“At times it feels really lonely as a journalist [so Press Freedom Day] becomes a good day to remember that our work has a lot of meaning … allows us to still believe that [journalism is] a profession that’s really needed to change the world.”

--Lydia Cacho Ribeiro, freelance journalist

Cacho won UNESCO’s 2008 World Press Freedom Prize for her work exposing political corruption, organized crime and domestic violence despite an attempt on her life and legal battles. She says that her 18 years as a freelance journalist in Mexico have not been easy.

“Censorship, including self-censorship, has resurfaced even in places where we thought it had been extinguished, and has gained new impetus in places where we believed it to be dying.”

-- Agnes Callanard, executive director of the free-speech advocacy group Article 19.

She says governments worldwide have enacted new laws or revived “old laws to combat terrorism worldwide, resulting in an increase in the use and scope of secrecy laws, and re-interpretation of freedom of information legislation with the aim of restricting access to information.”

“Never before has the issue of freedom of expression been of greater importance.”

-- Walid Al-Saqaf, former editor in chief of the Yemen Times, the country’s largest English-language newspaper

Al-Saqaf fights government restrictions on online journalism – Yemen’s Internet-targeted censorship initiative was the first of its kind in the Arab world. He says minds imprisoned by oppression are “time bombs awaiting to explode and hence freedom is not any more a luxury … but a necessity to ensure stability and peace in the long haul.”

“The yearning of people for the truth and context will never be satisfied so long as journalists are targeted and subject to violence and governments refuse to break the chains of media control.”

-- Aidan White, general secretary of the Brussels-based International Federation of Journalists

White says the professional journalism is being challenged by a “crisis of falling standards, undue corporate and commercial influence, and precarious social conditions.” If “press freedom is to prosper and grow,” he says, “we need to be vigilant in defense of our rights.”

“Where press freedom is suffocated, the country is either in turmoil, or popular anger and desperation are boiling up beneath the appearance of ‘stability,’ ready to explode in some upheaval or another, today or tomorrow.”

-- Kwame Karikari, executive director of the Media Foundation for West Africa

Even though crises can occur anywhere, “experience since the 1990s seems to show that in Africa the countries that guarantee relatively open and free press are those where multiparty democratic rule thrives in relative peace and stability,” he says.

A free press “plays a key role in sustaining and monitoring a healthy democracy, as well as in contributing to greater accountability, good governance, and economic development.”

-- Karin Deutsch Karlekar, senior researcher and managing editor for Freedom House

Freedom House monitors threats to media independence, primarily through its annual index, Freedom of the Press, which draws attention to countries and regions where such freedom is in jeopardy. Karlekar says the group’s 2008 findings show a sixth straight year of decline in global press freedom.

“There are two main challenges for journalists these days. One is to keep speaking truth to power. To approach it close enough to cover it, but … to be able to resist the charm offensive of the political and economic powers. The other one is not to give up to a sensationalism that seduces the public and tempts the profitable businesses that media companies try to be.”

-- Robert Menard, secretary-general of Reporters Without Borders

Menard says the world community must single out those countries that do not respect Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

On World Press Freedom Day 2008, UNESCO “pays tribute to the courage and professionalism of the many journalists and media professionals killed and wounded while carrying out their professional activities.”

-- Koïchiro Matsuura, UNESCO director general

Matsuura says press freedom and freedom of information “are the founding principles for good governance, development and peace” and adds that they “feed into the wider development objective of empowering people by giving people the information that can help them gain control over their own lives.”

“We keep the story going week after week, month after month, year after year. … In a way, I did feel a commitment to tell the story, that I felt that somebody had to goddamn well do it.”

-- Peta Thornycroft

Thornycroft, a 2007 recipient of the International Women’s Media Foundation’s Lifetime Achievement Award, is among the few remaining independent journalists in Zimbabwe, where she has covered its tumultuous political and economic conditions at great personal risk.

See related article: Veteran Reporter Outlines Challenges of Reporting from Zimbabwe

Listen to related podcast: Peta Thornycroft Offers Advice on Covering Conflict Zones See transcript)