaison Office in New York said, “the safety of journalists is fundamental” in ensuring that poverty and under development, especially in regards to women and children, are covered.

Falk asked the UN to “make 2014 the year to protect journalists, by adding the freedom of expression and press freedom to the post 2015 development agenda.”

The World Press Freedom Day highlights three interrelated themes: sustainability and integrity of journalism, media’s importance in development and safety of journalists and the rule of law.

Securing the safety of journalists and media workers is an urgent matter. More than 600 journalists and media workers have been killed in the last ten years. In other words, every week a journalist loses his or her life while bringing news and information to the public. These statistics highlight the relevance of the World Press Freedom (WPF) Day, which remains the fundamental principles of press freedom.

WPF Day, proclaimed by the U.N. General Assembly in 1993, celebrates its 20th anniversary in 2013. It focuses on the theme “Safe to Speak: Securing Freedom of Expression in All Media” and puts the spotlight on issues relating to safety of journalists, combating impunity for crimes against freedom of expression and securing a free and open Internet as the precondition for online safety.

“As we mark WPF Day, let us pledge to do our utmost to enable all journalists in all media to do their jobs.  When it is safe to speak, the whole world benefits,” said Ban Ki-moon, U.N. Secretary-General.

According to Reporters Without Borders (RWB), 19 journalists have already been killed in 2013, and 174 journalists and 162 netizens are in prison. The 2013 RWB WPF Index marks a return to a more usual configuration, after the Arab springs and other protest movements that prompted the fluctuations in last year’s index.

The same three European countries that headed the index last year hold the top three positions in 2013- Finland, Netherlands and Norway. Although many criteria are considered, ranging from legislation to violence against journalists, dictatorial regimes occupy the last three positions : the same three as last year- Turkmenistan, North Korea and Eritrea.

Journalists need to be safe to speak and not be jeopardized.” Impunity not only hurts media workers but all of us”, said Peter Launsky-Tieffenthal, Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information.

In past years, only about one-in-ten cases of crimes against journalists, media workers, and social media producers has led to a conviction. This level of impunity is not just bad in principle in terms of flouting the rule of law, in terms of which every State has a duty to protect its citizens in general, but it sends a signal to the wider public to keep quiet about corruption, environmental damage or human rights violations.

Various countries and organizations have been working on reducing impunity independently or in close cooperation.  For example, The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) issues an annual index on impunity tracking some of the highest rates of impunity around the world.

The 2013 WPF Day also highlights the digitalization of the media landscape, the reinforcement of the global trend of freelancing and the importance to provide the same protection as professional journalists for the citizen reporters and individual bloggers, while they may lack established forms of institutional gate-keeping.

Reporters say journalism is "not more fun" in the Philippines. Credit: Keith Bacongco/CC-BY-2.0

By Dennis Engbarth
MANILA, May 10 2012 (IPS)

Reporters working in the Philippines, the world’s third most dangerous nation for journalists, are having difficulty identifying with the “It’s More Fun in the Philippines” tourism promotion campaign launched by the Liberal Party-led government of President Benigno Aquino III.

The Southeast Asian nation’s reputation for press freedom and safety has yet to recover from the notorious Ampatuan Massacre of Nov. 23, 2009 in Maguindanao, Mindanao, in which 58 persons, including 32 reporters, were slaughtered by the private army of a local political clan chief, Andal Ampatuan Sr.

A total of 196 persons have been charged in the massacre, including clan patriarch Andal and his grandson, Anwar Ampatuan Jr, but less than 100 have been arrested and not a single one convicted of any crimes.

While the government attempts to paint over the tragedy with billboards proclaiming the joys of holidaying in the Philippines, media workers are continuing the fight for accountability.

A formal statement issued by the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP) to mark World Press Freedom Day on May 3 declared, “There is little reason for celebration since not a single mastermind in any of the 152 murders of journalists since 1986 has been arrested, prosecuted and convicted.”

Most of these killings occurred during the nine years of rule from 2001 to 2010 under former president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, who is now in detention on charges of electoral sabotage, but at least 12 have occurred in the past two years under the Aquino administration.

“Murders of media workers, just like all other extrajudicial killings, are a matter of State accountability,” declared the NUJP. “If the Philippine press remains free despite all the threats against it, it is not because of the government but because the press insists on being free.”

Nevertheless, the presidential office in the Malacañang Palace publically marked the country’s improved ranking in the annual Freedom of the Press index, published by the Washington-based human rights advocacy group Freedom House on May 1.

The index cited a reduction in violence against journalists, attempts by the government to address impunity and expanded diversity in media ownership among its reasons for the improved rating.

Communications Development Secretary Ramon Carandang acknowledged on May 2 that “more needs to be done”, but stated that the improved ranking had recognised the Philippine government’s attempts to strengthen press freedom.

On the following day, presidential spokesman Edwin Lacierda vowed that the Aquino administration would not tolerate extralegal killings, especially attacks on journalists.

Beneath the façade

NUJP Vice Chair Joseph Alwyn Alburo disputed the presidential spin on press freedom during an interview with IPS.

“After the Ampatuan Massacre, there has been no improvement on the issue of journalist killings or in the overall plight of journalists in our country,” he said.

Alburo told IPS that 124 Filipino journalists have been killed on the job since the end of the former dictatorship of the late Ferdinand Marcos in 1986, but only 10 of those cases have been solved.

“We are one year away from mid-term legislative and local elections next May and, based on our information, the family that perpetrated the (2009) massacre still have relatives in power and are still amassing private armies even as their patriarch and other senior clan members are facing trial,” he added.

“The Philippines has the (unfortunate) distinction of being rated the third most dangerous country for journalists, behind Iraq and Somalia and the only one of the three which is a democracy. Nov. 23 has been designated as the World Day Against Impunity, but the current president (has not even blinked) an eye about the impact of these notorious distinctions on our country.”

“It is with great sadness that I say things are not going to improve because all the factors that give rise to a culture of impunity are still present. Journalists in this country are still very much in danger.”

Another channel for powerful politicians and tycoons to restrict media freedom is through frequent filing of criminal libel charges against journalists, he said. The NUJP and other media unions and associations are currently leading the movement to decriminalise these charges.

Significantly, on Jan. 28, the Geneva-based United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) resolved that the laws in the Philippines that criminalise libel are incompatible with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).

The decision came in response to an appeal by Davao broadcaster Alex Adonis, who was jailed from 2007-2008 for reporting correctly that a leading local politician had been caught in bed with his alleged mistress by the latter’s husband.

Another major concern for reporters is the concentration of media ownership. Alburo confirmed that NUJP is “closely watching” the widely reported drive by First Pacific Group Chief Executive Officer Manuel Pangilinan to acquire the television network ‘GMA 7’ for approximately 1.2 billion dollars.

The businessman already owns one TV network, telecommunication and power utilities and shares in three major newspapers.

“Such a concentration (of the media) often compromises journalist ethics and editorial independence,” Alburo said.

NUJP aims to “jump start” campaigns to stop the killing of journalists, push for the decriminalisation of libel against journalists and promote passage of a robust Freedom of Information Act in May, when the UNHRC is conducting a review of the Philippines’ human rights record under the ICCPR.

The NUJP and other newspaper, television and broadcast journalist unions held a meeting on May 3, which resulted in the ‘Manila Declaration on Media Workers’ Rights and Welfare’, to be used as a platform for future unity and campaigns.

Despite a pervasive mood that there is very little to celebrate, over 40 NUJP members gathered at the fifth consecutive annual ‘Press Jam’ to commemorate World Press Freedom Day at the Skarlet Jazz Club in Quezon City on the evening of May 2.

“It has always been a trait of Filipinos to be able to laugh amidst very serious situations and troubles, so we hold a Press Jam (where) we can sing and be carefree for at least one night,” said Alburo.

Still, the festivities were not completely lighthearted; the event featured drawings by the children of journalists who were murdered in the Ampatuan Massacre and other incidents.

The artwork expressed the fear and sadness that still surrounds the tragedy, such as a drawing with the plaintive question, ‘Why is Daddy sleeping so long?’

On an ironic poster asking ‘Is it more fun in the Philippines to be a journalist?’ one NUJP member wrote, ‘Yes, you feel like a survivor all the time’.

Another pundit had added, ‘With criminal libel, 152 killed since 1986, what more can you ask for?’

A more hopeful note was stuck by one NUJP member, who wrote, ‘Yes, so much to write about, so much to change’.

Two years ago, Ashkan Delanvar was arrested by Iranian authorities and held in poor conditions for 14 days before he was sentenced to 10 months in prison.

Criticising authorities online has now become so dangerous that 2011 was considered the deadliest year for online activists in many countries. Credit: Antonella Beccaria/CC BY 2.0

His crime? The student, blogger and computer technician had provided software to overcome the authorities’ internet filters and trained people how to use it.

Delanvar was eventually able to flee the country and is currently seeking asylum in Germany. He was the first person identified by the rights group Amnesty International who was tried and sentenced to prison under the 2009 Law on Cyber Crimes in Iran.

“Bloggers see it as their duty to inform other people, but in Iran (they) are seen as a threat to the government because they provide analysis of daily life and politics, and reflect news that is blocked,” Delanvar told Amnesty.

On May 3, World Press Freedom Day, human rights defenders say that journalists and cyber activists are being increasingly persecuted in countries where press freedom is either not a constitutional right or the law is simply ignored.

2011 deadliest year yet

According to Amnesty International, criticising authorities online has now become so dangerous that 2011 was considered the deadliest year for online activists in many countries.

With social media now firmly established as a tool to organise protests such as during the Arab Spring, netizens – citizens who use social media networks such as twitter or facebook – are facing the same dangers as journalists.

“Since the beginning of 2012, one journalist is killed every five days,” Delphine Halgand, Washington director of Reporters Without Borders, said during a reception to celebrate World Press Freedom day on Thursday.

Another 161 journalists have been jailed, together with 121 netizens, for conducting their rights and duties around the world, she said.

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists puts the number even higher: 179 journalists detained in 2011, a 20 percent increase over 2010 and the highest level since 1990.

Governments pulling the plug

State authorities from China to Syria and Cuba to Azerbaijan are blocking search engines, charging exorbitant fees for internet access, torturing activists to obtain their facebook and twitter passwords, and passing laws that control what people can talk about online.

This was clearly evident during the Arab Spring, especially in Egypt, where the government shut down mobile phone services and the internet.

“The opening of the digital space has allowed activists to support each other as they fight for human rights, freedom and justice around the world,” said Widney Brown, senior director for international law at Amnesty International, in a press realease.

“States are attacking online journalists and activists because they are realizing how these courageous individuals can effectively use the internet to challenge them,” he added.

Yet journalists, bloggers and activists are coming up with new ways to bypass internet controls and ensure their voices are heard by millions across the world.

In some countries, activists have switched to using the twitter and facebook accounts of their imprisoned or murdered fellows in order to protect their own identities.

A global trend

This year already has seen autocratic regimes across the former Soviet Union strengthen their grip on power, choking dissent, muzzling criticism and clamping down on protest.

In Belarus, which held widely criticised presidential elections at the end of 2011, several prominent opposition activists and leaders of non-governmental organisations have been put behind bars.

Hungary’s parliament passed strict media-muzzling legislation in 2011 which was condemned by fellow member states of the European Union.

In Latin America, Honduras and Mexico are the most dangerous places for journalists.

Dina Meza, a Honduran journalist and human rights activist, received a series of threats of sexual violence against her in early 2012. On Apr. 6, she was walking in her neighbourhood with her children when she noticed two men taking photos of them.

On Apr. 28, the body of journalist Regina Martinez was found at her home in Veracruz, Mexico. Regina was a reporter with political magazine Proceso and, for over three decades, had reported on issues of insecurity, drug trafficking and corruption. Local authorities vowed to investigate the killing.

“Whilst new media is being more and more used in Mexico, last year also saw that this new era was facing attacks which hadn’t been imagined only a few years ago,” Karin Deutsch Karlekar, project director of freedom of the press of the non-governmental Freedom House, based in New York, told IPS.

Since 2000, at least 65 journalists have been killed in Mexico and at least 10 remain missing, according to human rights organisations.

On Thursday, the eve of Press Freedom Day the bodies of two news photographers were found dismembered in the eastern Mexican state of Veracruz.

“We have seen some decline of freedom of the press in México. We are very worried about that. One of the main issues is the impunity, because the killings are not investigated,” said Deutsch Karlekar.

The Mexican Senate has approved a new law to protect journalists and human rights activists who receive threats, but the situation remains dire.

“Impunity for those who attack or threaten journalists remains disturbingly prevalent,” United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said at a World Press Freedom day reception at U.N. headquarters Thursday.

“The U.N. will now intensify our efforts to help member states strengthen legal frameworks and investigate attack against journalists,” Ban said.

*With additional reporting by Rousbeh Legatis at the United Nations.

By Aprille Muscara
WASHINGTON, May 2 2011 (IPS)

The shutdown was surprisingly swift and almost total. In the midst of a popular revolution – one that was blogged, YouTubed, and Twittered in minute-by-minute cyber blasts – the Egyptian regime tightened its Internet spigot in late January, choking the free flow of information down to a trickle.

After a caustic domestic and international backlash, the North African country’s Internet Service Providers eventually restored connectivity. However, media analysts warn that ex-dictator Hosni Mubarak’s desperate deployment of information control – a time-tested tactic of repressive regimes – adapted to today’s new technologies of communication is but part of a growing global trend.

Indeed, a “Freedom on the ‘Net” study released by the U.S.-based Freedom House in late April warned that efforts to control and censor the cyber commons – from blocking Web sites to imprisoning bloggers – by a growing number of governments around the world have ramped up in recent years.

“In authoritarian states, such efforts are partly rooted in the existing legal frameworks, which already limit the freedom of the traditional media,” the study states. The usual suspects – China, with the world’s most sophisticated state censorship apparatus, Iran, Venezuela, Egypt, and Tunisia – are among those fingered as guilty.

But “[e]ven in more democratic countries – such as Brazil, India, Indonesia, South Korea, Turkey, and the United Kingdom – Internet freedom is increasingly undermined by legal harassment, opaque censorship procedures, or expanding surveillance,” the study continues.

On Monday, the U.S.-based Committee to Protect Journalists released a report on the “Top 10 Tools of Online Oppressors” in commemoration of World Press Freedom day on May 3.

“These techniques go well beyond Web censorship,” said Danny O’Brien, CPJ Internet Advocacy Coordinator and author of the report. “Combined, these digital attacks undermine our universal right to seek information.”

The list includes such good old-fashioned tactics as imprisonment and violence against independent and opposition journalists, to high-tech methods of censorship like Denial of Service cyber-attacks and so- called Internet “kill switches” similar to Egypt’s.

Press freedom in the networked world

With the amplification of citizen voices through the proliferation and penetration of information and communication technologies (ICTs) worldwide – according to Freedom House, more than two billion people have access to the Internet, a number that has doubled since 2006 – the once well-defined journalistic lines between spectator and contributor, source and correspondent are blurring, equally amplifying the threat of online censorship to press freedom.

“[T]he increased user participation facilitated by the new platforms has exposed ordinary people to some of the same punishments faced by well-known bloggers, online journalists, and human rights activists,” the Freedom House study said.

This overwhelming number of active voices contributing to the dissemination of news – some with questionable intents or identities – has also demanded a re-evaluation of the profession of journalism itself, with some arguing that crowd-sourcing can muddle the quality and accuracy of news.

Others, like media analyst and New York University-based journalism professor Jay Rosen, find value in mass participation in the reporting process. “The news system is stronger for it,” he wrote in a recent blog post, arguing that more contributions from friends and followers make for better news.

“We have an influx of material – videos, photos, testimonies and tweets – and we can weave a story on the ground just from people who are breaking this curfew and risking everything they have to tell their story,” North Africa and Middle East editor for Global Voices Amira Hussaini echoed in an interview with IPS during the Egyptian revolution.

“[T]he ability to hear from participants in a people power movement is a massive improvement from how we’ve generally covered public uprising, where we hear primarily from government spokespeople and professional talking heads,” Ethan Zuckerman, senior researcher at the Berkman Centre for Internet and Society at Harvard University, told IPS. “You want biased coverage from elites – there you have it.”

Subsequently, in this new model of participatory journalism, where the inputs of citizens can be as important as those of veteran reporters and traditional agenda-setters, the impact of increased online censorship is thus multiplied, as it can affect the layperson casually tweeting about the day’s events as much as the prolific opposition blogger.

In “The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom”, author Evgeny Morozov debunks the predominant narrative and initial techno-euphoria surrounding Iran’s restive summer of 2009 as a revolution purported to have been borne out of Twitter.

“If anything, Iran’s Twitter Revolution revealed the intense Western longing for a world where information technology is the liberator rather than the oppressor, a world where technology could be harvested to spread democracy around the globe rather than entrench existing autocracies,” he writes.

Indeed, as the Internet and other ICTs are ostensibly lauded for their potential to democratise the processes of news-making and news- gathering, technology can equally be harnessed for repression, as the Freedom House and CPJ publications illustrate.

Adapting old strategies to new technologies

“What is most surprising about these Online Oppressors is not who they are – they are all nations with long records of repression – but how swiftly they adapted old strategies to the online world,” O’Brien writes in the CPJ report.

Despite the seeming deftness with which regimes adjust to and co-opt ICTs – from filtering search results to employing fleets of online commenters with nimble fingers paid per pro-regime post – a host of tools also exist for circumventing censorship.

These tactics are as new as they are old, including the use of code words in Chinese blogs, proxies to mask an Internet user’s location and surely the next, yet-to-be-developed crowd sourced tactic created with the intent to gather and disseminate information – a fundamental requisite of the public sphere, whether online or off.

When the Internet was “killed” in Egypt, bloggers and journalists found workarounds to ensure that the voices of people on the ground were not wholly muted.

“On the first day, there was a total blackout,” Hussaini told IPS. “By the second day, we went back to basics. People were using phones, calling people abroad, while other people were transcribing.”

IPS’s own Emad MacKay and Adam Morrow in Cairo relayed dispatches via landline to colleagues in New York and London, who rendered their words for publication.

“Other people were glued to their TV screens, watching Al-Jazeera,” Hussaini said. “People were tweeting and blogging based on what they saw.”

“We saw the masses in the squares. We saw the demonstrations. We saw the police beating them up and spraying them,” she recalled. “All the images were streamed live in our living rooms.”

But as creative and inspiring as circumvention methods may be, the sobering reality is that they shouldn’t be necessary in the first place, says Zuckerman.

“Circumvention tools can be helpful and valuable,” Zuckerman told IPS, “but the shutdown of the Egyptian Internet shows that a truly determined government can always ‘pull the plug’ if they’re willing to suffer the fiscal and PR consequences.”

*Follow Aprille on Twitter at @aprilledaughn.

Excerpt:

By Daniela Pastrana
MEXICO CITY, May 2 2011 (IPS)

In Mexico, the country in the Americas facing the worst wave of violence against reporters, different journalistic initiatives are combating this dynamic, which fuels a tendency towards self-censorship.

Radio Chinelo web site. Credit: Radio Chinelo

“Living in Sinaloa is perilous, and being a reporter here adds an extra dimension of risk. But there is no other option; the alternative is to do nothing,” said Valdez, who has written several books on drug trafficking.

Río Doce was founded in February 1993 by reporters who formerly wrote for the daily newspaper Noroeste. It quickly won a reputation as an investigative weekly, in a state where one of the country’s most powerful drug cartels is based: the Sinaloa cartel headed by Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.

In September 2009, grenades were lobbed at the newspaper’s offices. “When we founded Río Doce we never said: we are going to investigate the narcos,” Valdez said. “We just suddenly found ourselves caught up in this mess. Because it’s inevitable. Here and in many other parts of the country, all roads lead to the drug trade.”

The weekly, which began this year to experiment with social networking sites, has four directors, all of whom are journalists – Valdez is one of them – and half a dozen stringers. The publication has ties with business owners, politicians and academics, but the editorial line is not negotiated with anyone.

“We thoroughly check our facts and we have complete trust in each other,” Valdez said. “That is extremely important, because there have been cases of newspapers here where even though a reporter hasn’t signed his article, the next day a police officer mentioned in the story tells the journalist he knows who wrote it.

“We have also had to learn how to administer information, because it’s better for us to put out 10 percent of the information that we have, well-documented, than for nothing to come out at all,” he added.

This year’s theme for May 3, World Press Freedom Day, is “21st Century Media: New Frontiers, New Barriers”

May 3 this year is also the 20th anniversary of the Windhoek Declaration for the promotion of free and pluralistic media – a challenge that is becoming tougher by the day in Mexico.

The 2010 Special Report on Freedom of Expression in Mexico, published in March by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) Office of the Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression, says that “since 2000 Mexico has been the most dangerous country in the Americas in which to practice journalism.”

The study, which forms part of chapter II of the 2010 annual report by the Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression, emphasises three central concerns: the impunity surrounding the murders of journalists “and other extremely serious acts of violence” against journalists; “the high concentration of ownership and control of the communications media”; and “an emerging tendency to restrict the right to access public information.”

Seventy-two percent of the country’s radio stations are controlled by just 10 business groups, according to the World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters (AMARC), which complains that community radio stations in Mexico are harassed and targeted by criminal action.

But as the violence spirals and the two dominant TV stations, Televisa and Telmex, wage war over the telecoms market, alternative or local media initiatives are taking a stand.

In October 2010, in Morelos, a state next to the Mexican capital where drug-related violence is spiralling, a group of young people organised a community radio festival.

The festival gave rise to Radio Chinelo, a community radio station whose aim is to give different sectors of society equal access to the media, to disseminate and debate their problems and ideas.

The “chinelos” are distinctively costumed dance troupes from central Mexico whose origins lie in pre-Hispanic rituals.

“We performed a few times, and used the money we earned to buy computers and a sound booth,” the head of the station’s news programme, Sergio Sánchez, told IPS.

Radio Chinelo has an on-line news station that broadcasts twice a week and played a key role in the coverage of protests against violence and the movement against impunity led by poet Javier Sicilia, whose son was killed Mar. 28.

The first broadcast was on Jan. 8, and the station’s TV programme – TVChinelo – is ready to go on the air, although for now the focus is narrowed to special events.

“At first there were only seven of us, now we are nearly 30,” Sánchez said. “We have gotten advice from other important community stations, like Ke Huelga and Radio Zapote.

“But unlike those stations, which are run by activists and provide information that is very much targeted towards their political base, we try to do a much more open kind of radio programming, with social, cultural and political content,” he added.

Another local project that has managed to overcome barriers is Transparencia para Todos (Transparency for All), which emerged from a programme on access to public information at the Universidad del Centro de México, a private university in the central state of San Luis Potosí.

“We are trying to raise people’s awareness on their right to information, to help them understand that it’s a right that is of use to them in their day-to-day lives,” the coordinator of the project, Samuel Bonilla, told IPS.

Since 2007, he has organised 18 workshops for the public on the use of available tools, like the Federal Law of Transparency and Access to Public Government Information, approved in 2003.

The 10-week workshops have given rise to a network of trainers who work at public libraries. A book compiling the experiences arising from the workshops will also be published.

Last year, the project was extended to the states of Puebla in the south and Sonora in the north, because Bonilla is a member of México Infórmate, a national network of journalists and academics that promotes the right to information and plans to carry out collective investigations this year, using the transparency law.

The original project included expanding the workshops to cybercafés and university computer centres. But this year, the State Transparency Commission withdrew the funds that it had provided for these activities in previous years.

“We have approached different state and federal institutions that are responsible for promoting transparency, for funds. If we don’t get support from some institution, we will be in a very difficult situation,” Bonilla said.

“But if this takes root, it will severely hamper the current legislative attempts to roll back the progress made towards access to public information,” he added.

Excerpt:

For a country that has had quite a few run-ins with global giants in the diplomatic arena, the last fortnight has witnessed somewhat of a turnaround for Sri Lanka.

The South Asian island state has received accolades from several diplomatic heavyweights and organisations for recent actions initiated by President Mahinda Rajapaksa.

Rajapaksa’s grant of a presidential pardon to journalist Jayaprakash Tissainayagam, who had been sentenced to 20 years’ imprisonment, was quickly commended by the international community.

Tissainayagam, who belongs to the minority Tamil community, was convicted by the High Court of Colombo in August 2009 on charges of receiving funding from the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and instigating communal violence through his writings. The website editor and opinion writer’s arrest and subsequent conviction elicited wide international criticism.

Sri Lanka’s foreign minister Gamini Peiris said that the pardon – announced on World Press Freedom Day last week – showed that the new government of President Rajapaksa was committed to upholding civic rights.

The Tissainayagam pardon was specifically welcomed by the United States, France and several international media watchdogs.

“We, with our European partners, strongly condemned the sentence of 20 years in prison which had been passed against him last August and expressed our deep concern with the Sri Lankan authorities on several occasions,” the French foreign ministry said in a statement welcoming the pardon.

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) also welcomed the pardon, albeit cautiously. “While this is potentially very good news, our enthusiasm is muted until the details are made clear,” Bob Dietz, CPJ’s Asia program coordinator, said.

However, details of Tissainayagam’s pardon remain unclear. Neither he nor his lawyers have made any public comments since it was announced while sources briefed on the pardon told IPS that the lawyers were in discussion with the Attorney General’s Department on the technicalities of the pardon.

Notwithstanding his pardon, Tissainayagam’s passport remains with the government, raising questions on whether he is free to travel within and outside the country.

Still, local media rights groups said the President’s move should bode well for the future of the media. “It is a welcome move and we hope the current trend continues,” Chulavangsha Sirilal of the local media rights group Free Media Movement told IPS.

Three days after Tissainayagam was pardoned by the President, journalist Ruwan Weerakoon, who was on remand, was released on bail. Weerakoon was arrested on charges of collusion with Sarath Fonseka, the former army commander and defeated presidential candidate now facing charges of corruption and plotting to overthrow the government.

Within the same week of Tissainayagam’s pardon, the government also relaxed the emergency regulations that had been in place since 2006, when then foreign minister Lakshman Kadirgamar was assassinated by the Tamil Tigers.

Some of the regulations that were removed included the provision on the imposition of curfews, those requiring households to give information about their members and the power of security forces to enter private property for searches.

Other provisions restricting the conduct of public meetings and printing of propaganda material were likewise eased, according to foreign minister Peiris.

He was quick to note, however, that the relaxation of the regulations had nothing to do with attempts at thawing icy relations, especially with the West.

“We do not believe that there is a need to continue with those particular regulations. The situation in the country is settled,” he told the media.

President Rajapaksa has also announced that he will set up a special commission to look into the final phase of the war against the Tamil Tigers that ended in May 2009. Sri Lanka has staved off international criticism and even attempts to initiate international inquiries on possible war crimes committed during the 25-year conflict with the LTTE. The planned commission will determine if any such violations took place, according to the President’s Office.

The government has also strongly objected to moves by the United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to set up an advisory committee on Sri Lanka. It said that the country’s situation was fast returning to normal and development work had been accelerated now that the second Rajapaksa administration had taken office.

The Sri Lankan government has not been loath to lock horns with international big boys even in the face of financial losses. Earlier this year the European Union (EU) scrapped a preferential trade facility – the Generalized System of Preferences Plus (GSP+) tariff regime – that allowed exports from Sri Lanka to the EU to gain concession exceeding 100 million U.S. dollars in 2008.

The EU said Sri Lanka had violated international human rights conventions. Sri Lanka had objected to the EU sending a fact-finding mission to investigate the country’s human rights record. Suspending the concession, the EU said that if Sri Lanka fulfilled certain criteria, then the GSP+ concession would be reinstated.

Whether President Rajapaksa’s recent decisive actions – including the grant of a presidential pardon to journalist Tissainayagam – will help bring that about is well worth watching.

By Busani Bafana
BULAWAYO, May 3 2010 (IPS)

Fourteen months after Zimbabwe’s government of national unity was formed, harassment, arbitrary arrest and general intimidation of journalists remains common.

In a statement issued on May 3, World Press Freedom Day, the Zimbabwe chapter of the press watchdog Media Institute of South Africa deplored repressive legislation constraining journalists.

These include the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act, which prevents media organisations from hiring unaccredited journalists; the Public Order and Security Act which has been widely used to prosecute critics of the president, his government and policies; and the Broadcasting Services Act, which sets such complex requirements for registering broadcast media that the government-controlled Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation remains the only station on the airwaves.

“These laws are unnecessary and unjustified in a democratic society and should therefore be repealed in line with the principles of the African Charter on Human Rights, Banjul Declaration on the Principles of Freedom of Expression in Africa, [and the] SADC Protocol on Information, Sports and Culture and African Charter on Broadcasting,” the statement read.

“The changes to the restricted media space have been cosmetic to say the least,” MISA-Zimbabwe chair, Loughty Dube told IPS. “Journalists still face the same harassment and intimidation that was common before the GNU.”

In January this year, freelance journalist and IPS contributor Stanley Kwenda fled into exile after a senior police officer allegedly threatened him with death over a story.

A correspondent for the government owned Chronicle working in the border town of Beitbridge, Mashundu Netsianda, was arrested for reporting on police officers fleeing gunfire. In March, a Mexican journalist was arrested in Masvingo gathering footage for a World Cup documentary.

Photo journalist Anderson Manyere has become a regular guest in police holding cells and has been arrested for doing his job at least than three times since the start of the year.

Five journalists from the Standard newspaper have been summoned to appear in court in connection with a story about a land scandal involving prominent businessmen Phillip Chiyangwa and the Minister of local government, Ignatius Chombo.

Radio journalist and documentary maker Zenzele Ndebele has also been threatened for his documentary on the “Gukurahundi” atrocities committed by Zimbabwean security services in Matabeleland in the early 1980s.

“Press freedom in Zimbabwe is guaranteed by whoever is in power and that is clear in the manner journalists have to constantly watch their backs each time they write a story or make a broadcast,” said Ndebele.

“Radio Dialogue has been waiting for 10 years for a community radio broadcasting licence and we cannot fully operate as a radio station,” he said.

The announcement by the Zimbabwe Media Commission at the end of April of greatly reduced fees for media registration and calling for media houses and journalists to renew their registration by Jun. 4 has been welcomed by journalists as a small sign of change.

“A free and unfettered media plays a critical role in advancing citizens’ universal right to access to information held by both public and private bodies,” said MISA-Zimbabwe in its statement, “and is a panacea to socio-economic development, accountable governance and political stability.”

Human Rights Watch, which published a critical report on failure on the Zimbabwean government’s failure to protect press freedom in April, warns that credible elections – which President Robert Mugabe has suggested will take place in 2011 – cannot be held in the absence of a free media.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
PARIS, Apr 19 2010 (IPS)

“Please remember that we know where your child goes to school.”

French memorial to slain reporters at Bayeux, France. Credit: Town of Bayeux

In addition to such veiled threats, journalists run the risk of harassment, detention, arrest, assault and even murder in many countries, says the Paris-based agency, which would like governments to do something about the situation.

Ahead of its annual conference on World Press Freedom Day, May 3, UNESCO is calling on its member states to “reaffirm and implement their international commitments to guarantee and promote freedom of information”.

“Far too many journalists exercise their profession in an environment where restrictions on information are the norm, where dealing with pressure, harassment intimidation or even physical assault are all in a day’s work,” says UNESCO’s director-general Irina Bokova.

“I call on governments, civil society, the news media and individuals everywhere to join forces with UNESCO in promoting freedom of information all over the world,” she said in a statement.

This appeal, however, may be a hard sell in countries that routinely detain media workers or that look the other way when journalists are attacked as they carry out their work.

In 2009, some 77 journalists were killed, making the year one of the most dangerous for the media, according to official reports. So far this year, 22 journalists and other media workers (including cameramen, fixers and drivers) have been struck down, according to the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ).

“It’s turning out to be another bloody year for media professionals,” said Ernest Sagaga, IFJ’s human rights and information officer.

UNESCO says that one of the main issues affecting the protection of journalists is the impunity that their killers enjoy in some regions.

Mogens Schmidt, the agency’s deputy assistant director-general for the communication and information sector, told IPS that “more than 70 percent of the culprits” have not been brought to trial.

“Journalism is a lifeblood of democracy,” he said. “So how can you ensure fundamental freedoms if journalists cannot practice their profession freely?”

In 2008, UNESCO requested information from 28 countries about their judicial follow-up of the killings of journalists during 2006-2007, and only 13 provided detailed information. Nearly all of the investigations were described as “on-going”. There had been two convictions.

“Member states must… take a firm stance to prevent the murders of journalists and to ensure that the perpetrators of crimes and acts of violence against media professionals and associated personnel are duly prosecuted,” the agency said in its related report.

The UNESCO World Press Freedom Day conference, which this year is being held in Brisbane, Australia, May 2 -3, has as its theme “freedom of information, the right to know”. It will examine how access to information affects democracy, among other issues, and will also focus on the experiences of journalists who face official repression as they try to do their job.

Such repression may include raids on media offices, repeated arrests, interrogation, the cutting of broadcast signals and the apparent sanctioning or cover-up of killings.

The countries that carry out these acts include many UNESCO member states, signatories of the 2007 Medellin Declaration which says that “press freedom can only be enjoyed when media professionals are free from intimidation, pressure and coercion”.

Schmidt acknowledges that it is difficult to discuss freedom of information with certain governments, but he said that UNESCO was having results through “capacity building” and silent diplomacy.

“The fact that we serve as a go-between can be a way of creating more space for independent media,” he told IPS. “The whole awareness-raising work is one side of the issue. The other is working with member states.”

UNESCO says it is the only UN agency with a mandate to defend freedom of expression and press freedom because of its constitution.

“By making governments, parliamentarians and other decision-makers aware of the need to guarantee free expression, UNESCO promotes freedom of expression and freedom of the press as a basic human right”, the agency says.

To emphasise this right, the agency has awarded an annual Press Freedom Prize since 1997. This year’s prize goes to Chilean journalist Mónica González Mujica, a “heroine of the struggle against dictatorship in her country”, according to UNESCO.

González has been imprisoned and tortured as a result of her investigative reporting, but has continued working as a journalist. She is director of the Center of Journalism and Investigation in Santiago.

She will receive the 25,000 US dollars prize from UNESCO’s Bokova at the conference in Australia on World Press Freedom Day.

During the day, UNESCO is also urging newsrooms around the world to observe one minute of silence to pay tribute to the journalists killed each year.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
PARIS, Mar 25 2010 (IPS)

A record 77 journalists were killed last year, making 2009 one of the most dangerous years for media workers, according to a report published Thursday by UNESCO, the United Nations’ cultural agency.

The organisation denounced the slayings, saying that governments need to do more to protect journalists and to bring their killers to justice.

The report, prepared by UNESCO’s International Programme for the Development of Communication (IPDC), says that “impunity” is one of the main problems in attacks against the media, and that this represents a “severe threat” to freedom of expression.

The report comes as the IPDC’s 39-member intergovernmental council holds a three-day meeting here. On Friday, when the meeting ends, officials are expected to adopt a draft decision recommending that the IPDC “continue monitoring the follow-up of killings condemned by UNESCO’s director-general”.

They will also advise the agency to propose that a one-minute silence be observed in newsrooms around the world on May 3, World Press Freedom Day, “to honour the journalists killed each year”.

Sources told IPS that some UNESCO member-states objected to being named in the U.N. agency’s press statement on the report. But media-protection groups such as Reporters Without Borders (RWB) and the International Federation of Journalists have made available the list of countries that account for the 77 killings.

The Philippines tops the list with 33 journalists killed there in 2009, according to RWB. UNESCO, meanwhile, says that there were “37 murders targeting journalists” during the same period in the Philippines. Of these, about 30 journalists were killed in only one day, in an ambush on Nov. 23.

Although war-torn Somalia, Iraq and Afghanistan also feature on the list, many of the journalists were killed in countries outside of conflict zones, the UNESCO survey said. The murders were carried out to stop them revealing sensitive information – about drug trafficking, violation of human rights or corruption, the report said.

In Russia, for instance, five journalists were murdered last year, as they investigated crime and corruption.

Vincent Brossel, a spokesman for RWB, told IPS that there was too little coordination among the various agencies working to protect journalists, but that his group had joined with UNESCO to publish a practical handbook to help journalists in the field.

“We also want to expose the serious situation that’s taking place,” he said. “Much more needs to be done. Governments should create conditions that are favourable for media workers, especially in certain countries where there is always violence related to elections.”

Brossel said that journalists are increasingly seen as a target for a wide range of attackers, including terrorists and religious fundamentalists. Nine journalists were killed in Somalia last year and five in Pakistan, and investigations indicate such groups were involved, he said.

As part of a protection campaign, RWB has developed a programme to rent bullet-proof vests to the media, especially war correspondents. The programme is currently available only in France, RWB’s headquarters, but it will be expanded to other countries, Brossel said.

The group also organises training sessions with the French army that simulates the reporting conditions in war zones.

Arnold Karskens, a Dutch war correspondent for the daily ‘De Pers’ and author of seven books on war and war journalism, said such measures offered limited security.

“The only real protection is for governments to make it known that there will be consequences for those who kill journalists,” he told IPS in an interview. “In some countries, militants know that they have carte blanche to kill journalists who are against a political party or against certain issues. Governments must tell these attackers that they will face the consequences.”

Karskens, who has covered the war in Iraq and reported from many other conflict zones, said measures should be taken to bring attention to every murder and to ensure prosecution of the perpetrators.

“If they want to kill you, they will,” he added. “But they shouldn’t be able to get away with it.”

So far six journalists have been killed this year, but murder is not the only threat media workers face. According to RWB figures, 178 journalists and 120 “netizens” have been imprisoned since the year began.

Without naming names, UNESCO this week reminded its member-states that the organisation had adopted the Medellin Declaration in 2007 which states that “press freedom can only be enjoyed when media professionals are free from intimidation, pressure and coercion”.

This declaration requires states “to uphold their obligations to prevent, investigate and punish crimes against journalists,” says the agency’s report.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
GABORONE, May 13 2009 (IPS)

While the international theme for World Press Freedom Day was “Fostering Dialogue, Mutual Understanding and Reconciliation”, the Botswana government and the media seemed to take the opposite route – taking turns to snub each other’s calls for dialogue.

Journalists protest new media law requiring, among other things, registration and accreditation of journalists and an enforced right to reply. Credit: Ephraim Nsingo/IPS

After honouring his invitation and arriving at the event on time, all seemed to be on track that government spokesperson, Jeff Ramsay, would take part. And indeed, he was the first to take his place on the podium. But when it was his turn to speak, Ramsay shocked the audience by using the platform to merely state that he would no longer participate.

“Last month I willingly accepted an invitation from MISA-Botswana to participate in this panel. I did so in the context of government’s continued willingness to openly engage with stakeholders and the general public on issues surrounding the Media Practitioners Act, as passed by parliament last year,” Ramsay told the audience.

“It has, however, come to my attention that a legal notice relevant to tonight’s panel topic was received by the Attorney General’s Chambers yesterday (May 6), which was moreover authored by tonight’s moderator [Mr Batsho Nthoi]. Given these facts, as well as additional information that has also come to my attention over the last 24 hours, I have come to the inescapable conclusion that it would be inappropriate for me to take any further active part in these proceedings.”

The media lobby, stunned by Ramsay’s reaction to their registration of the statutory notice, has defended its actions.

“The step brings to substance the publishers resolution in March 2009 in which they resolved to take the legal route in their quest to have the law repealed,” reads a MISA statement.

“Among other issues, the notice challenges clauses of registration and accreditation of journalists, enforced Right to Reply, as well as its implications on the constitution of the country and its international commitments. The notice continues to call on the courts to declare the Act as invalid.”

Civil society activists outside the media have also been drawn into the drive to contest the MPA and its impact on access to information and freedom of expression.

“This law is basically draconian and is very limiting and will shut down the space for meaningful debate on key issues,” argued Diana Moswele, a policy advisor with the Botswana Network on Ethics, Law and HIV/Aids (BONELA).

South Africa-based media lawyer Lloyd Kuveya explained that the new law could impact negatively on Botswana’s international standing.

“What has happened has shocked many people who have always praised Botswana as a successful democracy.”

But not everyone supports a total rejection. Journalist Regis Maburutse of the Business Diary publication rounded on the media for boycotting debate on the MPA when it was still a Bill.

“The law was passed, and now we are crying foul. A militant stance will not work, we need to be diplomatic with the government because this is now law, and they can enforce it anytime.”

University of Botswana law academic, Mike Mothobi, has also advocated for a less confrontational stance. “We need to have a system of both self and statutory regulation. This is what in my view the new law seeks to achieve.”

Civil society and the media are being backed by the country’s main opposition party, the Botswana National Front (BNF). In a solidarity statement, BNF spokesperson, Moeti Mohwasa, accused the government of having “overplayed its hand to the extent of putting its palm on the mouths of the people” which he described as “an affront to democracy”. There is also unease with the MPA in the ranks of the ruling party.

After numerous standoffs over the MPA in 2008, President LT. Gen. Seretse Khama Ian Khama met a delegation of the Botswana Editors Forum on April 20. The parties seemed, for the first time since the enactment of the law, to draw closer to each other. A follow up meeting on May 6 appears to have been similarly conciliatory. But the legal action by publishers has evoked a new round in the tit-for-tat battle and has set the stage for a bruising battle ahead.

In an address to a protest march staged by journalists in the capital, Gabarone on May 9, the secretary general of the United Congregational Church of Southern Africa, Reverend Prince Dibeela, said it was “ironic” that the Botswana government, was an “outspoken critic” of Zimbabwe, yet it was “plagiarising their laws” and over regulating the country.

Excerpt:

By Joyce Mulama
NAIROBI, May 2 2009 (IPS)

Four years ago, a furious Lucy Kibaki, Kenya’s First Lady, marked World Press Freedom Day by storming the offices of leading independent publisher the Nation Group with her entourage.”

David Makali Credit:

She was outraged by the group’s portrayal of her dispute with a neighbour and seized phones and laptops in a demonstration of the low respect one powerful figure has for a free press.

Today the situation is little better. In Kenya and Uganda which are considered heavyweights in the region, continued backsliding in press freedom has threatened their democratic gains.

David Makali, chairman of the East Africa Editors’ Forum says, conditions in these two states set the pace for how other countries in the region handle press freedom. Hopes for a free press have been deflated with the continued existence of repressive media laws and heightened attacks on media outlets in East Africa.

In a candid interview with IPS, Makali shared his thoughts on trends of press freedom in the region.

IPS: How would you rank press freedom in East Africa? David Makali: I think East Africa is not very well-ranked in terms of press freedom. On a scale of A to E, probably East Africa is at C; not the worst, but not the best.

I think there is moderate respect for press freedom but that respect is not founded on any solid legal or political foundation. It is dicey and the media is vulnerable to sporadic attacks from predators such as politicians, private gangs as well as commercial forces.

These threats don’t seem to be relenting. They are actually getting worse, because the political systems in all these countries are not geared towards protecting press freedom as a fundamental policy.

As a matter of practice, governments in this region do not hold press freedom as one of the cardinal rights or freedoms that they need to guarantee for society.

IPS: What other factors have jeopardised media operations? DM: I am most worried about the corporate and commercial impact on the freedom and independence of the media. It is not visible but it probably the most dangerous threat that we have. It has taken over the position of government as a threat to press freedom.

Because of competition and the whole struggle for survival by media enterprises, they become susceptible to manipulation by corporate entities, and the integrity of the news can no longer be ascertained. You do not know whether what you are reading is motivated by corporate and commercial interests or the genuine public interest.

Then of course there is the second threat to press freedom which comes from non-state actors; either private citizens working in cahoots [with the state] or [government agents] disguising themselves as private but attacking the press, media houses and individual journalists anonymously.

We see that in Tanzania, for example, the attacks on MwanaHalisi [a weekly publication which was banned for three months in October 2008] which was unprecedented.

Museveni did the same in Uganda when he banned the Monitor just like that. We have seen [private television station] NTV- Uganda being put off-air for indefinite periods; attacks on the Red Pepper, attacks on the New Vision journalists [two independent Ugandan newspapers].

In Kenya we remember the hooded guys who attacked the Standard Group [a media house comprising newspapers and a television station], acting on the guise of private people aggrieved by the content of media houses, but in fact I think they are accomplices of the state.

IPS: What is your take on media laws in the region; is the situation getting better? DM: No. They are the obvious government threats to press freedom by virtue of their oppressive nature, and are being enforced on the media across the region to protect political interests or to prevent uncomfortable truths from being published.

IPS: The theme of this year’s World Press Freedom day is the “Potential of the media in fostering dialogue, mutual understanding and reconciliation”. How can the media be effective given the environment under which it operates in the region? DM: First of all, for people to begin demanding any responsibility from the press either in terms of achieving reconciliation, fostering unity, there has to be regard and respect for press freedom by governments. Governments cannot want to have their cake and eat it or societies for that matter cannot want to have their cake and eat it.

They must first give to the press what is theirs; freedom to practice, and then begin demanding of it certain obligations to serve the society in which they operate. If that can be guaranteed, then I think the media has a significant role to play because as we have noticed when there is conflict, the media cannot thrive.

IPS: Authorities have justified their actions by accusing the media of exercising irresponsible journalism. What are your thoughts? DM: There can be no press freedom without responsibility.

It is reciprocal and it is the bare minimum that should be expected of journalists that if you are given certain privileges, you need to reciprocate in terms of how you practice.

And journalists, media owners and practitioners need to give back to society ethical products that promote social harmony, development and peace.

It has come across since the 2007 election in Kenya that radio stations, especially broadcast media, incited ethnic disharmony. The jury is still out because no clear-cut evidence has been provided to link particular broadcasts with particular flare-ups or crimes. But the assumption is that the general conduct of the media encouraged ethnic disharmony.

I think the media in this country, in this region, need to reflect on their role and see how they can become agents of positive change and aggregate conflict rather than maximize on differences.

That calls for responsible editorship. So perhaps it is time to begin asking who are the decision makers within our media outlets, and there has not been sufficient regard of consideration given to qualifications of people who are in that crucial gate-keeping role.

From where I sit, there is clearly need to consider strongly some benchmarks for the gate-keeper role within all stations, all media outlets that are coming up, especially the vernacular stations where people have been appointed more for their ability, knowledge of folk-lore and ability to communicate in their vernacular languages than their capacity for ethical decision-making and editorial judgment.

That is the challenge that faces our media which must be addressed through thematic training and exposure to the code of ethics of journalism, so that we can have a reduction in the number of the incidences of unethical decisions and unethical broadcasts and content going out.

Excerpt:

By Najum Mushtaq
NAIROBI, May 27 2008 (IPS)

The May edition of popular Ethiopian entertainment magazine Enku did not appear on newsstands as scheduled this month. Ethiopian police impounded all 10,000 copies before they could be distributed; Alemayehu Mahtemework, the magazine's publisher and deputy editor, was charged with threatening public order and spent five days in detention, along with three of his staff.

Serkalem Fasil, a journalist who was herself imprisoned by the Meles Zenawi government for writing articles critical of the conduct of the 2005 parliamentary elections, believes that the police action against the magazine was intended to send out a message to the media in general.

"The suppression of Ethiopia's free press is probably the most overlooked story in Africa," says Fasil whose exposés on election-rigging were followed by her arrest in November 2005 along with her brother, husband and a dozen others on charges of genocide and treason. Pregnant at the time of her arrest, she gave birth to her baby in jail – she would not be released for 18 months.

The charges against Alemayehu stem from Enku's cover story for May, a feature on the arrest and trial of one of the country's most popular singers, Tewodros Kassahun. Better known to Ethiopians as Teddy Afro, the singer appeared in court on April 23, where he pleaded not guilty to involvement in a hit-and-run accident in November 2006.

Razak Adam, an Ethiopian development worker based in Nairobi, says that anywhere else in the world, Kassahun's trial might simply be a story of celebrity misdeeds, but in Ethiopia, it is widely viewed as politically motivated. His music and public statements are critical of government policies and his April court appearance sparked impromptu protests in Addis Ababa, involving thousands of his fans, mostly teenagers. Such protests are a rare sight in the tightly-controlled Ethiopian capital. A similar spontaneous protest took place at the Addis Ababa Stadium on May 4, when many of the 35,000 fans at the 16th African Athletics Championships began chanting "Free Teddy" slogans after Ethiopian runner Kenenisa Bekele won the 5,000 meter race.

"In Ethiopia, the story is deeply political and complex as it reflects not only the precarious state of press freedom; it also raises some other critical but unaddressed issues which are pulling Ethiopian society apart," Adam told IPS.

These simmering issues encompass Ethiopia's past as well as its present. Kassahun sings tunes and lyrics that challenge ethnic and religious divisions in society. His 2005 hit, Yasteseryal ("redemption" in Amharic) was used by opposition parties as their anthem to rally the public against the government of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi. The video for the song includes images of Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie, the Derg – the repressive military government that succeeded the emperor – and the present leadership under Zenawi; the lyrics suggest that the regimes have changed, but the people still suffer. Since then, Kassahun's music has been banned from all state-controlled media.

To most of his listeners, though, Kassahun is a hero. By giving coverage to his trial, Mahtemework and his avowedly non-political magazine attracted the hostile attention of the government. Mahtemework says Enku has been routinely censored by its government-owned printer since it began covering Teddy Afro's music in December, but he did not anticipate his arrest or the confiscation of his magazine. "Ever since the third issue of our magazine, we have been subjected to censorship by the printer. We expected to be told that the coverage of the Tewodros Kassahun's trial would not pass the censors, but the impounding was a surprise to us."

The Enku episode is a continuation of the crackdown on independent media. Serkalem Fasil – arrested in 2005 – was not released until April 2007, when she was acquitted on all charges. But heavy fines had already been imposed on the three newspapers published by her company, Serkalem Publishing House, and they were eventually closed down. Though there is no legal justification, the government is refusing to grant her licences to start new newspapers.

The Ethiopian Free Press Journalists Association, along with Fasil, led the campaign for the release of Enku's editor. International press freedom watchdogs also swiftly condemned the government's actions against Enku and its staff.

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists condemned Mahtemework's arrest and Reporters Without Borders, an international organisation that fights censorship and defends journalists, issued a statement saying, "The Ethiopian authorities have sent a very negative signal by choosing the eve… of World Press Freedom Day to arrest a journalist and seize an issue of an independent magazine." The organisation threatened to put Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi back on a list of what it calls "press freedom predators"; Zenawi was taken off the list in 2007, in recognition of an improvement in the media freedom in Ethiopia.

Despite his arrest and the charges pending against him, Mahtemework remained positive. "My morale is good. We want to continue publishing, but all our working capital is invested in the monthly issue which has been impounded… our hands are tied."

The onslaught against Enku cannot be seen in isolation from the wider political and cultural problems in Ethiopia. The Teddy Afro affair and the Enku episode are symptoms of the government's aversion to even a hint of dissent.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
SUVA, May 4 2008 (IPS)

Fiji’s interim government has come under withering criticism both nationally and internationally for the deportation on Friday of the Australian publisher of the leading ‘Fiji Times’ daily, Evan Hannah.

Hannah’s arrest came only hours after interim Prime Minister Commodore Frank Bainimarama delivered a World Media Freedom Day message saying that media freedom was alive in Fiji, but within limitations. “The Constitution provides for these limitations and media freedom must be exercised carefully in ensuring that our citizens are informed in a balanced, accurate and truthful manner,” he said.

Bainimarama also accused the media of “low standards”, adding that self-regulation by the Fiji Media Council was perhaps a failure. “Over the past year some media reporting have left much to be desired and some reports have been careless, irresponsible and some in fact have been inciteful and destabilising, posing a threat to national security and stability.’’

The Fiji Media Council said it was shocked and dismayed that on the eve of World Media Freedom Day the interim government should make a mockery of its claim that the media in Fiji is free. “Apparently Hannah is alleged to have breached his work permit by publishing matters that could be a threat to national security. However, rather than be transparent and publicly explain its actions the government is hiding behind a cloak of secrecy.”

In a statement on Friday, the minister for defence, national security and immigration, Ratu Epeli Ganilau, said Hannah was removed under Section 13(2) (g) of the Immigration Act, 2003, relating to prohibited immigrants. “Based on credible evidence and advice furnished to me, Hannah’s actions were breaching national security of the country,’’ the statement said.

Ganilau added that Hannah was “previously cautioned of the implications of his actions” which he chose to ignore. On the stop order issued by the High Court, Ganilau said it had not been officially received by immigration authorities before Hannah’s expulsion.

The Fiji Times, the largest newspapers in Fiji, rejected government claims that Hannah was threatening national security. “No proof of these allegations has been offered in either case,’’ the paper said in a weekend editorial.

Editor-in-chief Netani Rika told the media that the newspaper would not be intimidated and would carry on with its reporting.

The Pacific Islands News Association (PINA) president Joseph Ealedona described the deportation as a ‘’blatant attack on the freedom of the media in Fiji’’ and ‘’calculated to intimidate and silence voices critical of the interim government’’.

The Citizens’ Constitutional Forum (CCF) has also condemned the deportation. “The government is making a mockery of our legal justice system. We call on the interim government to stop violating rights of people in such a manner,” CCF chief executive officer Rev. Akuila Yabaki said.

A statement released by the state department of the United States said the expulsion of a second newspaper publisher in less than 10 weeks raises serious questions about the government’s respect for the freedom of the press. “The United States continues to condemn the military coup and the interim government’s actions to suppress the freedom of speech of those in the media,’’ said the statement.

Australian foreign affairs minister Stephen Smith issued a statement saying that the deportation was a “reprehensible attack by the illegal Fiji interim government on human rights and freedom of speech’’.

“It is unconscionable that the Fiji authorities did not provide any notification to the Australian High Commission and have still not provided any explanation for Hannah’s summary detention and expulsion. Equally outrageous is the fact that the Fiji regime, despite repeated requests, did not allow appropriate consular access to Hannah. It says a lot that the Fiji regime has acted in this way on the eve of World Press Freedom Day.’’

“This is yet another reprehensible act in a disturbing pattern of behaviour since the coup of December 2006 which has resulted in the severe erosion of fundamental human rights, freedom of the press, and the rule of law in Fiji,” said the statement.

The Fiji Media Council chairman, Daryl Tarte, vowed that the media in Fiji would not be intimidated by this development. “If the interim government believes the expulsion of people like Russell Hunter and Evan Hannah is going to force the media to be more accommodating to them, they are wrong. The media has a responsibility to reflect the views and opinions of the people of this nation and there are a great many people who do not agree with the government,’’ Tarte said.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
BANGKOK, May 2 2008 (IPS)

More than gaining the freedom to report on society’s problems Asian media must gauge it’s real contribution to the public‘s needs, especially at a time of increasing commercialisation.

This was the common theme running through an interactive dialogue here on Friday – ahead of World Press Freedom Day on May 3 – organised by the United Nations Economic, Social and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) around the theme of freedom of expression, access and empowerment.

“Press freedom is meaningful and important not only to journalists, but to society at large. With freedom of expression, more information becomes available to the people, ‘’ said UNESCO Bangkok director Sheldon Shaeffer. “With more information, people are empowered to participate in more activities affecting their lives. And to engage in discussion and debate, they must have freedom of expression… and so it goes.”

At the same time, media must make this space for freedom of expression work in terms of addressing the human development needs of the society it claims to benefit. Asia boasts several economic and human development achievements in the last few decades, but it is also home to growing inequalities, including economic gaps and their adverse effects on women.

“One of the causes of this inequality is ‘knowledge poverty’,” said Patrick Keuleers, head of the Democratic Governance Practice Team of the United Nations Development Programme.

Knowledge poverty, according to Keuleers, is the lack of information that helps prevent the impoverished from taking part in the economic, social and political processes around them. It also refers to the lack of transparency that leads to all types of corruption.

Calling Asia a “region of paradoxes”, Keuleers noted the ongoing explosion of many privately-owned media outlets and websites, as well as Internet users, in the region.

But more media avenues do not necessarily mean media that produce information that addresses social needs and social change. “At the same time, media outlets are often monopolised by private interests and many journalists practice some form of self-censorship in covering sensitive topics,” Keuleers said.

“Press freedom is not only about an individual’s right to expression, but it’s also about the value of making sure that important ideas are heard,” said Melinda Quintos de Jesus, executive director of the Philippines-based Centre for Media Freedom and Responsibility.

“The challenge to free press grows more serious as we gain more in communication media and technology,” she said. “We’re also challenged by the fact that some citizens out there are probably better informed than the journalists.”

With so many media tools available to the public, journalists are hard pressed to engage readers with news that have to contend with more entertaining sources, concedes Steven Gan, editor-in-chief of Malaysia’s independent online news site, Malaysiakini.com.

“As news journalists, it is our job to make our news relevant. It is our job to engage our readers and connect them. If our readers think that our news is not worth reading, then we are not doing our job,” he said at the UNESCO dialogue.

Apart from politically related repression that led to the deaths of 17 journalists worldwide in 2007, the problem of overcommercialisation in the media – which critics say has led to the ‘dumbing down’ of many media entities – is another cause for concern, participants at the discussion said.

While media organisations need to look after revenues, having this become their only goal and driving force could create an environment that discourages the generation of news and information around serious public issues because they are not attractive to the ‘market’.

Malaysiakini’s Gan knows the dilemma only too well. “This is something that we are worried about. But we wanted to provide a new economic model in terms of media organisations,” he said, explaining that the news site relies mainly on subscriptions, instead of advertising revenues.

“We separate business from editorial to the point that I don’t even know exactly what my chief executive officer is doing. One good thing is that my CEO is a former journalist who can run the business side of things and also understands what journalism is all about,” he added.

Malaysiakini also has policies to demand and protect editorial freedom. “Any investor who wants to do business with us has to sign a memorandum of agreement stating that they will not interfere with our editorial policies,” Gan explained.

De Jesus sees education as the only effective antidote to commercialisation taking control over the news media. Education, she added, is a “part of the whole process of developing good, autonomous and independent media because an educated person will always seek to know more”.

“Of course, there is always this human response to look at the bright side of life, to turn away from great seriousness. Yet, if we do that, we abdicate our responsibility as citizens,” she explained. “The whole issue of commercialisation rests on the public that we are serving. They will be the ones who will say ‘enough already’.”

But Roby Alampay, executive director of the Bangkok-based Southeast Asia Press Alliance, did not discount the possibility of something substantial coming out of what is considered frivolous and mundane.

“You don’t just give up on any type of mass communication because there could be an effective platform for people or community (to bring to light important issues),” he said.

Alampay cited the case of a Burmese astrologer who predicted that 2007 would not be a good year for the junta – and was subsequently investigated by the authorities. This, he said, was yet another example of the repression of freedom of expression in that country.

Alampay added: “When it comes to media, it’s easy for everything to become political and it’s a good thing. It’s also easy to cross over from something mundane to something serious.”

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
NEW YORK, May 2 2008 (IPS)

Over the last 15 years, at least 500 journalists were killed directly because of their work. But in less than 15 percent of cases have the perpetrators been brought to justice, according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).

"Every time a journalist is murdered and the killer is allowed to walk free, it sends a terrible signal to the press and to others who would harm journalists," said Joel Simon, executive director of CPJ.

Murder is used by states as the ultimate form of censorship, and the more these cases go unpunished, the more the press is silenced. In 2007 alone, there were 65 murders of journalists in connection to their reporting, making it the second deadliest year on record. Governments in most of these cases lack the will or the capacity to prosecute these crimes, CPJ says.

At a press conference held at the U.N. headquarters Tuesday, Simon, CPJ&#39s Communications Director Abi Wright, and CPJ board member and award-winning journalist from the Philippines, Sheila Coronel, released the "Impunity Index", which lists countries where murders of journalists are neither investigated nor solved.

Last November, CPJ launched the Global Initiative to Combat Impunity. The Index coincides with the World Press Freedom Day on May 4.

Countries that have been on the list in the past have refuted it by attacking CPJ&#39s methodology. This time, the list simply tallies the cases of journalists murdered in direct relation to their work and for which no conviction followed. For a country to be included on the list, there must be more than five unsolved murder cases from the years 1998 to 2007.

While expressing alarm at the number of journalists killed in conflict zones, CPJ did not include those cases for the sake of objectivity. Cases where there was a conviction of the assassin but not the mastermind were considered "solved" and not included on the list.

The countries highest on the Index were Iraq, Sierra Leone and Somalia. All three are suffering serious internal conflicts. But the nine others on the list are democracies – countries like India, Russia and Mexico, which have a functioning government and law enforcement institutions but where murders of journalists still go unpunished.

Coronel said that sometimes journalists are killed just for writing about low-level corruption. She cited the example of a journalist in the Philippines murdered for disclosing that a mayor had stolen steel beams from public construction sites to use for his own purposes. Such cases deter other local journalists from writing about corruption. And no arrests inspire more killings.

CPJ notes that there are other, more sophisticated ways to marginalise and silence the press, sometimes organised by government officials or in other cases by local crime networks. Intimidation and threats can have the same outcome in censoring reporters. As Simon said, the fact that a country is not on the list doesn&#39t mean that killings do not happen – it just means that they are not confirmed.

The aim of the Index list is to bring pressure from the international community. Convictions often happen when U.S. or other foreign reporters are murdered. But in the cases of local journalists, there is often no action from governments.

As Simon said, murder without consequence has a far reaching impact in spreading fear in society, preventing the free circulation of ideas and negatively impacting press freedom.

"We are calling for action, thorough investigations and vigorous prosecutions in all journalist homicides," he said.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
PORT OF SPAIN, Jun 27 2007 (IPS)

At a Caribbean media conference to mark World Press Freedom Day last month, Patrick Cozier, the general secretary of the Barbados-based Caribbean Broadcasting Union, issued a grim warning.

Cozier told delegates to the two-day meeting in St. Lucia that while the Caribbean was fortunate not to suffer the challenges encountered by journalists in South America, Southeast Asia, parts of Africa and the Middle East, the region should guard against lapsing into complacency as there were “threats which impinge upon the whole question of freedom and democracy in our societies”.

Recent events in the Caribbean have underscored his words.

Deportations from Antigua and Barbuda, arrests in Barbados, and a government advertising boycott of a leading Guyanese paper are among the developments that have forced Caribbean media workers to recall Cozier’s speech.

The Association of Caribbean Media Workers (ACM) said the crackdown has vindicated the predictions in its special report titled “The Looming Storm” released two years ago.

“There has never been any doubt in my mind that we face the prospect of a multifaceted assault on free expression in the Caribbean, if only because almost all our societies are in a state of social crisis,” said Wesley Gibbings, the ACM’s general secretary, who edited the 2005 report.

In Guyana, the Bharrat Jagdeo government has stuck to its position, despite regional and international criticism, of refusing to take out advertisements in the independent Stabroek News, which it felt had been critical of the administration prior to last year’s general and presidential elections.

The Government Information News Agency said that the decision to place advertisements in the Kaieteur News instead was based on economics rather than a press freedom issue.

“Kaieteur holds the mantle today as the largest private newspaper, carrying a deeper dissemination capacity than the Stabroek News, not only nationally but internationally within the Guyanese Diaspora in New York City,” the government news agency said, without providing supporting circulation figures.

Last month, a four-person regional media delegation, which tried to intervene in the dispute, said it was unable to resolve the issue after holding talks with Jagdeo.

The Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) also wrote to Jagdeo, referring him to the Inter-American standards on the allocation of public advertising.

“According to these standards, the use of official advertising in order to punish or reward social mass media based on their approach to coverage may create an undue restriction on the right to freedom of expression enshrined in Article 13 of the American Convention on Human Rights and Article IV of the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man,” the IACHR said, giving Guyanese government 15 days to respond.

Across the border, the state-owned Suriname Television Service pulled the plug on a popular news programme after Vice President Ram Sardjoe reportedly called on the producers not to air segments on the ongoing China-Taiwan diplomatic tussle in the country.

Producers of “Suriname Today” said the programme would have dealt with the efforts by Taiwan to get Suriname to switch its diplomatic allegiance from China.

The Surinamese Association of Journalists described the intervention as a “flagrant violation of the right of free expression”.

Sardjoe insists that his intervention was necessary. “I regret that the producers are claiming that they were being censored, but as the government we have to look after the national interest of the country,” he said.

In Jamaica, where general elections are due later this year, the media have been caught in the middle as the two main political parties intensify their campaigning.

Both the Press Association of Jamaica, which represents media workers, and the Media Association of Jamaica, which represents media owners, have raised concerns about “inflammatory” statements by the leadership of both parties.

The two bodies have since called for a meeting with the political ombudsman, Bishop Herro Blair, particularly after Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller fired another salvo, accusing media bosses of suppressing news that portrays her party in a positive light.

Her comments seemed directed at the Jamaica Observer, after the paper did not carry a political poll which showed the ruling People’s National Party ahead of the main opposition Jamaica Labour Party.

Meanwhile, the arrest of a television cameraman and the “roughing up” of a newspaper reporter and photographer while covering a motor vehicle accident has led to a call for the enactment of press freedom legislation in Barbados.

Attorney Michael Lashely made the call after his client, Jimmy Gittens, was released on 750 dollars bail and ordered to reappear in court on Jul. 11 on charges of trespassing in the compound of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital.

“I also call for a Freedom of Information Act because we definitely do need some sort of legislation to allow the press to do what is necessary once their actions are within the parametres of the law,” he said.

In Antigua, the deportation of journalists Vernon Khelawan and Lennox Linton has also raised eyebrows.

Khelawan, a Trinidadian, and Linton, a Dominican, were booted out of the country earlier this month, with Prime Minister Baldwin Spencer saying they lacked the necessary work permits.

“There comes a time when one has to deal with the laws of this country and if it affects certain persons, so be it,” Spencer said, while his Labour Minister, Dr. Jacqui Quinn-Leandro, a former journalist, applauded the decision to expel the media workers. Both men deny the charges, and say they will take the matter to the Trinidad-based Caribbean Court of Justice, which has responsibility for interpreting the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Single Market and Economy regulations that allow for free movement of workers, journalists included, across the region.

The Association of Caribbean Media Workers said the Antigua incident provided “evidence” that that government “is not committed to honour its obligations under the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas and is prepared to take action in contravention of the rights of journalists to practice their profession.”

“This is not an assault on breached immigration regulations, it is an attack on the free press,” said the ACM, which has written CARICOM chairman Dr. Ralph Gonsalves, who is also the prime minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, about the issue.

Excerpt:

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, May 3 2006 (IPS)

The United Nations is willing to convene an international conference to formulate ethical guidelines for journalists covering one of the most politically sensitive issues in the world body: terrorism.

Implicitly calling for a virtual ban on interviewing terrorists, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan says that both civil society and mass media should play a prominent role in countering “hyper-nationalistic and xenophobic messages that glorify mass murder and martyrdom”.

In a new 32-page report on terrorism released here Tuesday, he said the news media may wish to study the experiences of countries that have adopted voluntary codes of conduct for journalists covering terrorism, including, for example, bans on interviewing terrorists.

The study, which was requested by some 150 world leaders at the U.N. World Summit last September, will go before the 191-member General Assembly on May 11.

The United Nations, Annan said, stands ready to work with journalists’ associations and press freedom groups on this specific issue, including by convening an international conference, if so desired.

Last month, news media the world over ran statements and videos by Osama bin Laden, Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi and Ayman Al-Zawahiri, each with a price on their heads.

The United States has offered over 50 million dollars for the capture of the three – dead or alive. But all have received considerable play both in the print and electronic media – particularly in the Middle East.

The administration of Pres. George W. Bush has singled out Bin Laden as the prime architect of the terrorist attacks on the United States on Sep. 11 2001. Al-Zawahiri has been described as a second-in-command to Bin Laden, while al-Zarqawi is leading the current anti-U.S. insurgency in Iraq.

“In Britain, the government banned broadcast interviews with members of the Irish Repubican Army (IRA) – and ended up negotiating with them,” says Ian Williams, U.N. correspondent for The Nation, columnist for MaximsNews and the DeadlinePundit blogger.

“While I was president of the U.N. Correspondents’ Association, we invited Sinn Fein leaders to speak as a protest against such forms of censorship,” he said. From China, to Uzbekistan to Washington, governments brand their opponents as terrorists.

“In Israel, a government whose political predecessors practiced random bombings and massacres of Arabs under the U.N. mandate, and assassinations of British officials during the war against the Nazis, now says that no one should talk to an elected ‘terrorist’ government of the Palestinian Authority,” Williams told IPS. And it does so while shelling packed civilian areas in Gaza.

“Freedom of information is far too important to risk for expedient or hysterical definitions by officials of any government. A journalists’ duty is to ask hard and searching questions of any political actor, whether ‘freedom fighter’, ‘terrorist’, elected representative, or self-appointed tyrant,” said Williams.

On the question of an international conference, he said that such a meeting would be useful – but no government can be trusted to control information, or to dictate what or who the media show.

In his study, Annan said that “just as the media cycle is exploited by terrorists every day, we need to take on the challenge to match their narrative of hate with the narrative of victims; the narrative of communities divided and broken by terrorist acts; the narrative of courage of those who risk their lives going about their daily business; the narrative of values for which the United Nations stands.”

Tony Jenkins, U.S. Correspondent for the Expresso of Lisbon and also a former president of the U.N. Correspondents Association, told IPS: “I don’t have a problem with ethical guidelines per se. But the thorny old issues remain: who gets to define who is a terrorist? Whose ethics?”

He pointed out that the “recent cartoons fiasco taught us a lesson”. In Denmark, he said, the cartoons of Prophet Muhammad might by some standards have been tasteless and or insensitive, but they were not unethical. On the other hand, they were clearly deemed unethical by a majority of the world’s 1.3 billion Muslims.

“Worse, I think the emphasis is misplaced. You cannot censor your way to victory in the campaign against those who use terrorist methods. Rather than shutting Bin Laden up, expose him all the more. Defeat his ideas,” said Jenkins.

Any good journalist in the field would die to interview an Osama – often, they literally do, he said. And if he or she is a good journalist, Bin Laden and his views would be exposed for everyone to judge, as U.S. television journalist Peter Arnett proved..

“That is what the media do. We’ve had too much censorship, not too little, especially self-censorship. There’s been too much media kowtowing to the powers that be, not too little, as the White House press corps has proved to everyone’s detriment,” Jenkins added.

Perhaps the secretary-general, he said, could instead use the occasion of World Press Freedom Day Wednesday to do something to help ensure that 63 journalists and five media assistants are not killed this year as they were in 2005.

“Or perhaps he could do something about the 120 journalists who are currently in prison for exercising their profession?”

One of the two worst offenders, China, is a permanent member of the Security Council (Cuba is the other, according to some watchdog groups). “In Russia, another permanent member, we have also seen the media come under assault and outright control by the government,” he said.

Jenkins said the United Nations is custodian of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 19 of which is freedom of the press. If ever there was a time and a day to speak truth to power, today is it, he added.

In his study, Annan also said the new breed of terrorists rely on communication to build support and recruit members.

“We must deny them this access, particularly by countering their use of the Internet – a rapidly growing vehicle for terrorist recruitment and dissemination of information and propaganda.”

In 1998, according to the report, there were fewer than 20 “terrorist websites” on the Internet. By 2005, that number was estimated to have surged into the thousands.

“Indeed, it seems that some major recent attacks drew support from content on the Internet,” Annan said.

“Terrorists take advantage of differences in national responses – if blocked from operating in one state, they can simply relocate to another. In this way, Internet can become a virtually safe haven that defies national borders,” the secretary-general warned.

In an implicit reference to the United States – which has justified the suspension of civil liberties and rule of law in the name of fighting terrorism – Annan said the international community “should not sacrifice its values and lower its standards to those of the terrorists”.

The United States has come under heavy fire for the treatment of suspected terrorists at the U.S.-run Guantanamo Bay detention facility in Cuba.

At the same time, U.S. soldiers have been accused of torturing and humiliating terror suspects in the Abu Ghraib prison outside the Iraqi capital of Baghdad and the Baghram airbase in Afghanistan. The mistreatment of suspects is also a violation of the Fourth Geneva Conventions which govern the treatment of prisoners of war.

Annan said that international cooperation to fight terrorism must be conducted in full conformity with international law, “including the charter of the United Nations and relevant international conventions and protocols.”

He pointed out that when human rights are abused as part of a campaign against terrorism, terrorists exploit the abuse to mobilise recruits and seek to further justify their actions.

Excerpt:

By Moyiga Nduru
JOHANNESBURG, May 3 2006 (IPS)

As countries around the world commemorate World Press Freedom Day on Wednesday, a mixed picture has emerged of the state of media freedom in Southern Africa.

“Angola, which is recovering from decades of conflict, is…opening up. Angola passed its access to information act in 2002. It’s a good gesture by the government to come out with such an act – but it needs a lot of improvements,” said Kaitira Kandjii, regional director of the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA). This non-governmental organisation (NGO), based in the Namibian capital of Windhoek, lobbies for press freedom in the 14-nation Southern African Development Community (SADC).

In a publication issued Wednesday titled ‘So This Is Democracy? Report on the state of media freedom and freedom of expression in southern Africa 2005’, MISA said it issued 155 alerts in 2005 about media freedom and freedom of expression violations in the 11 SADC countries it covered.

“This is a decrease of 8.3 percent over the 169 alerts recorded the previous year in 2004, and a 57 percent increase over the 84 alerts issued in 1994, when MISA first began monitoring…violations in the sub-continent,” noted the publication.

The countries monitored were Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

“A breakdown of the 155 alerts issued in 2005 reveals among others, that 16 journalists were attacked, 14 detained (and) 36 censored whilst 9 victories – either through the adoption of positive legislation or where charges were dropped against a journalist – were recorded,” MISA noted.

“No journalists were killed as a result of their work in 2005.”

Nonetheless, “We have some severe challenges to press laws in the region, Zimbabwe and Swaziland being (among) them,” William Bird, director of the Media Monitoring Project – an NGO headquartered in South Africa’s financial centre of Johannesburg – told IPS.

MISA agrees that Zimbabwe is currently one of the worst SADC countries for journalists to work in.

“Although Zimbabwe continues to lead in terms of the number of individual violations recorded, MISA documented a 62 percent decrease in the number of violations (from 120 in 2002 to 46 in 2005) in Zimbabwe,” says the organisation in its May 3 report.

But, this is not necessarily a sign of improvements in press freedom. Kandjii attributes the 62 percent decrease to “the fact that the independent media in Zimbabwe has been effectively silenced with the vigorous application of the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA) and the Public Order and Security Act (POSA).”

He told IPS that government had tightened the noose around the media with the signing into law of the Criminal Bill last June: “(This) makes it increasingly difficult for the few remaining journalists who survived the implementation of AIPPA and POSA to perform their newsgathering tasks without fear or favour.”

In addition, the General Laws Amendment Bill had increased penalties against journalists who were convicted of publishing statements thought to insult or undermine the authority of the president.

Zimbabwe has been in the grip of a political and economic crisis in recent years, during which the country has adopted a problematic land redistribution programme, and held several elections marred by human rights abuses.

In Swaziland, Africa’s last absolute monarchy, a new constitution that endorses media freedom and freedom of expression was given the green light by parliament and King Mswati the Third last year. However, there is “much public scepticism” about whether authorities will observe it, notes MISA.

“While on the surface government projects itself as friendly to critical and crusading media, politicians continue with an undeclared and covert policy of assimilating journalists through threats; recruiting them as ministerial private secretaries; or offering them perks,” adds the organisation.

“These ploys seem to be working to the extent that they have sown distrust within the profession, polarised the media and divided journalists.”

Litigation was also described as a threat to media freedom in Swaziland.

Opposition parties have been banned in this country for more than three decades. King Mswati has also come under heavy criticism for his extravagance at a time when – according to the United Nations World Food Programme – two thirds of Swazis live below the poverty line.

While the SADC Protocol on Culture, Information and Sport, adopted in 2002, seeks to increase access to information in the region, its benefits have yet to be fully realised.

“It still needs to be ratified by some countries,” said Kandjii, adding that “…the practice on the ground needs to change. Lower government officials continue to deny access to information. We are calling on governments to change their attitudes and their old cultures and open up.”

He also hopes that anti-corruption acts introduced in Namibia, Malawi and Zambia will boost access to information, as these oblige governments to make available certain details to organisations probing allegations of graft.

But, are journalists themselves taking advantage of access to information laws where these are in effect?

“The laws are in place, we are comfortable with it. But I don’t think the media have used them frequently,” Joe Thloloe, chairman of the Johannesburg-based South African National Editors’ Forum, told IPS.

“It’s a state of lack of resources and staff that make them not use the access to information act to investigate stories,” he added. “There are very few news organisations that are investing in it like the ‘Mail & Guardian’ and ‘Sunday Times’. On the whole, people resort to the easy route of newsgathering and publishing.”

Bird thinks ignorance may also have something to do with this trend: “I don’t think the majority of people in South Africa are aware of the existence of the act (the Promotion of Access to Information Act, of 2000),” he said. “There is a great need for awareness campaigns about the law.”

MISA also has concerns about other developments in the South African media sector, notably last year’s high court ruling that prevented the ‘Mail & Guardian’, an independent weekly based in Johannesburg, from publishing a report on the so-called “Oilgate” scandal. This matter concerned allegations that an oil company named Imvume had diverted public funds to the ruling African National Congress ahead of general elections in 2004.

“The banning presented the genuine fear that the judgement may open the way for others seeking to prevent newspapers from publishing articles about their questionable or irregular conduct, by enabling them to obtain legal censorship of the media through the courts,” Kandjii said.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
MEXICO CITY, May 2 2006 (IPS)

Since Mexican President Vicente Fox took office in December 2000, 15 journalists have been killed in the line of duty, five were murdered for reasons unrelated to their work and two are missing.

The deaths of these journalists, added to the self-imposed censorship adopted by media workers in Mexico for fear of violent reprisals, and the recent passage of media laws that “restrict the right to freedom of expression,” have generated deep concern, Amerigo Incalcaterra, the local representative of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), said on Tuesday.

According to studies by the non-governmental Centre for Journalism and Public Ethics (CEPET), 121 media workers have been killed in Mexico since 1970. The largest number of victims (46) were killed during the administration of president Carlos Salinas (1988-1994).

CEPET reported that 15 reporters have been murdered during Fox’s administration, which ends in December, and listed the names of the victims, their jobs, and the circumstances of their deaths.

The wave of murders of journalists is attributed to violent drug trafficking gangs, which are especially active in northern Mexico along the border with the United States.

We trust “that the State will take the necessary measures to protect and guarantee press freedom, which is essential for the consolidation of democracy and the rule of law in this country,” Incalcaterra said.

On the eve of World Press Freedom Day, Incalcaterra took part in a conference on the issue this Tuesday, alongside Leonarda Reyes, the director of CEPET, and Carlos Castillo, with the office of the Special Prosecutor to Investigate Crimes Against Journalists.

According to Reyes, the government “has been ineffective in the fight against organised crime,” and this has led to the killing of media workers.

CEPET is waging an ongoing campaign against the violence that journalists face in Mexico, and demands government action.

Under pressure from the outcry triggered by the murders, the Fox administration set up the Special Prosecutor’s office in February. Its director, Castillo, said that his office needs more time to prove its effectiveness.

However, he recognised that there are obstacles, as it is not easy to demonstrate the connection between murders of journalists and the work they were doing.

The Inter American Press Association states that the most dangerous area today for journalists to work in is the north of Mexico, where drug traffickers kill, kidnap and threaten reporters with impunity.

In one of the latest incidents, in February, two hooded assailants entered the premises of El Mañana, a local daily newspaper in the city of Nuevo Laredo, on the U.S. border, where they fired more than 30 shots and threw a grenade, seriously wounding one of the journalists.

Reporters and media outlets in northern Mexico, including El Mañana, acknowledge that in the present climate of fear and threats, they have opted for self-censorship when reporting on drug trafficking.

Most of the crimes against journalists go unpunished, as do nearly all those committed by gangs of drug traffickers.

International organisations, such as the Committee to Protect Journalists and Reporters Without Frontiers, warn that journalism is one of the most dangerous occupations in Mexico today.

However, they recognise that the State itself is not now guilty of exerting undue pressure on freedom of expression and of the press, in contrast to the seven decades – from 1929 to 2000 – when Mexico was governed by the Institutional Revolutionary Party.

But while progress has been made, “it is a matter of concern to find that freedom of opinion and expression is still threatened, by physical attacks on journalists and other media workers,” Incalcaterra insisted.

So far this year, the OHCHR has registered three murders of journalists, three attacks and five death threats.

Incalcaterra said that another cause for concern about freedom of expression in Mexico was the approval of new laws governing radio and television, in March.

According to the OHCHR representative, the media reforms approved by legislators and signed into law by President Fox “limit and restrict the rights to freedom of opinion and speech.”

The laws were passed amid intense lobbying by the Televisa and TV Azteca media giants, whose hold over most of the broadcasting spectrum was strengthened by the new legislation.

Under the new rules, broadcasters who already operate given frequencies can extend their use to provide digital services of all kinds, simply by notifying the government. But potential competitors will have to bid for broadcasting frequencies in public tenders.

There is no provision in the new laws for educational media, sponsored by the federal government, local governments and public universities, or independent broadcasters such as community radio stations.

Incalcaterra said that the new legislation enshrines “pre-eminently economic criteria, to the detriment of freedom of speech and information.”

Legislators who opposed the new laws are preparing to bring a suit before the Supreme Court, arguing that they are unconstitutional.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
UNITED NATIONS, May 2 2006 (IPS)

As the world reflects on the best and worst places to practice journalism on Press Freedom Day Wednesday, independent writers’ groups and civil liberties advocates warn that Washington’s “war on terror” is putting a growing chill on the basic democratic right of free expression.

As the world reflects on the best and worst places to practice journalism on Press Freedom Day Wednesday, independent writers’ groups and civil liberties advocates warn that Washington’s “war on terror” is putting a growing chill on the basic democratic right of free expression.

“Thanks in large part to the Patriot Act, our government is once again excluding foreign writers and scholars from the country simply because of their political beliefs,” said Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)..

Romero was speaking at an event last week in New York titled “An Evening Without…”, organised with PEN’s American Centre, the oldest group in the world dedicated to defending free expression and fighting censorship.

Intended to highlight the problem of ideological exclusion, it featured famous authors and actors reading from the works of writers and scholars who have been banned from the United States because of their political opinions.

These included writers who were excluded during the Cold War, such as Colombian novelist and Nobel laureate Gabriel García Márquez, Italian playwright and Nobel laureate Dario Fo, Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, English writer Graham Greene, Chilean poet and Nobel laureate Pablo Neruda, and Mexican author Carlos Fuentes.

“Events like these help raise public awareness both of what is going on now and how these current struggles relate to similar struggles in the past,” Larry Siems, director of PEN’s Freedom to Write programme, told IPS.

“The U.S. has a history of excluding those whose political beliefs are deemed unacceptable. We believe this has been done to try to limit the scope of criticism and debate of controversial policies and issues,” he said.

One recent example is Tariq Ramadan, a Swiss native and visiting fellow at St. Antony’s College at Oxford University in England. Ramadan is considered a leading scholar of the Muslim world, who has published 20 books, more than 700 articles and approximately 170 audio tapes on Muslim issues.

Some of Ramadan’s most recent lectures include a discussion on “Why Islam Needs a Feminist Movement” and “Muslim Democrats in the West and Democratisation in the Muslim World: Prospects for Engagement”.

Named one of the most influential people of the 21st century by Time magazine, Ramadan is strongly opposed to all forms of terrorism. He deplored the 9/11 attacks, saying to Muslims “now more than ever we need to criticise some of our brothers… You are unjustified if you use the Koran to justify murder.”

In the beginning of 2004, the professor was offered a tenured position as the Henry R. Luce Professor of Religion, Conflict and Peacebuilding at the University of Notre Dame’s Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies in the U.S. state of Indiana.

Ramadan was granted a special non-immigrant visa in May 2004. However, in July, only nine days before he and his family were to move to Indiana, he was informed by the U.S. embassy in Switzerland that his visa had been revoked.

The reason emerged a month later. Russ Knocke, a spokesman for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement division of the Department of Homeland Security, cited the ideological exclusion provision as the basis for the revocation.

“We believe that Section 411 of the Patriot Act and subsequent laws threaten free expression because they can be used to exclude foreigners from the United States on the basis of their opinions and speech rather than on their actions,” Siems told IPS.

The USA Patriot Act was hurriedly enacted by Congress, at the behest of the George W. Bush administration, shortly after the Sep. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. It gave federal law enforcement agencies sweeping new surveillance and detention powers.

“We have launched a major advocacy campaign focusing exactly on the impact of post-9/11 laws and policies on freedom of expression,” Siems said.

Called the Campaign for Core Freedoms, it calls on U.S. lawmakers to protect the personal privacy necessary for the free exploration of information and ideas; protect public access to both governmental information and a full range of voices from the United States and around the world; and promote U.S. policies that reflect a core commitment to individual rights, preserve these rights at home, and expand them internationally.

Ramadan’s is not an isolated case. Recently, Fernando Rodriguez, a Bolivian human rights lawyer, and Dora Maria Telles, a scholar and Former Nicaraguan health minister, had their visas denied based on the Patriot Act’s terrorism provision.

Undeniably, the press in the United States enjoys more democratic freedoms than many other countries. A new report by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) released at U.N. headquarters Wednesday listed the 10 most censored countries in the world. North Korea topped the list, followed by Burma, Turkmenistan, Equatorial Guinea, Libya, Eritrea, Cuba, Uzbekistan, Syria and Belarus.

“People in these countries are virtually isolated from the rest of the world by authoritarian rules which muzzle the media and keep a chokehold on information trough restrictive laws, fear, and intimidation,” said CPJ Executive Director Ann Cooper. “Journalism should not be a criminal act,” she added.

However, as Siems notes, “many of the countries that act similarly are ones that the United States would not normally want to emulate in questions of freedom of expression and human rights”.

The administration has also been criticised for attempts to compel reporters to reveal their confidential sources in the name of national security. In its 2005 press freedom index, Reporters Without Borders noted that “the United States (44th) fell more than 20 places, mainly because of the imprisonment of New York Times reporter Judith Miller and legal moves undermining the privacy of journalistic sources.”

After the revocation of his visa, Ramadan sent a message to Muslims around the world: “Know who you are, who you want to be, and start talking and working with whom you are not. Find common values and build with your fellow citizens a society based on diversity and equality.”

“Western Muslims can make a critical difference in the Muslim majority world. However, that can only happen if their governments and other citizens do not cast doubt on their loyalty every time they criticise government policies.”

“Is this a threatening contribution? Is it not a needed and urgent message in America in the post-Sep. 11 world?” the professor concluded.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
NAIROBI, May 2 2006 (IPS)

As preparations to mark World Press Freedom Day (May 3) in Kenya move into high gear, calls for government to pass a freedom of information bill are intensifying.

“The (bill) will guarantee not only freedom for the media to access government information, but will also give the public the right to this information,” Absalom Mutere, chairman of the Media Council of Kenya (MCK) board of trustees, told IPS. The council, based in the capital of Nairobi, is an independent body that seeks to improve journalistic standards.

A draft Freedom of Information Bill has been drawn up, but has yet to be tabled in parliament.

As it stands now, the constitution provides for freedom of expression, but fails to stipulate a right to information. A new constitution that had included provisions for press freedom as well as access to information was rejected by Kenyans during a referendum held in November 2005 – largely because of fears that the draft also gave the presidency too much power.

The appeal for a freedom of information bill comes amidst broader concerns about the state of the press in Kenya. On Mar. 2, officials raided the studio of the Kenya Television Network (KTN) and the printing press of its sister newspaper, ‘The Standard’. Transmission was paralysed in the process, forcing KTN to go off air for 14 hours – while thousands of copies of that day’s paper were set alight.

KTN, ‘The Standard’ and other media outlets had been critical of alleged government involvement in a series of corruption scandals. Officials claimed reports carried by KTN and ‘The Standard’, which form part of Kenya’s second-largest media house, were inciting the public to unrest.

The scandals included the so-called Anglo Leasing scam, which first came to light in 2004. It concerned the awarding of two contracts to a fictitious company, Anglo Leasing and Finance: one for supplying equipment to produce passports that could not be forged, another for constructing forensic laboratories for the police. Officials reportedly paid close to 90 million dollars to the company for these services.

In January, the contents of a dossier that gave further information about the Anglo Leasing scandal were leaked to the press, prompting the resignation of Energy Minister Kiraitu Murungi, and his counterpart at finance, David Mwiraria.

The dossier, by former permanent secretary for governance and ethics John Githongo, revealed how ministers had tried to prevent investigations into the Anglo Leasing matter from going ahead.

Education Minister George Saitoti resigned the following month over another scam, the Goldenberg affair. This scandal took place in the early 1990s, and involved the fictitious export of gold and diamonds under an export compensation scheme – costing Kenya more than 600 million dollars. Saitoti was finance minister and vice-president at the time.

These developments have highlighted the need for a free press in Kenya. When evidence of graft surfaces, says Joe Kadhi – a journalism scholar and lecturer at the United States International University-Kenya – “…you need the fourth estate to play its watchdog role more efficiently. For this to happen, the media itself must be free and independent.”

For its part, government often accuses the media of behaving irresponsibly – a claim that the MCK’s Mutere concedes may have some merit.

“The biggest challenge is the low standards of professionalism that have penetrated the industry. There are many journalism schools that have mushroomed, some even on top of casinos and bars,” he remarked.

“The gutter press has also infiltrated the industry and even comedians are coming into the market.”

The Media Council of Kenya Bill, yet to be tabled in parliament, seeks to give the MCK powers to regulate the media. Among other things, the bill lays down standards for the conduct and disciplining of journalists and the media, and also provides for training in a code of ethics.

In a bid to address the proliferation of journalism schools which are not worth the name, the MCK has further established the Media Educators and Trainers Association. This body will deal with curricula for journalism schools, as well as the matter of accreditation.

Concerns about media freedom in East Africa are not restricted to Kenya. The fourth African Media Leadership Conference, held in Nairobi last month, highlighted an increase in repression throughout the region – notably in Uganda, Tanzania, Eritrea and Ethiopia.

In addition, the conference – which brought together leading media representatives from 12 African countries – sounded an alarm over the fact that several countries in East Africa were seeking to pass legislation that would allow the media to be regulated by authorities, or already had such laws in place.

Fears about media freedom in East Africa were echoed in a statement by the Ethiopian Free Press Journalists in Kenya, received by IPS last week.

“We have fled our country due to the crackdown on freedom of expression in 2005 and in earlier years. We came to Kenya by foot, leaving our families behind to avoid persecution and imprisonment by the Ethiopian government,” it noted. There are 10 Ethiopian journalists exiled in Kenya at present, according to the statement.

Last year, 80 people died in Ethiopia during clashes between police and persons demonstrating against election results, believed to have been rigged. Authorities jailed eighteen reporters at the time; all have been denied bail.

“Our colleagues now face charges such as treason, genocide and attempting to overthrow the constitution,” said the Ethiopian Free Press Journalists in Kenya.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
UNITED NATIONS, May 2 2006 (IPS)

As the world reflects on the best and worst places to practice journalism on Press Freedom Day Wednesday, independent writers’ groups and civil liberties advocates warn that Washington’s “war on terror” is putting a growing chill on the basic democratic right of free expression.

“Thanks in large part to the Patriot Act, our government is once again excluding foreign writers and scholars from the country simply because of their political beliefs,” said Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)..

Romero was speaking at an event last week in New York titled “An Evening Without…”, organised with PEN’s American Centre, the oldest group in the world dedicated to defending free expression and fighting censorship.

Intended to highlight the problem of ideological exclusion, it featured famous authors and actors reading from the works of writers and scholars who have been banned from the United States because of their political opinions.

These included writers who were excluded during the Cold War, such as Colombian novelist and Nobel laureate Gabriel García Márquez, Italian playwright and Nobel laureate Dario Fo, Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, English writer Graham Greene, Chilean poet and Nobel laureate Pablo Neruda, and Mexican author Carlos Fuentes.

“Events like these help raise public awareness both of what is going on now and how these current struggles relate to similar struggles in the past,” Larry Siems, director of PEN’s Freedom to Write programme, told IPS.

“The U.S. has a history of excluding those whose political beliefs are deemed unacceptable. We believe this has been done to try to limit the scope of criticism and debate of controversial policies and issues,” he said.

One recent example is Tariq Ramadan, a Swiss native and visiting fellow at St. Antony’s College at Oxford University in England. Ramadan is considered a leading scholar of the Muslim world, who has published 20 books, more than 700 articles and approximately 170 audio tapes on Muslim issues.

Some of Ramadan’s most recent lectures include a discussion on “Why Islam Needs a Feminist Movement” and “Muslim Democrats in the West and Democratisation in the Muslim World: Prospects for Engagement”.

Named one of the most influential people of the 21st century by Time magazine, Ramadan is strongly opposed to all forms of terrorism. He deplored the 9/11 attacks, saying to Muslims “now more than ever we need to criticise some of our brothers… You are unjustified if you use the Koran to justify murder.”

In the beginning of 2004, the professor was offered a tenured position as the Henry R. Luce Professor of Religion, Conflict and Peacebuilding at the University of Notre Dame’s Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies in the U.S. state of Indiana.

Ramadan was granted a special non-immigrant visa in May 2004. However, in July, only nine days before he and his family were to move to Indiana, he was informed by the U.S. embassy in Switzerland that his visa had been revoked.

The reason emerged a month later. Russ Knocke, a spokesman for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement division of the Department of Homeland Security, cited the ideological exclusion provision as the basis for the revocation.

“We believe that Section 411 of the Patriot Act and subsequent laws threaten free expression because they can be used to exclude foreigners from the United States on the basis of their opinions and speech rather than on their actions,” Siems told IPS.

The USA Patriot Act was hurriedly enacted by Congress, at the behest of the George W. Bush administration, shortly after the Sep. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. It gave federal law enforcement agencies sweeping new surveillance and detention powers.

“We have launched a major advocacy campaign focusing exactly on the impact of post-9/11 laws and policies on freedom of expression,” Siems said.

Called the Campaign for Core Freedoms, it calls on U.S. lawmakers to protect the personal privacy necessary for the free exploration of information and ideas; protect public access to both governmental information and a full range of voices from the United States and around the world; and promote U.S. policies that reflect a core commitment to individual rights, preserve these rights at home, and expand them internationally.

Ramadan’s is not an isolated case. Recently, Fernando Rodriguez, a Bolivian human rights lawyer, and Dora Maria Telles, a scholar and Former Nicaraguan health minister, had their visas denied based on the Patriot Act’s terrorism provision.

Undeniably, the press in the United States enjoys more democratic freedoms than many other countries. A new report by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) released at U.N. headquarters Wednesday listed the 10 most censored countries in the world. North Korea topped the list, followed by Burma, Turkmenistan, Equatorial Guinea, Libya, Eritrea, Cuba, Uzbekistan, Syria and Belarus.

“People in these countries are virtually isolated from the rest of the world by authoritarian rules which muzzle the media and keep a chokehold on information trough restrictive laws, fear, and intimidation,” said CPJ Executive Director Ann Cooper. “Journalism should not be a criminal act,” she added.

However, as Siems notes, “many of the countries that act similarly are ones that the United States would not normally want to emulate in questions of freedom of expression and human rights”.

The administration has also been criticised for attempts to compel reporters to reveal their confidential sources in the name of national security. In its 2005 press freedom index, Reporters Without Borders noted that “the United States (44th) fell more than 20 places, mainly because of the imprisonment of New York Times reporter Judith Miller and legal moves undermining the privacy of journalistic sources.”

After the revocation of his visa, Ramadan sent a message to Muslims around the world: “Know who you are, who you want to be, and start talking and working with whom you are not. Find common values and build with your fellow citizens a society based on diversity and equality.”

“Western Muslims can make a critical difference in the Muslim majority world. However, that can only happen if their governments and other citizens do not cast doubt on their loyalty every time they criticise government policies.”

“Is this a threatening contribution? Is it not a needed and urgent message in America in the post-Sep. 11 world?” the professor concluded.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
BAGHDAD, May 2 2006 (IPS)

There is so much more media around now; the problem is that Iraqis do not know what to believe anymore.

Through the abundance, the one thing clear is that most Iraqis do not trust the media. “Most of the news about Iraq is imperfect news; the numbers for U.S. soldiers killed by the Resistance and also the Iraqis killed by road or car bombs, I see different numbers from channel to channel,” Safa Muayad, a 25 year-old student at Baghdad’s Islamic University told IPS.

“There has been palpable mistrust of the media among Iraqis,” Joel Campagna, Middle East coordinator for the Coalition to Protect Journalists(CPJ) told IPS. “You hear this from foreign and Iraqi correspondents. There is hostility towards the media when you go to report on political violence.”

This hostility has increased particularly over the past two years, Campagna said. “You hear stories from even journalists in their local communities operating under tremendous pressure.”

But locally and internationally, Iraqi journalists are inevitably essential to reporting Iraq. “The language factor and the knowledge of the place help the reporter to get material more than the Western one,” Bassam Sebti, an Iraqi who works for the Washington Post told IPS.

But even with Iraqi journalists, media movement is increasingly limited to particular neighbourhoods. News coverage appears to have an especially strong focus on Baghdad’s Green Zone, where Iraq’s isolated politicians haggle over increasingly arbitrary decisions.

There are still major foreign bureaus in Iraq, but freelancers, once as common on Baghdad’s streets as sand in your sandals, have become a rare breed.

Their capacity for movement is even more constrained. “Freelancers are fewer and farther between than ever,” Dave Enders, an American freelancer who has spent 18 months in Iraq told IPS. “My colleagues scoff at me for not using a chase car, which I can’t afford on a freelance budget.”

Enders once used to visit the troubled Sunni neighbourhood Adhamiya, but now he says it “seems to be constantly watched, so I stay out.”

Bassam Sebti tried to visit Adhamiya during the recent violence. “But the clashes were so heavy that no one dared to go in there. In addition, if insurgents discover I am a journalist working for Western media, they may kidnap me and kill me.”

The dwindling presence of the foreign press in Iraq is cause for alarm for many locals. Foreign media is still necessary in Iraq because there is no established tradition of press freedom in Iraq, Fatima al-Naddaf, member of the Women’s Will Organisation and editor of their newspaper told IPS.

Some channels support the interests of the occupation forces, others inflame risks of civil war, she said. “Some of media cause problems between Sunni and Shia. It depends on the channel, some of them are positive and work for the truth, but other channels are negative and they are part of the problem, tools for the occupation.” It is a situation where media particularly need to be objective and professional.

Everyone seems to agree that media cannot function independently under occupation. “Iraq media are not good media because we are under occupation and the occupation controls the media,” journalist Salah Hassan told IPS.

Safa Muayad says there is no free press in Iraq. “Because occupation killed many journalists.. They want Iraq to be empty of Western journalists, to destroy Iraq. In Fallujah and other cities they did many crimes freely because there were no journalists there.”

Baghdad resident Ya’rub Tarik believes that once Iraq has a free press, it will serve the people better. “Then the media, by showing the truth, will help to end occupation.”

But meanwhile journalists are facing more danger than before. In 2003 it was safe to say you work for western media, Bassem Sebti said, but now it is not because anyone working with the Western media are seen as “infidels and agents of the occupier.”

The CPJ has expressed concern about increasing risks to Iraqi and Arab journalists.

“Statistics show that nearly 80 percent of all media fatalities have been local Iraqi journalists,” Campagna said. “These are journalists working for both international news and the nascent Iraqi media following the fall of the old regime. These statistics reflect the increasing role that local journalists play in telling the story from Iraq.”

Paradoxically, while Iraqis are suspicious of the press, they seem overwhelmingly to believe that media has a vital role to play in the conflict situation. The difficulty is in finding the media outlet to pick and trust. Iraqis have a bewildering choice between different channels, websites accessed through cyber cafes that have sprouted all over, and the many local media outlets.

“The new media is very politicised,” Campagna said. “You have opposition newspapers, affiliated with political parties, and even the state broadcaster has been accused of being pro-sectarian or pro-Shia.”

Bassam Sebti says a part of Iraqi media is “owned by political parties who want to achieve a specific political aim.” But he said that while Iraqi journalists tell him the foreign press is more professional than the Iraqi media, he believes some foreign newspapers are very biased as well.

Campagna has misgivings about prospects of press freedom in Iraq’s near future. “If we look at the succession of the government from the interim government on, they have not always dealt with the media in a positive way. We’ve had a number of cases of journalists harassed, who’ve had their cameras confiscated. You hear many stories of the heavy- handed treatment of journalists by security forces. Those reports keep trickling in.”

The government has limited media freedom, Sebti says. “But I hope newspapers’ views become unbiased and neutral to take the country to the other side, to security.”

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
JOHANNESBURG, May 1 2006 (IPS)

Good news about media freedom in Eritrea is rare – so it’s understandable that delight and relief greeted the announcement last November that Isaac Dawit, an Eritrean journalist with Swedish nationality, had been released after four years in prison.

Sweden’s ambassador to the East African country, Bengt Sparre, issued congratulations. Dawit’s family – waiting back in Sweden – was overjoyed.

But days after the news broke, Eritrean Information Minister Ali Abdu told the Agence France-Presse news agency that Dawit had merely been released for hospital tests – and was going directly back to prison.

What went wrong? A miscommunication between the Swedish ambassador and Eritrea’s government? A change of heart on the part of officials in Asmara irritated by press freedom campaigners?

The truth may never reach the public sphere.

Described by the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) as one of the world’s worst jailers of journalists, Eritrea has at least 13 reporters in prison. And as Dawit’s story shows, campaigning on the issue is delicate and perhaps even counter-productive.

“They say it’s an internal issue – nothing to do with other countries,” one diplomat commented.

“And it’s better not to give them (the journalists) a trial because Eritrea still has the death penalty – that’s the message we get.”

In 1991, a euphoric Eritrea won independence from neighbouring Ethiopia after 30 years of struggle, and enormous human suffering. Eritreans returned from overseas, the economy grew, and then U.S. President Bill Clinton admiringly described head of state Isayas Afewerki as a “new leader” for Africa – marking a break with the previous generation of oppressive and corrupt rulers.

But the dreams turned sour.

The Eritrean-Ethiopian relationship deteriorated, and the two countries fought a border war between 1998 and 2000. By the time a peace deal was signed, a quarter of Eritrea was occupied, its infrastructure destroyed, and a third of its population displaced. Isayas was also accused of missing out on opportunities for better peace proposals.

Inevitably, many in Eritrea – including the journalists now jailed – questioned government’s handling of the war and other political issues.

Then, while the world’s attention was distracted by the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington in September 2001 – a crackdown on the media began.

“With the world’s attention thus diverted, Isayas ordered the arrest of the G-15 (a group of 15 leading politicians), the closure of the country’s entire private press, and the detention of the offending media’s leading editors and reporters,” says veteran observer of Eritrean politics Dan Connell in his book, ‘Conversations with Eritrean Political Prisoners’.

Since then, little has been heard of the journalists. The charges against them apparently include avoiding the military draft, and threatening national security.

“The journalists have virtually disappeared since the September 18, 2001 press crackdown and closure of privately owned newspapers. Eritrean officials have refused to provide information on their health, whereabouts or legal status,” noted a CPJ press release in September last year.

“Some reports say they may have been tortured. The government’s monopoly of news, and the families’ fear of intimidation make it extremely difficult to gather information about the detainees.”

Even the number of journalists imprisoned is unclear.

In November 2005, the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans frontières, RSF) put the number at 13. A few months later, the CPJ said 15 journalists were still jailed. According to the U.S. government, “at least” 15 are in custody – although the number may be as high as 16.

With many of the reporters virtually unknown at the time of their arrest, it has proved difficult to keep their plight on the international agenda. In addition, they are competing for attention with political detainees and persecuted religious minorities, amongst others.

Locally, most Eritreans have no access to information about the reporters or much else, but that approved by the government; besides, they are working hard just to look after themselves and their families. Opposition to the administration may not have been totally crushed in Eritrea, but it is completely silent.

Reports by the CPJ, RSF – and the U.S. government’s annual report on human rights – mean the fate of the imprisoned journalists is not forgotten. And the issue will doubtless come under discussion May 3, when the global community marks World Press Freedom Day. But that seems to be as far as it goes.

Diplomats have other things to worry about. New conflict with Ethiopia is still a possibility, as is a humanitarian crisis linked to government restrictions on emergency aid for helping the country to address the effects of a severe drought.

Journalists thought to be in prison (sources: CPJ, Amnesty International):

Arrested January 1999

1. Zemenfes Haile

Arrested June 2000

2. Ghebrehiwet Keleta

Arrested September 2001

3. Amanuel Asrat

4. Medhanie Haile

5. Yusuf Mohamed

6. Mattewos Habteab

7. Temesgen Ghebreyesus

8. Said Abdelkader

9. Dawit Isaac

10. Seyoum Tsehaye

11. Dawit Habtemichael

12. Fesshaye “Joshua” Yohannes

Arrested late 2001

13. Selamyinghes Beyene

Arrested February 2002

14. Hamid Mohammed

15. Saidia Ahmed

16. Saleh Aljezeeri

Journalists arrested and since released: Ruth Simon, Semret Seyoum and Aklilu Solomon

Excerpt:

By Lansana Fofana
FREETOWN, May 3 2005 (IPS)

On the occasion of World Press Freedom Day (May 3), Sierra Leonean journalists aren’t so much celebrating media freedom as girding themselves for a legal battle over press rights.

"We think the time is now to challenge in court the seditious libel laws which hang as a sword of Damocles over our heads," says Ibrahim Ben Kargbo, president of the Sierra Leone Association of Journalists (SLAJ).

"These laws are inconsistent with the constitution of the republic which provides for freedom of expression."

The legislation in question, contained in the Public Order Act of 1965, criminalizes the publication, distribution and even possession of material that may cause "public disaffection" against the president and other officials.

Breach of the act is punishable by imprisonment of up to seven years and, in the case of newspaper owners and publishers, a possible ban on their publications.

Since its promulgation, this colonial-era law has been used by governments of various stripes – both elected civilian administrations and military regimes – to silence those who asked uncomfortable questions about leaders of the day.

The latest person to find himself at odds with the act is Paul Kamara, managing editor of a vibrant, independent tabloid called ‘For di People’.

Kamara is currently serving a four-year jail term at the maximum security prison in Sierra Leone’s capital – Freetown. His crime: publishing an article that questioned the integrity of President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah while the latter was a senior civil servant in the 1960s.

According to the Vienna-based International Press Institute’s ‘2004 World Press Freedom Review’, Kamara’s paper challenged "the fact that the Speaker of Parliament, Edmond Cowan, had defended President Kabbah in Parliament after accusations.that the president had been found guilty in 1968 by a commission of inquiry into fraud."

At the time, the head of state was working as permanent secretary at the Ministry of Trade.

Kamara’s publication of the commission’s findings, in serial form, and his trenchant commentaries on the matter angered Kabbah – and ultimately resulted in the editor’s incarceration.

"In seditious libel, facts are no defence," says barrister Sulaiman Banja Tejan-Sie, who has represented Kamara in another, similar matter. "What the prosecution seeks to establish is how much public disaffection or chaos the publication is likely to cause."

The SLAJ is preparing to challenge the Public Order Act before the Supreme Court this week, with help from the Lawyers Centre for Legal Assistance (LAWCLA), which provides free services for poor persons. The centre also takes on cases that involve civil and individual liberties.

"The criminal libel laws are an abrogation of the right to free speech. It negates our constitution and impedes especially the work of journalists," says Melron Nicol-Wilson, executive director of LAWCLA.

"LAWCLA will offer free services to SLAJ because it is a justified cause: fighting against a draconian and an outdated law left behind by the colonial powers."

Government, however, is standing its ground on the matter – insisting that the Public Order Act is needed to protect citizens from journalistic abuses.

"The libel laws contained in the Public Order Act are very relevant because our government has the obligation to protect the rights of all Sierra Leoneans," says Frederick Carew, attorney general and minister of justice.

"Imagine a journalist has been paid or bribed to libel a government official or private individual who has spent dozens of years building his or her character and reputation?"

The attorney general has urged SLAJ to recommend measures that would help reduce what he describes as "irresponsible journalism".

A further statement by Carew has been viewed by some as an invitation to self-censorship by reporters: "We would prefer the journalists regulate themselves and try to be responsible."

Such comments anger Richie Gordon, editor of another vocal tabloid, ‘Peep’.

"The government talks about its democratic credentials and yet keeps the draconian libel laws in the books. I think those laws have to be expunged," he says.

Adds reporter Zainab Kanu, "I think the government is toying with democracy. It has to scrap these obnoxious laws and allow people to express themselves freely."

Tensions between government and the independent press are expected to heighten ahead of general elections scheduled for 2007.

For much of the 1990s, Sierra Leone was gripped by a civil war between rebels from the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), and a succession of presidents and coup leaders. The war was, to a considerable extent, fought over control of the West African state’s diamond resources.

Widespread human rights abuses took place during the conflict, notably the amputation of limbs by the RUF. Following a 1999 ceasefire, United Nations peace-keepers were deployed in Sierra Leone, and the war was finally declared over in January 2002.

Kabbah swept to power in elections held later that year, and in June 2004 a United Nations-backed court began trying persons accused of bearing the greatest responsibility for war crimes in Sierra Leone.

Excerpt:

By Marwaan Macan-Markar
BANGKOK, May 3 2005 (IPS)

For Sri Lanka’s reporters, World Press Freedom Day on Tuesday took on added poignancy this year due to one name, Dharmeratnam Sivaram – the South Asian island nation’s best journalist on Tamil affairs.

On the night of Apr. 28, the 46-year-old Sivaram was grabbed off the street by four men and bundled into a vehicle soon as he stepped out of a bar in the heart of the Sri Lankan capital Colombo.

His body, with gunshots to the head, was found the following morning by the side of a marsh within close proximity to the country’s parliament. The police also recovered a spent cartridge from a 9 mm pistol and a napkin, which had been used to gag him.

The implications of his murder cut across the broad spectrum of that island’s troubled political landscape. For one, it places the Sri Lankan government of President Chandrika Kumaratunga under pressure to find Sivaram’s killers as a mark of its commitment to upholding press freedom.

But there is little reason for the island’s media to feel sanguine, since the Kumaratunga administration has failed to arrest and put on trial suspects linked to the murders of journalists before Sivaram’s. Among those victims during the past five years were Mylvaganam Nimalarajan, Aiyathurai Nadesan, Rohana Kumara, Nadarajah Atputharajah, Anthony Mariyanayagam and Bala Nadarajah Iyer.

That comes on top of Colombo’s record of harassing sections of the media, the worst year of which was 2000, when there 29 assaults on journalists, states the Paris-based media freedom watchdog Reporters sans Frontiers (RSF).

Sivaram, in fact, was a victim of such heavy-handedness on, of all days, Press Freedom Day last year. Police visited his house in a suburb south of the Sri Lankan capital to conduct a search based on questionable reasons. A similar act of police intrusion, without a search warrant, happened again to Sivaram in late July.

Yet such intimidation from the state failed to deter him from his trenchant analysis of Sri Lanka’s political developments. Nor did he waver in his writings following threats levelled by a break-away faction of the Tamil Tiger rebels against the lives of Tamil journalists from the country’s eastern province, where Sivaram hails from.

His courage to stand for what he believed in was best demonstrated in the line he took on Sri Lanka’s ethnic conflict that has pit government troops against the separatist Tamil Tiger rebels. He was unequivocally behind the rebels’ cause to create a separate state of Tamil Eelam in the north and east of the country for Sri Lanka’s Tamil minority.

He brought a level of insight about the political agenda of the Tamil Tigers that was without peer. These accounts, written under the nom de plume ‘Taraki’ in the ‘Daily Mirror,’ an English language newspaper, and the ‘Virakesari,’ a Tamil language daily, were grounded in facts not many had access to.

His grasp of the undercurrents within the world of Tamil politics in the island also flowed in the website he helped set up in the mid-1990, ‘TamilNet.’

Such achievements will, undoubtedly, make his absence excessively painful for his following among Sri Lankan Tamils living overseas and those who have followed his views on the conflict, which has killed over 63,000 people, or the current peace process, at home.

His murder brought to an end the best interpreter of the ground realities in the war-torn northern and eastern Sri Lanka. What helped him become one was the fact that Sivaram was, literally, a rebel with a cause before he took up the pen. In the 1980s, as a young man in his twenties, he trained as a militant for the People’s Liberation Organisation of Tamil Eelam (PLOTE), one of the many rebel groups that sprang up to advance the Tamil nationalist cause.

And when he drifted out of that movement, having served as head of PLOTE’s political wing, Sivaram turned his attention to writing, including filing dispatches for IPS in the late 1980s from Sri Lanka.

But as a friend and colleague Rajpal Abeynayake recalled, it was the weekly columns Sivaram began writing on the Tamil militancy in a Sunday English language newspaper that announced his arrival as a unique journalist among the local crowd.

”The level of curiosity was at fever pitch about the man who had so much inside-dope on the militancy of the Tamil movement. Who the hell was Taraki, they all asked?” Abeynayake, a columnist on ‘The Sunday Times’ in Colombo, wrote in a tribute to Sivaram.

It was a writing that also catered to those with a keen eye for military strategy, philosophy, Tamil culture and the history of Batticaloa, the town in eastern Sri Lankan where Sivaram was born.

Yet that paper trail created a list of enemies among sections of Sri Lanka’s Sinhalese majority in the country’s south. To them he was a ”terrorist,” as articulated recently by Omalpe Sobitha Thera, general secretary of a political party of Buddhist monks. That spark of enlightenment has also been evident when Sivaram ran into trouble in the mid-1990s, including being thrown into jail for a brief period, due to his writings.

Where others may have chosen to flee Sri Lanka or hide due to such threatening conditions, Sivaram did not. He opted instead to live life fully with his wife, Herly Yogaranjini, and his three children, Vaishnavi, Vaitheki and Seralaathan.

On the night he was abducted he had demonstrated such a will to live, too. He was in a bar drinking beer and talking politics with friends.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
KATHMANDU, May 3 2005 (IPS)

Press freedom in Nepal is in peril. And on Tuesday to mark World Press Freedom Day, about 1,500 journalists braved arrest to march through the capital in a bid to remind the international community that many of their colleagues are still languishing in detention centers since King Gyanendra seized power in February.

In the three months since the king took absolute powers on Feb. 1, his forces have systematically dismantled much of Nepal’s once-thriving independent media and shut down news reporting on FM radio – an important source of information in the impoverished Himalayan kingdom.

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, in a report titled ‘A Country Silenced’ released late last week, says dozens of journalists have been arrested and detained, their patriotism questioned and their safety threatened in the three months of absolute rule. Since February, CPJ estimates that 2,000 journalists have lost their jobs.

”Blank pages in magazines and newspapers reflected sweeping bans on news reporting, and the censors’ insidious hand continues to suppress coverage everyday in less obvious ways,” adds the report author, former ‘British Broadcasting Corporation’ correspondent in Nepal, Daniel Lak.

Last Friday, a day after the report was made public, King Gyanendra lifted the Feb. 1 state of emergency. But the move hasn’t convinced analysts that the royalist government is suddenly going to commit itself to civil liberties and press freedom.

They argue that the emergency was lifted due to intense international pressure. And it still remains to be seen whether civil liberties like freedom of assembly, expression and movement will be fully restored.

Through a curt message late Friday, the royal palace secretariat announced the termination of the state of emergency.

It came within hours of the king’s arrival in Kathmandu from a much-publicised visit, first to the Asian-African Summit in Indonesia and later to the Boao Forum in China where he met heads of governments and states, including Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Chinese President Hu Jintao, and U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan.

India, the United States and Britain, major suppliers of arms to Nepal, have suspended their military assistance since Feb. 1, saying that the resumption of military supplies would depend on restoration of democracy.

Analysts said early Saturday that New Delhi might still want to see unambiguous signs that civil liberties and press freedom would be restored before resuming arms supplies, which remains crucial in Nepal’s nine-year counterinsurgency against the Maoist rebels that has killed over 11,000 Nepalis.

”I am not reading much into the lifting of emergency,” said Lok Raj Baral, a noted scholar, who was stopped three times, since February, from leaving Kathmandu to attend international conferences.

”The king’s roadmap to democracy remains hazy,” he added.

Hazy, too, is the future of a free press In Nepal. According to the CPJ study though overt censorship eased after the first week and soldiers were withdrawn from many media outlets, harassment by telephone and other means continued right till April.

Pressure of a different kind has been exerted, too. The regime issued a directive saying that government advertisements will, now, only go to state-owned media. Obviously this is meant to damage the private press because over 25 percent of the ad pie in independent media comes from the government.

But the hardest hit, since the Feb. 1 royal takeover, are FM radio stations.

”FM was a flourishing news venue until just weeks ago,” says CPJ, ”offering views in many languages, helping build national identity, and fostering debates on vital issues.”

”Now, an estimated 1,200 radio journalists are idle, and music has replaced the news bulletins and community discussion programs that made FM popular.”

It’s with reason that the government has came down hard on FM radio stations, said Pratyoush Onta, a Kathmandu-based media analyst.

”The 46 FM stations scattered all over Nepal, many of them in rural districts, are difficult to monitor for a government that is deeply distrustful of people’s judgment,” Onta told IPS.

”While TV networks are aired from Kathmandu, FM radio stations are not. If you don’t have the confidence in the people’s sense of judgment, FM becomes an easy target. It is a highly diffused medium and extremely difficult to control,” he added.

Another factor against FM radio stations is the nature of hard-hitting radio news and listeners’ talkback, which seem to be relatively recent in Nepal. That, according to Onta, has made it easy to be targeted by the government. In addition, FM radio stations enjoy no constitutional and legal protection – unlike the print media.

To many of those working in newspapers and publications, the protection that the 1990 constitution provides is reason enough to push boundaries.

Yubaraj Ghimire, editor of Nepali-language ‘Samay’ magazine, said: ”At ‘Samay’ we have taken a collective decision that the public right to information is our responsibility and duty. For us the constitution is the guiding principle. Period.”

Asked how his staff was managing the new censorship regime, Ghimire replied: ”We are working in difficult times, but the sense of fulfillment is enormous.”

Excerpt:

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, May 2 2005 (IPS)

The Philippines, Iraq, Colombia, Bangladesh, and Russia are the world’s ”most murderous” countries in which to be a journalist, New York-based media watchdog the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said Monday.

The Philippines, Iraq, Colombia, Bangladesh, and Russia are the world’s ”most murderous” countries in which to be a journalist, New York-based media watchdog the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said Monday.

After five years of investigations beginning Jan. 2000, CPJ concluded that the vast majority of journalists killed on duty did not die in crossfire or while covering dangerous assignments.

Instead, 121 of the 190 journalists who died worldwide since 2000 were ”hunted down and murdered in retaliation for their work,” the organisation said in a study released on the eve of World Press Freedom Day, which falls on Tuesday, May 3.

In more than 85 percent of these slayings, the killers have gone unpunished, the study added.

”By failing to investigate and punish the killers, the governments in these five countries embolden all those who seek to silence the press through violence,” CPJ executive director Ann Cooper said in a statement.

In most cases, journalists were murdered in retaliation for reporting on government corruption, crime, drug trafficking, or the activities of rebel groups.

”The problem is enormous but not intractable,” Cooper said, adding that ”governments must recognise what’s at stake is not only justice for those murdered but also the collective right of society to be informed.”

Journalists cannot do their job in a climate of violence and impunity. ”Governments, particularly those in the five most murderous countries, must devote the resources and exercise the will to solve these crimes,” she added.

In the Philippines, 18 journalists have been slain for their work since 2000. All had reported on government and police corruption, drug dealing, and activities of crime syndicates.

Many were rural radio commentators or reporters ambushed in drive-by assassinations, the report said.

Philippine journalists attribute the violence to a nationwide breakdown in law and order, the wide circulation of illegal arms, and the failure to convict a single person in the murders, CPJ said.

In Iraq, crossfire was the leading cause of death among journalists. But even in this war zone, where U.S. and coalition forces have battled a growing insurgency since Mar. 2003, 13 of the 41 work-related deaths of news personnel were murders.

More than half of those murdered were Iraqi journalists targeted by insurgents because of their affiliation – real or perceived – with coalition forces, foreign organisations, or political entities. Several of the slain journalists had been threatened beforehand, according to CPJ.

According to some news reports, even U.S. forces have been accused of deliberately targeting journalists, particularly those critical of the U.S. military occupation of Iraq.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in late January, Eason Jordan, then chief news executive of Cable News Network (CNN) caused a stir when he reportedly said he believed that U.S. military forces had deliberately aimed at journalists and killed at least 12 of them.

Following a firestorm of criticism by right-wing groups in the United States, Jordan backtracked on his statement by saying: ”I never meant to imply that U.S. forces acted with ill-intent when they accidentally killed journalists.”

”I apologise to anyone who thought I said or believed otherwise,” he added.

Even so, his 23-year journalism career ended when he was forced to resign from CNN.

The New York Times said there was ”some uncertainty” over his precise language because the Davos Forum, which videotaped the conference, refused to release its tape.

Meanwhile, in Colombia, where reporting on drugs, paramilitary organisations, and local corruption has placed reporters at great risk, 11 journalists have been murdered since 2000.

All of the journalists murdered in the last five years reported on at least one of those sensitive topics. At least eight received death threats and warnings before being gunned down, according to CPJ.

The murders took place in regions of extreme lawlessness, with competing groups fighting for territorial control.

In Bangladesh, nine journalists have been slain since 2000, eight in the lawless southwestern Khulna district, which is rife with criminal gangs, outlawed political groups, and drug traffickers. Seven had received death threats.

”Bangladesh has long been a violent place for journalists; they are routinely beaten, harassed, and threatened while carrying out their work” the report said. A CPJ delegation traveled to Bangladesh last year to urge the government to prosecute those responsible.

In Russia, contract-style killings pose a grave threat to journalists. CPJ said that at least seven journalists died in contract-style slayings in direct reprisal for their work. The group continues to investigate the motives in four other contract killings that may have been related to the victims’ work.

Most of the victims, according to CPJ, were print journalists investigating organised crime and government corruption, while a few were broadcast journalists who had criticised the policies of influential local politicians.

”A politicised criminal justice system, crippled by corruption and mismanagement, has perpetuated a climate of impunity in Russia,” CPJ said.

Asked if the United Nations could ”name and shame” these countries, Abi Wright of CPJ told IPS: ”It is an interesting idea.”

But she pointed out that CPJ reports are not dissimilar, for example, from U.N. reports which have condemned countries and rebel groups by name for recruiting child soldiers.

She said that CPJ reports were part of the advocacy work the organisation does ”to pressure governments and make them very uncomfortable.”

”We spotlight these cases and try to hold governments accountable,” she said.

Excerpt:

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, May 2 2005 (IPS)

The Philippines, Iraq, Colombia, Bangladesh, and Russia are the world’s ”most murderous” countries in which to be a journalist, New York-based media watchdog the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said Monday.

After five years of investigations beginning Jan. 2000, CPJ concluded that the vast majority of journalists killed on duty did not die in crossfire or while covering dangerous assignments.

Instead, 121 of the 190 journalists who died worldwide since 2000 were ”hunted down and murdered in retaliation for their work,” the organisation said in a study released on the eve of World Press Freedom Day, which falls on Tuesday, May 3.

In more than 85 percent of these slayings, the killers have gone unpunished, the study added.

”By failing to investigate and punish the killers, the governments in these five countries embolden all those who seek to silence the press through violence,” CPJ executive director Ann Cooper said in a statement.

In most cases, journalists were murdered in retaliation for reporting on government corruption, crime, drug trafficking, or the activities of rebel groups.

”The problem is enormous but not intractable,” Cooper said, adding that ”governments must recognise what’s at stake is not only justice for those murdered but also the collective right of society to be informed.”

Journalists cannot do their job in a climate of violence and impunity. ”Governments, particularly those in the five most murderous countries, must devote the resources and exercise the will to solve these crimes,” she added.

In the Philippines, 18 journalists have been slain for their work since 2000. All had reported on government and police corruption, drug dealing, and activities of crime syndicates.

Many were rural radio commentators or reporters ambushed in drive-by assassinations, the report said.

Philippine journalists attribute the violence to a nationwide breakdown in law and order, the wide circulation of illegal arms, and the failure to convict a single person in the murders, CPJ said.

In Iraq, crossfire was the leading cause of death among journalists. But even in this war zone, where U.S. and coalition forces have battled a growing insurgency since Mar. 2003, 13 of the 41 work-related deaths of news personnel were murders.

More than half of those murdered were Iraqi journalists targeted by insurgents because of their affiliation – real or perceived – with coalition forces, foreign organisations, or political entities. Several of the slain journalists had been threatened beforehand, according to CPJ.

According to some news reports, even U.S. forces have been accused of deliberately targeting journalists, particularly those critical of the U.S. military occupation of Iraq.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in late January, Eason Jordan, then chief news executive of Cable News Network (CNN) caused a stir when he reportedly said he believed that U.S. military forces had deliberately aimed at journalists and killed at least 12 of them.

Following a firestorm of criticism by right-wing groups in the United States, Jordan backtracked on his statement by saying: ”I never meant to imply that U.S. forces acted with ill-intent when they accidentally killed journalists.”

”I apologise to anyone who thought I said or believed otherwise,” he added.

Even so, his 23-year journalism career ended when he was forced to resign from CNN.

The New York Times said there was ”some uncertainty” over his precise language because the Davos Forum, which videotaped the conference, refused to release its tape.

Meanwhile, in Colombia, where reporting on drugs, paramilitary organisations, and local corruption has placed reporters at great risk, 11 journalists have been murdered since 2000.

All of the journalists murdered in the last five years reported on at least one of those sensitive topics. At least eight received death threats and warnings before being gunned down, according to CPJ.

The murders took place in regions of extreme lawlessness, with competing groups fighting for territorial control.

In Bangladesh, nine journalists have been slain since 2000, eight in the lawless southwestern Khulna district, which is rife with criminal gangs, outlawed political groups, and drug traffickers. Seven had received death threats.

”Bangladesh has long been a violent place for journalists; they are routinely beaten, harassed, and threatened while carrying out their work” the report said. A CPJ delegation traveled to Bangladesh last year to urge the government to prosecute those responsible.

In Russia, contract-style killings pose a grave threat to journalists. CPJ said that at least seven journalists died in contract-style slayings in direct reprisal for their work. The group continues to investigate the motives in four other contract killings that may have been related to the victims’ work.

Most of the victims, according to CPJ, were print journalists investigating organised crime and government corruption, while a few were broadcast journalists who had criticised the policies of influential local politicians.

”A politicised criminal justice system, crippled by corruption and mismanagement, has perpetuated a climate of impunity in Russia,” CPJ said.

Asked if the United Nations could ”name and shame” these countries, Abi Wright of CPJ told IPS: ”It is an interesting idea.”

But she pointed out that CPJ reports are not dissimilar, for example, from U.N. reports which have condemned countries and rebel groups by name for recruiting child soldiers.

She said that CPJ reports were part of the advocacy work the organisation does ”to pressure governments and make them very uncomfortable.”

”We spotlight these cases and try to hold governments accountable,” she said.

Excerpt: