Journalists’ safety key focus for World Press Freedom Day conference

03 May 13 | Politics and Society, United Nations

Journalists from around the world are marking UNESCO’s 20th annual World Press Freedom Day in San Jose, Costa Rica.

Driven by the deaths of 600 journalists over the past decade, this year’s conference — a series of panels, workgroups and ceremonies — is devoted to the theme of promoting safety and ending impunity for journalists, bloggers and everyday citizens who cross red lines to speak their minds. The gathering also honours journalists who have been attacked, imprisoned or died for their work. Of the 600 killed, only in 10 percent of cases have those responsible been punished.

This year’s theme is on promoting safety and ending impunity for journalists, bloggers, media workers and everyday citizens who cross red lines to speak their minds. The annual 3 May conference is a series UNESCO hosts a series of panels, workshops and ceremonies to evaluate global press freedom and to honour journalists who have been attacked, imprisoned or died for their work. 

Journalists gathered in Costa Rica to mark World Press Freedom Day. Photo: Brian Pellot / Index on Censorship

Journalists gathered in Costa Rica to mark World Press Freedom Day. Photo: Brian Pellot / Index on Censorship

Most of the first day’s sessions provided analysis of the dangers journalists face.

In societies where journalists feel unsafe or where attacks against them go unpunished, a culture of self censorship often emerges. Javier Darío Restrepo, a journalist and writer from Colombia, said journalists self censor to survive, but in doing so they cease to be a voice of the powerless in their societies. Building on that point, OSCE’s representative on freedom of the media Dunja Mijatović described the right of journalists to carry out their work without fear — an important prerequisite for media freedom in society.

One common reference on day one of the conference was the recently published UN Plan of Action on Safety of Journalists and the Issue of Impunity – which Index on Censorship contributed to. The plan calls on UN agencies, member states, NGOs and media organisations to work together in promoting the safety of journalists and raising awareness of the primary threats they face.

Adnan Rehmat, executive director at Intermedia Pakistan, said the main issues facing press freedom in his country are that attacks on journalists are not recognised as attacks on freedom of expression. One positive development he mentioned was the establishment of a Pakistan Journalist Safety Fund to provide assistance for journalists in distress.

In the same discussion, Andrés Morales, executive director of La Fundación para la Libertad de Prensa in Colombia, cited a recent attack on noted Colombian investigative journalist Ricardo Calderon as indicative of the wider problems facing journalists in the region and around the world. Colombia has seen a markeddecline in the number of journalists murdered in the past decade, which he attributes in part to a protection programme for journalists but also to self censorship. Many journalists believe that if they don’t write about sensitive issues, they won’t be punished for their words.

In a panel devoted specifically to freedom of expression in Costa Rica, local journalist Mauricio Herrera Ullola outlined some of the greatest obstacles media professionals face in his country today. By some measures, Costa Rica’s press can be considered free. But “crimes against honour” are still prosecuted criminally and carry a penalty of up to 100 days in prison if someone feels personally insulted by a journalist’s story. Herrera Ullola said that media ownership is very concentrated, self-censorship is common, and current laws around slander and libel can be chilling in Costa Rica. He also said the country needs freedom of information laws to promote greater transparency and access to public records.

Several speakers described great improvements for the rights of women, indigenous populations, youth and sexual minorities across Latin America in recent decades, but agreed that many countries in the region still have work to do to ensure full freedom of expression. Colombia and Mexico are both on the Committee to Protect Journalists’ top 10 list of deadliest countries for journalists, a clear sign that freedom of expression remains under attack in the region.

In a poignant moment during the conference’s first day, one delegate asked whether journalists dying on the job is an occupational hazard; an unavoidable price society must pay for good journalism and ultimately for the truth. Adnan Rehmat from Intermedia Pakistan responded: “The price of journalism should not be more than feeling tired after a long day’s work.”

Brian Pellot is Index on Censorship’s Digital Policy Adviser. UNESCO’s three days of events for World Press Freedom Day in Costa Rica complement dozens of local and regional events around the world. Follow Brian on Twitter @brianpellot (along with the hashtags #wpfd and #pressfreedom) as he reports on the rest of the conference, and read the full programme of events in Costa Rica here.

World Press Freedom Day

European Union: Is the European Union faltering on media freedom?
Tunisia: Press faces repressive laws, uncertain future
Egypt: Post-revolution media vibrant but partisan
Brazil: Press confronts old foes and new violence

A tale of two Australians

20 Feb 12 | News and features

His organisation’s name was on the marquee, but no-one invited him to the party. We understand there was no attempt at all to invite Rupert Murdoch to last week’s Paris conference on The Media World after WikiLeaks and News of the World.

In contrast the founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, couldn’t attend the conference, being unable to leave the UK for well-documented reasons.

But his organisation says they only got eight days notice that they could send a representative, circumstances that Wikileaks spokesman Kristinn Hrafnsson characterised as a de facto ban on their participation and “censorship”.

Hrafnsson was particularly exercised by the speaker list, which included several journalists who seem to have crossed Assange in the past.

In fact the principles of transparency and justice that WikiLeaks espouse were well defended by the brilliant Jérémie Zimmermann, co-founder of the citizen advocacy group La Quadrature du Net. It was left to him to remind everyone that of the two accused organisations, only one does what they do for corporate profit.

Not speaking for Assange, but still supportive, was WikiLeaks’ occasional legal advisor, Geoffrey Robertson QC. (Robertson’s quip of the day, after counting Assange as a “great Australian”, was to say the same of Murdoch, but only “in the sense that Atilla was a great Hun”.)

The end result was a shortlived attempt to stoke outrage on Twitter and what turned out to be an unheeded call to WikiLeaks supporters to #OccupyUNESCO, the United Nations cultural agency that was hosting the event.

The organisers, the World Press Freedom Committee (WPFC), and UNESCO itself, argued that the conference was about journalism in the wake of the WikiLeaks and News of the World sagas, “and not about the episodes themselves”.

WPFC asserted its right to pick the speakers they liked, but offered to distribute a WikiLeaks statement “and include it in the published conference proceedings”; it was left to UNESCO to invite a WikiLeaks representative a week later.

On the eve of the conference, UNESCO reconfirmed to Index on Censorship that if Hrafnsson wanted to attend, he would be allowed to speak. He didn’t attend. The e-mail trail between Hrafnsson and the organisers is here.

It is odd to call a conference to discuss a media landscape transformed by WikiLeaks and the News of the World, then not invite from the outset, people to speak for the pair that did the transforming.

Most interesting — in what was still a useful event — would have been to hear how the two key actors in the two very different dramas were themselves redefining their own organisations’ roles in their wake.

Murdoch was that very day in London reinventing the News of the World as the Sun on Sunday, while WikiLeaks’ own reinvention, as part of The Global Square, an online global collaboration peer-to-peer platform for activists, is due to prototype next month.

Pressure delays release of UN sex education guidelines

09 Sep 09 | Index Index, minipost, News and features

UNESCOs proposed international sex education guidelines aimed at reducing HIV have been removed from its website amid criticism by conservative American organisations that they were too explicit for young children. The guidelines are a product of two years work by a team of experts at UNESCO at a cost of $350,000. Instead of the final document, a new draft was released on 7 September at a sex education conference in Birmingham.
Read more here