Today Is World Press Freedom Day, Hurrah – Except In Many Places In Our World Journalists Have Little Joy, Just Harassment and Imprisonment

The eyes of the media world will be focused for a the next couple of days on Medellin, Colombia, perhaps better known as the haven for drug lords rather than for press freedoms. But it is there that the world remembers Guillermo Cano Isaza, a courageous Colombian journalist murdered during his fight against the drug kingpins 21 years ago, and UNESCO is holding two days of meetings there on the theme of press freedom and violence against journalists.

Each year UNESCO awards a $25,000 Cato award to an individual or organization that demonstrates courage in defending free expression, but this year’s winner won’t be able to pick up the prize. She’s dead. Anna Politkovskaya, journalist for Novaya Gazeta was gunned down in the lobby of her apartment building last October, the 13th such contract-style killing of a journalist in Russia. Her killer(s) have not been apprehended. There have been no convictions in the other cases.

“Anna Politkovskaya showed incredible courage and stubbornness in chronicling events in Chechnya after the whole world had given up on that conflict. Her dedication and fearless pursuits of the truth were the highest benchmark of journalism, not only for Russia but for the rest of the world. Indeed, Anna’s courage and commitment were so remarkable that we decided for the first time to award the UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize posthumously,” Kavi Chongkittavorn, president of the prize’s jury of 14 journalists and editors from around the world, explained.

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Regretfully, the delegates at the two days of UNESCO meetings have some very grim statistics before them on how journalists are increasingly becoming cannon fodder and how journalists and bloggers are increasingly being imprisoned.

The International News Safety Institute reports that this year alone 52 journalists and staff have been killed. Last year the casualty rate hit 168. The largest number of those deaths were in Iraq -- since the 2003 start of the Iraq conflict 194 journalists and support staff have lost their lives there.

The Committee to Protect Journalists reported last December that its annual census found 134 journalists imprisoned around the world, nine more than the year before, with China, Cuba, Eritrea and Ethiopia the top jailers among 24 countries that had imprisoned journalists.

But don’t think press freedom shenanigans are restricted just to the developing world. David Banisar, director of the Freedom of Information Project at Privacy International noted in an article written for the World Association of Newspapers (WAN), that shenanigans are going on in “developed” Europe, too.

He cites the German Federal Intelligence Agency that had been illegally spying on journalists for years, including planting journalists in newsrooms to learn their sources; in The Netherlands the government tapped the phones of the country’s largest newspaper, deTelegraaf, in an effort to learn sources, and when that failed the police threw the journalists in jail for a day; in Latvia financial police tapped the telephone of a TV reporter and then leaked tapes of what they heard to the media; and in Sweden the government has announced legislation to monitor all international telephone calls, something it claims the Defense Ministry has been doing for years, anyway.

Freedom House’s report, Freedom of the Press 2007: A Global Survey of Media Independence, said that in terms of population, 18% of the world’s inhabitants live in countries that enjoy a free press, while 39% have a partly free press and 43% do not have a free press. Of the 195 countries and territories examined 74 (38%) were rated Free, 58 (30% were rated Partly Free, and 63 (32% were not Free.

The report warned particularly of expanded Internet restrictions, highlighting China, Vietnam, and Iran that “continue to convict and imprison large numbers of journalists and ‘cyber dissidents’” and the report said the trend is spreading.

The study said there was a long-term trend of press freedom decline or stagnation, particularly in the Americas and in the former Soviet Union. It said that over the past five years Venezuela has suffered the largest single decline in media independence (the government this month is refusing the license renewal for RCTV, due May 27; it is the most popular Venezuelan station, often critical of President Hugo Chavez). Other countries that registered major declines include Thailand, the Philippines, Russia, Argentina, Ethiopia and Uganda.

“The records of Venezuela and Russia are appalling, all the more so because of those countries’ impact on their regions,” said Karin Karlekar, managing editor of the world press freedom survey.

Americas: 17 countries (48%) were rated Free, 16 (46%) were rated Partly Free, and 2 (6%) were rated Not Free. Cuba continues to have one of the most repressive media environments worldwide; in Venezuela, the government has further intensified its efforts to control the press.

The region did have some noteworthy positive developments with both Haiti and Colombia moving into the Partly Free category. But there were negative trends in Argentina, Peru, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay and the Dominican Republic. In Mexico, improvements in the legal sphere were outweighed by an appalling level of violence against journalists. Although the United States continues to be one of the better performers in the survey, there were continuing problems in the legal sphere, particularly concerning cases in which legal authorities tried to compel journalists to reveal confidential sources or provide access to research material in the course of criminal investigations.

Asia-Pacific: The Asia-Pacific region as a whole exhibited a relatively high level of freedom, with 16 countries (40%) rated Free, 10 (25%) rated Partly Free, and 14 (35%) rated Not Free. Two of the five worst-rated countries in the world are Burma and North Korea, which have extremely repressive media environments. Several other poor performers included China, Laos and Vietnam, all of which use state or party control of the press as the primary tool to restrict media freedom.

Nepal, where wide-ranging political change led to a dramatic opening in the media environment, was a bright spot as were Cambodia and Indonesia. Asia saw many negative developments in 2006. Coups and military intervention led to the suspension of legal protections for press freedom and new curbs imposed on media coverage in Fiji and Thailand. Intensified political and civil conflict during the year contributed to declines in Sri Lanka, East Timor and the Philippines. Heightened restrictions on coverage, as well as harassment of media outlets that overstepped official and unofficial boundaries, negatively impacted press freedom in Malaysia, China and Pakistan.

Central and Eastern Europe/Former Soviet Union: For the combined CEE/FSU region, 8 countries (28%) — out of a new total of 28 countries, after Montenegro’s independence—remain classified as Free, 10 (36%) are rated as Partly Free, and 10 (36%) as Not Free. While many countries in Central and Eastern Europe rank firmly in the Free category, the repressive media landscape in the former Soviet Union is illuminated by the fact that 10 of the 12 non-Baltic post-Soviet states are ranked Not Free.

Most trends in the region were negative. Kyrgyzstan saw increased censorship and attacks against journalists. Russia’s worsening score reflected negative developments in the legal sphere coupled with heightened impunity, epitomized by the lack of prosecutions of increasingly frequent crimes and attacks against journalists.

Middle East and North Africa: The Middle East and North Africa region continued to show the lowest region wide ratings, with just one country (5%) rated Free, two (11%) rated Partly Free, and 16 (84%) rated Not Free. Media freedom remained extremely restricted in Libya, Syria, Tunisia and the Israeli-Occupied Territories/Palestinian Authority. The deteriorating security situation in Iraq made it highly dangerous for the media, with several dozen journalists and media workers, mostly Iraqis, killed during the year.

Improvements noted over the last several years reversed course, with several countries that had previously shown numerical improvement stagnating or moving in a negative trajectory. Conditions in Saudi Arabia and Iran deteriorated, while media in Egypt, Jordan and Algeria were hampered by legal restrictions. The use of legal harassment against independent journalists increased in Morocco, with a highly influential editor forced to leave the country due to the threat of crippling fines in a defamation case.

Sub-Saharan Africa: Overall, 8 countries (17%) were rated Free, 19 (39%) were rated Partly Free, and 21 (44%) remain rated Not Free. In 2006, Cape Verde was upgraded to Free as a result of a decrease in the legal harassment of and attacks on journalists. Changes in the legal sphere contributed to the Central African Republic’s upgrade to Partly Free, and to numerical improvements in Angola, Sierra Leone, and Mozambique.

Meanwhile, conditions in one of the world’s worst performers, Eritrea, deteriorated further as a result of tightened restrictions for foreign reporters traveling inside the country. Several countries that have registered a significant longer-term negative trend—The Gambia, Ethiopia, and Uganda—continued to move in the wrong direction in 2006.

Western Europe: Western Europe continued to boast the highest level of press freedom worldwide; in 2006, 24 countries (96%) were rated Free and one (4%) was rated Partly Free. However, increasing threats from far-right and Islamist groups during the year resulted in modest declines for a number of top-performing countries, particularly those in Scandinavia and northern Europe. A dramatic rise in legal harassment was noted in Turkey, where almost 300 journalists and writers were prosecuted for “insulting Turkishness.” However, in a major positive move, Italy was upgraded in 2006 to resume its Free status primarily as a result of media magnate Silvio Berlusconi’s exit as prime minister.

Worst of the Worst: The five worst-rated countries continue to be Burma, Cuba, Libya, North Korea, and Turkmenistan. In these states, which are scattered across the globe, independent media are either nonexistent or barely able to operate, the press acts as a mouthpiece for the ruling regime, and citizens’ access to unbiased information is severely limited. The numerical scores for these five countries have barely changed in relation to the previous year, reflecting a level of extreme repression and stagnation for the media. Rounding out the bottom 10 most repressive media environments are two countries in the former Soviet Union—Belarus and Uzbekistan—and three countries in Africa—Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, and Zimbabwe—where media are heavily restricted.

Some 30 years ago the very same UNESCO that is holding its Press Freedom celebrations meetings in Medellin, tried very hard to introduce a global licensing system for journalists that the world’s free media fought very hard to defeat (the Soviets at the time thought it was a great idea); indeed the US and Britain both quit UNESCO in protest, and did not rejoin until that silliness was long gone. As that organization has changed from one trying to restrict press freedom to one that wishes to enhance press freedom, then one must hold out hope that those countries that trample upon democratic rights will also change their ways