Press challenges loom large

FELICE FRIEDSON THE MEDIA LINE

Newspaper readers might have noticed an empty white space in place of front-page stories in their favorite broadsheets and tabloids earlier this month. It was part of a campaign organized by the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN) to mark World Press Freedom Day (WPFD). WAN’s chief executive officer Larry Kilman said that the idea was to “remind [readers] that, without a free press, this is what the industry would look like.”

WPFD was created 20 years ago by journalists in Africa who wanted to sound a call to arms to protect the fundamental principles of freedom of expression as set forth in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Although at first glance it seems to be little more than just one more day of commemoration, to journalists covering a volatile world, the observance has taken on renewed meaning in 2011.

While the news industry undergoes a sea change spawned by new technologies and the prominence of social media, reporters, photojournalists and producers who cover conflicts the old-fashioned way are doing so under more dangerous conditions than ever, as evidenced by statistics documenting one of the bloodiest years in history in terms of casualties among working journalists.

The extensive list of participants in this year’s WPFD activities in New York and Washington, D.C., bears witness to how seriously members of the profession regard the issues of press freedoms and journalists’ safety. The international conference organized by UNESCO and the U.S. State Department focused on the theme of 21st Century: New Frontiers, New Barriers, and dealt with the increasing role of the Internet, the emergence of new media and the dramatic rise in social networking.

Naomi Hunt, the International Press Institute’s press freedom advisor for Africa and the Middle East, said that, so far in 2011, 17 deaths were reported in that region alone – nearly twice the number of journalists killed there in the previous year and almost twice as many journalists as were killed in the entire rest of the world during the same time. In Iraq alone, seven journalists have been killed during the first few months of 2011, while none died there in all of 2010.

University of California-Los Angeles Prof. Judea Pearl heads a foundation dedicated to press freedoms that was founded in memory of his son, the Wall Street Journal’s Southeast Asia bureau chief Daniel Pearl, who was captured and murdered by al-Qaeda in 2002 while investigating a link between the terrorist syndicate and Richard Reid, “the shoe bomber.”

Pearl’s sense of accomplishment, when in May 2010 U.S. President Barack Obama signed the Daniel Pearl Freedom of Press Act, turned to profound disappointment when he realized that the State Department has done precious little to fulfil its mandate to deepen its reporting on press freedom issues worldwide. Specifically, according to Pearl and backed up by a study conducted by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), although the Daniel Pearl law was intended to flag governments that participate in or condone press censorship, the State Department has failed to catalogue the violations, such as physical violence and censorship by governments, criminals and armed extremist groups.

The dramatic rise in journalists’ deaths and Pearl’s experience beg the question of whether correspondents have themselves become targets as they cover conflicts. Pearl thinks so.

“I do believe that journalists are targeted more these days as hostile agents rather than passive observers,” he told this reporter. New York Times Mideast correspondent Stephen Farrell doesn’t disagree, although he seems to see less overt intent to harm reporters. Farrell’s bona fides come with the distinction of having been captured three times in the course of covering conflicts: in Iraq, in Afghanistan and, most recently, as one of four Times journalists taken into custody and brutalized by Muammar Qaddafi’s troops in Libya.

Farrell admitted that there are times when either side of a conflict has a strong interest in preventing a story from being told, either because it compromises strategy or is a source of embarrassment. He also said that there are times when a regime seeks to send a message to a specific news organization. According to him, targeted violence is a much greater risk for local rather than foreign correspondents, praising the unsung courage of those local writers who, he said, can find their families threatened, too. But Farrell believes that the greatest danger more typically comes when the reporter is in the wrong place at the wrong time: the unanticipated victim of incoming artillery rounds or crossfire.

In February, New York Times readers were captivated and horrified by a front-page account written by the four Times correspondents of their time in captivity by pro-Qaddafi forces. The now-safe captives bore witness to the unique sets of dangers that complicate journalists’ plight.

While New York Times readers presumably found the correspondents’ account of their experience both harrowing and entertaining, it is far more worrisome to working journalists who know well that the level of danger facing those reporting from theatres of conflict has increased significantly in recent years. Farrell tells of a warning he gave to an enthusiastic young journalist anxious to follow in his footsteps. Farrell’s warning was that, without a major organization like the New York Times behind you, it’s suicidal to venture into harm’s way.

Potential havoc lurks even outside of the threat of physical harm. The newest technological age brings with it its own collection of tools available to would-be oppressors – state-sanctioned or not. The new era that was heralded by the ability to foment regime-changing demonstrations from a computer keyboard also brings with it a new set of tools capable of inflicting abuses as devastating as the advances are powerful. In recognition of WPFD, CPJ has catalogued the latest array of nefarious cybercraft in a special report on how online oppressors operate, including but not limited to the use of web-blocking, malware attacks and other forms of state-sanctioned cybercrime.

Legislation guaranteeing the right to communicate to the press, which is as old as Sweden’s 1766 Freedom of Press Act, has not outlived its need. But, as Judea Pearl has discovered, passing legislation designed to expose and pressure government offenders into compliance with standards of good behavior, falls far short of guaranteeing protection for journalists working in theatres of conflict. To that end, Pearl seconds an idea he credits to a friend: that the United Nations create a category of crime called “a crime against society,” which would criminalize the harming of journalists on the theory that the injured journalist is not serving a single newspaper but, he said, “all of society.”

Felice Friedson is co-founder and the current president and chief executive officer of the Media Line (themedialine.org) and executive producer for their radio, television and film productions.

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