There’s A Session Missing From UNESCO’s Conference On Press Freedom: ‘What Actions Can The UN Take To Stop Governments Arresting, Jailing, And Killing Journalists?”

Philip Stone April 30, 2009

Despite all of the press freedom verbiage from governments around the world, the number of journalists arrested, jailed, and, yes, killed, each year is one of humanity’s disgraces. UNESCO holds a two-day meeting Saturday and Sunday to mark World Press Freedom Day May 3, but regretfully it pussyfoots around what governments are doing.

In his keynote speech at the Doha, Qatar event Koïchiro Matsuura, UNESCO’s director-general, uses the diplomat’s language to say that efforts must be strengthened to build media “critical of inherited assumptions yet tolerant of alternative perspectives” and he concludes that “A free press is not a luxury that can wait until more peaceful times”. But there is no damnation of the jailing and arrests going on throughout the world, no plea for it all to stop, but then given UNESCO is a UN organization what can one really expect?

UNESCO’s only real acknowledgement of what is going on out there is that Matsuura will present the 2009 World Press Freedom Prize posthumously to murdered Sri Lankan journalist Lasantha Wickrematunge. The prize is supported by the Ottaway and Cano foundations and Denmark’s JP/Politiken (the JP stands for Jyllens-Posten of cartoon fame so it knows a thing or two about press freedom!)

Press freedom lovers still observe UNESCO with some skepticism. Thirty years ago it proposed  licensing  journalists around the world, something the then Soviet Union and its allies thought was just dandy. The plan eventually died after vociferous debates and forceful western objections but it still caused a 19-year UNESCO boycott by the US.  

So while Matsuura probably has gone  as far as he can wearing his UN collar, at least for a few days the world’s attention is turned to press freedom which can be no bad thing, although doubtful it will make any difference to the decision makers in China, Cuba, and those other countries that make a habit of jailing journalists.

And just how bad is it out there? The World Association of Newspapers (WAN) says 70 journalists were killed last year (the International News Safety Institute – INSI puts the figure at 109 deaths in 36 countries), 125 were jailed (using figures from the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists -- CPJ) and 673 were arrested (according to Reporters Without Borders -- RWR). INSI says that another 24 journalists were killed during the first three months of this year.

INSI says all but five of the 109 it reported killed in 2008 were local journalists and that 80 of those deaths were not as a result of war but rather as victims probing organized crime, corruption and the like.

To help the media celebrate World Press Freedom day, WAN has prepared in several languages a package of stories, pictures, graphics, cartoons etc., that the world’s media can use free of charge and which can be downloaded here. The two cartoons we are running with this article come from that package.

Among the statistics that might shock is that there now are more Internet journalists (56) jailed globally than journalists working in any other medium. Credit China with much of that. “Online journalism has changed the media landscape and the way we communicate with one another,” CPJ Executive Director Joel Simon explained. “But the power and influence of this new generation of online journalists has captured the attention of repressive governments around the world, and they have accelerated their counterattack.”

It may surprise American readers to learn that the CPJ has the US on its list of countries that jails journalists, not in the US but in Iraq. The CPJ says that the US for at least five years has been jailing local journalists, some of whom worked for the likes of Reuters, AP, and CBS, for periods ranging from a few days to several months without charge and all were eventually released. President Obama has announced a stop to torture; wouldn’t it be a great celebration of World Press Freedom Day if he was to announce no more jailing of journalists in Iraq or other war zones without due process.

Perhaps the most interesting award honoring press freedom comes from The International Press Institute’s (IPI) that is giving its 2009 Free Media Pioneer Award to Russia’s Novaya Gazeta, the crusading Moscow newspaper that has seen four of its reporters killed in the past decade including the renowned Anna Politkovskaya who was gunned down in the lobby of her apartment building in October, 2006.

"Novaya Gazeta symbolizes the values behind World Press Freedom Day and its commitment to independence from government meddling", said IPI Director David Dadge.  Gazeta Editor Dmitry Muratov replied, "This award also belongs to those who sadly will not be able to see it with their own eyes. By this I mean our colleagues who died while carrying out their professional duties. This reward is devoted to their memory. Moreover, this prize is an opportunity for many journalists in our country who lost their faith in the possibility, under today’s conditions, to carry out an independent investigation of life, to serve the society and not the state. This award will give us confidence that this is still possible".

The staff owns 51% of the shares in the thrice-weekly publication with former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and Russian entrepreneur Alexander Lebedev owning the rest. Lebedev, a KGB officer in his younger days, recently bought London’s Evening Standard.

World Press Freedom Day is being celebrated in diverse ways around the world although a common theme seems to be getting politicians and journalists facing  one another on the sporting field. In France, for instance, the foreign ministry is hosting on Sunday a basketball game between foreign accredited journalists and French journalists against foreign diplomats accredited to Paris, while in Cameroon the British High Commission held a volleyball game against Cameroon journalists. The High Commission recently sponsored training on effective reporting in crisis situations for 19 Cameroon media organizations.

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