Tag Archives: Freedom of the Press

U.S. to Host World Press Freedom Day in 2011

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The United States will play host to UNESCO’s World Press Freedom Day event in 2011, from May 1 – May 3.  The celebration will be held in Washington, DC, and will carry the theme “21st Century Media: New Frontiers, New Barriers.”

During the event, UNESCO will award the Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize, which honors a person, organization or institution that has notably contributed to the defense and/or promotion of press freedom, especially where risks have been undertaken.   The recipient is determined by an independent jury of international journalists.

In a statement about World Press Freedom Day 2011, Philip J. Crowley, Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs at the U.S. Department of State said:

“New media has empowered citizens around the world to report on their circumstances, express opinions on world events, and exchange information in environments sometimes hostile to such exercises of individuals’ right to freedom of expression.  At the same time, we are concerned about the determination of some governments to censor and silence individuals, and to restrict the free flow of information.  We mark events such as World Press Freedom Day in the context of our enduring commitment to support and expand press freedom and the free flow of information in this digital age.” 

For further information regarding World Press Freedom Day Events for program content, you can visit the World Press Freedom Facebook page http://www.connect.connect.facebook.com/WPFD2011

Photo Friday

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[image src="http://photos.state.gov/libraries/amgov/3234/Week_1/070610_streetsense_500.jpg" caption="Vendor Roger Dove (right) has worked since December 2009 for Street Sense, a newspaper that covers homelessness and poverty issues while providing a source of income to the homeless. (State Dept./Jane K. Chun)" align="center"]

Learn more about the paper or get a subscription at StreetSense.org.

Photo Friday

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[image src="http://photos.state.gov/libraries/amgov/3234/Week_2/beeler_500.jpg" caption="Editorial cartoons are a powerful way of making political and social commentary. Nate Beeler, editorial cartoonist for the Washington Examiner, works on a drawing about the media attention surrounding Washington Nationals pitcher Stephen Strasburg. (State Dept./Jane K. Chun)" align="center"]

(You can see the final version of the cartoon at the Washington Examiner website.)

How much is a Trustworthy News Source Worth?

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Now that World Press Freedom Day has come and gone, many of us, especially in the United States, can resume the “deathwatch” for the traditional news media.

As I repeatedly blogged about in an earlier incarnation, there are many concerns that the American press, and by extension American democracy (since democracy requires an informed public), face a serious crisis due to the rise and prevalence of “infotainment,” on the one hand, and advocacy journalism on the other, instead of straight news reporting.  Yet even the advertisement-driven business model hasn’t been enough to keep many traditional print sources afloat in a sea of free Web-based news.

On May 5, in an appearance on The Daily Show, Newsweek editor Jon Meacham announced that his magazine’s owner, The Washington Post, had put the publication up for sale, which may ultimately lead to its demise after 77 years of operation.  If you’re interested in buying it, please let Meacham know.

Meacham referenced author J.D. Salinger’s celebrated book, saying Newsweek is one of the few remaining “catcher[s] in the rye” that is preventing the American public from falling off a cliff into ignorance.  (Bnet.com disagrees.)

The editor urged news consumers to examine their priorities.  “We have to decide, are we ready to get what we’re willing to pay for? And if you’re not going to pay for news, then you’re going to get a different kind of news,” he said.

News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch recently proposed a digital subscription model that would affect newspapers such as The Times of London and The Wall Street Journal.  That led to a recent discussion with colleagues (including fellow BTP blogger Tanya) on whether we would be willing to pay $20 a month to read The New York Times.  Would you?

But check this out: according to The Atlantic, a senior executive at Google.com, which Murdoch and others have held responsible for the current crisis, says the company is now looking at how to save the news business “for commercial as well as civic reasons.”  Google realizes that “if news organizations stop producing great journalism … the search engine will no longer have interesting content to link to.”

Is there a link between an informed citizenry and commercial profit?  The cynic in me is finally seeing room for hope.

Free Press and New Media Irony

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There’s good news and bad news about new media.  First the good news:  The Internet, mobile phones, and other types of “new media” are making information sharing infinitely easier.  For the first time in history, there is a global platform for free speech and the possibility of a truly free press.  But you knew this.

The bad news is that freedom of the press is actually decreasing just about everywhere in the world!  In a report released April 29, Freedom House — a watchdog group that monitors democratic issues around the globe — found that press freedom declined for the eighth consecutive year, and only one in six people live in countries with genuinely free media.  And – as I learned from attending a conference on the topic last week sponsored by the Center for International Media Assistance – for the first time the number of bloggers in prison almost surpasses the number of traditional print and broadcast journalists.

It seems that the very success of the Internet and new media in spreading ideas is what has motivated repressive governments to increasingly restrict access to these tools, crack down on journalists, and crush a basic human right:  freedom of speech.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has likened information networks to “the new nervous system for our planet.”  Ultimately, she said, the issue “isn’t just about information freedom; it is about what kind of world we want and what kind of world we will inhabit.”  Do we want to live, she said, in one global community with “a common body of knowledge that benefits and unites us all.”  Or, Clinton said, do we want to live on “a fragmented planet in which access to information and opportunity is dependent on where you live and the whims of censors.”

Does it send a chill up your spine, too, to think that just as a world of knowledge is opening, there are those who would impose a new “Dark Age”?

World Press Freedom Day

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In 1993, the United Nations General Assembly designated 3 May as World Press Freedom Day.  For the past seventeen years, this day has highlighted the importance of freedom of the press, and paid tribute to journalists who have lost their lives while doing their jobs. 

Last week, Freedom House reminded us all that there is still much work to be done to ensure freedom of the press around the world when they released a study that says global press freedom declined in 2009.

This week, America.gov’s entire Democracy and Human Rights page is devoted to the topic of freedom of the press.  There are articles, a photo gallery, and information about upcoming webchats (one in English, one in French) with journalists.

Update: Statement by Secretary Clinton on World Press Freedom Day

Update: President Obama on World Press Freedom Day

Access versus Privacy

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A Washington Post column published April 14 has generated quite the debate over freedom of the press versus the need to keep certain governmental matters private.

The article, Obama’s disregard for media reaches new heights at nuclear summit received 1300 comments within an hour of its posting. The summit, which brought leaders of 47 nations together for a series of meetings, led to an agreement among nations to take meaningful steps to secure nuclear materials.

In his column, Dana Milbank is critical of the administration’s decision to keep meetings private. “Reporters, even those on the White House beat for two decades, said these were the most restricted such meetings they had ever seen,” he writes.

Many of the commentors agree with Milbank. They note that it wasn’t just meetings that were closed off to the press, but in many cases ceremonial meet and greets were also limited.

But others point out this: consider the context of the summit. Nuclear proliferation is a matter of national, in fact international, security. There is a need to keep certain discussions private. Also, leaders may feel they are able to be more frank with one another without the glare of cameras.

What do you think?

Film about Burmese Underground Journalists Up for Oscar

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Coverage by citizen journalists brought international attention to the 2007 Saffron Revolution.

Coverage by citizen journalists brought international attention to the 2007 Saffron Revolution.

In their tightly controlled media climate, most Burmese will not be able to watch the upcoming Academy Awards March 7, but their political repression will have the world’s attention. Among the Oscar nominees for best feature documentary is the film Burma VJ, which chronicles undercover Burmese journalists and how they were able to capture and smuggle out footage of the military government’s brutal crackdown of the 2007 Saffron Revolution.

U Gawsita, a Burmese monk who is featured in the film, welcomed the Academy Award nomination in an interview with thewrap.com. “It shows that the world is standing with the oppressed people of Burma. It’s not ignoring the suffering of the people.”

Much of the film’s footage came from amateur journalists associated with the Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB), based in Oslo, Norway. In a video interview with the National Endowment for Democracy, DVB Executive Director Khin Maung Win says the station, which has expanded from shortwave transmissions to satellite television, is able to reach 10 million Burmese per month — a significant crack in the regime’s near monopoly on information. Providing DVB with content is a risky undertaking, since cameras must be hidden and footage must be clandestinely sent out of the country. There are now 10 DVB journalists in prison, but Win said that “even though they know the risk, they are committed.”

Their job is to cover precisely what the military regime is trying to hide, such as human rights violations and activities of opposition figures such as National League for Democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi. Given their constraints, Win said probably only about 20 to 30 percent of the military’s abuses can be documented, but even that small percentage shows “the power of media and how it can challenge the authority.”

Burma VJ director Anders Ostergaard emphasized the importance of citizen journalism to democracy.

“I believe it’s very powerful. We saw the same thing happening in Iran in the spring. It is here to stay, and I think it’s a very powerful tool for democracy and awareness. We tend to think that new technology is always ‘big brother is watching you,’ but it can also be ‘little brother is watching you.’ And that’s quite a good thing,” Ostergaard said.

What is the state of citizen journalism in your country, compared with Burma? How much do you rely upon “unofficial” news sources?

Journalism and the Exposure of Covert Intelligence

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Need a challenge? Try covering intelligence issues as a journalist. Like other beats in journalism, you are heavily reliant upon getting people to talk to you, in addition to any other detective work you can manage on your own. But unlike other beats, you are focusing on topics in which many people are actively trying to deny you information, or even steer you in the wrong direction.

The tug of war between governments and journalists over what information will be made public comes out most clearly in intelligence matters. The journalists want to be the first to let the public know what is going on, while the government wants to protect intelligence sources and methods.

When The New York Times exposed the government’s surveillance of U.S. citizens without obtaining warrants in 2005, then-President Bush was visibly unhappy and said the sources of the report had committed a “shameful act.”

But we have also seen just recently how The New York Times also agreed to a White House request for a delay in publishing its story on the capture of Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar. For more information, check out this very interesting interview from the BBC.

I recently went to a book signing by Shane Harris, who wrote The Watchers: The Rise of America’s Surveillance State. He compared the challenge of uncovering truth and fact in the intelligence world with being asked to write a review of a play that is being performed in a theater which never raises its curtains.

“You hear footsteps behind the curtain, you hear people moving around, [and] you catch snatches of muffled dialogue,” he said, adding perhaps there will be a brief glimpse behind the curtain or someone involved in the production will whisper some information about the plot in your ear.

But that person is often followed by an official who says, “I know somebody just came out and told you what they thought was going on behind the curtain. That’s not what is going on at all. We’re not going to talk about what’s going on behind the curtain,” Harris said in his analogy.

As intelligence reporters, we are “constantly grabbing these fragments of a story where we can and then going back … and trying to fashion them into a mosaic in a narrative,” he said.

But, conversely, chroniclers like himself “often see the totality of a narrative that even the people in the play behind the curtain don’t always see.” He related how he once went to intelligence committee staff at the U.S. Congress to confirm bits of information he had gleaned from private and government sources. “Stop asking us these questions,” they told him. “Clearly, you know more about this story than we do.”

Suppose you were working on an article like the Mullah Baradar capture and were told by your government to delay it or to not publish it at all. Where would your “red lines” be in that type of scenario?

The Storm of a Century: A History Lesson

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We here in Washington, D.C., are still crawling out from under one of the worst winter storms on record for the area. As of last Wednesday, the winter of 2009-2010 broke the record for snowfall in the greater D.C. area. The previous record was 54.4 inches (1.38 meters) during the winter of 1898-1899.

Given how much hassle we’ve had getting the city back up and running in 2010 — the federal government was officially closed for four days last week due to snow conditions — it made me think about what was happening in D.C. 111 years ago during that previous record-holding season.

A quick trip to the Internet helped jog my memory of American history, and it turns out the winter of 1898-1899 was actually pretty important. William McKinley was halfway through his first term as president (though elected to a second term in 1901, McKinley was assassinated shortly thereafter and did not get to serve much of it), and the country was at war with Spain.

A sketch of the U.S.S. Maine explosion

A sketch of the U.S.S. Maine explosion

On February 15, 1898, the U.S.S. Maine exploded while docked in Havana harbor, killing 266 American sailors. The press at the time publicly blamed Spanish officials for the explosion and fueled a reactionary public with sensationalized stories of atrocities committed by the Spanish in Cuba. These stories were part of the “yellow journalism” of the time that favored rumors, exaggerations or even outright lies to generate eye-catching headlines.

One popular story about the role the press played in stirring up public sentiment for the Spanish-American War has William Randolph Hearst, publisher of the New York Journal, telling his correspondent in Cuba, “You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war.” That story is probably more legend than truth, but it encapsulates the spirit of the runaway yellow press nicely.

But in the winter of 1898, presumably between blizzards, representatives from the United States and Spain signed the Treaty of Paris on December 10, 1898, and the U.S. Senate ratified it February 6, 1899. The treaty ended the Spanish-American War, with Spain ceding Puerto Rico, the Philippines and Guam to the United States.

The Maine incident, incidentally, had also helped push a joint resolution through Congress earlier in the year annexing Hawaii. There were many petitions protesting annexation, and the effort had already failed under the previous president, Benjamin Harrison — but you can read more about that history elsewhere.

Obviously, there were larger geopolitical strategies in play here, and the colonial policies that came out of the Treaty of Paris created many problems. Still, one year in which the United States took over Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Guam and Hawaii? A year that set a snowfall record that would not be broken for 111 years? Maybe the politicians of the late 1890s were just looking for a warmer place to get away from the winter weather. I know I sure am.