World Press Freedom Day - it sounds like a day when journalists can bask in their own importance before getting back to the business of writing lurid headlines, pursuing sensationalist stories and invading the privacy of others. In Ireland it will mean yet another plea for the reform of the libel laws and a promise to put in place a voluntary regulatory system for the press. This Government, like its predecessors, will ignore this and life will go on until the next World Press Freedom Day. This is not how it should be.
World Press Freedom Day is an opportunity to examine why 32 journalists died in 2000 and why another 81 were in jail up to last December 31st. It is a chance to see what this means for the media in the modern world.
During the 1980s journalists covering conflict often wore T-shirts with JOURNALIST written across the front and back to avoid being shot. This is now not the case. The power and influence of the media and the importance of public opinion means that journalists are witnesses; their reports can be used to bring war criminals to justice or identify criminals.
Journalists have become targets. Those who are intimidated, harassed, imprisoned or killed are rarely big-name international correspondents. They are not those we see on television in designer fatigues and well-cut flak jackets. After all it was journalists working for a Belgrade rock music station, B-92, who were the focus of opposition to the Milosevic regime.
Those who are most in danger tend to be local journalists, such as Flavio Bedoya (52), a regional correspondent with the Colombian newspaper Voz. His death is believed to be linked to a number of articles concerning collusion between the armed forces and right-wing paramilitary groups.
His is the first death in Colombia this year; three died last year. It has replaced Sierra Leone as the most dangerous country in the world to practise journalism.
Nahar Ali was beaten to death in a town in Bangladesh following articles he wrote about local crime syndicates. Thai journalist Witha yut Sangsopit was shot as he entered the radio studios where he worked. His death is believed to be linked with his investigations into land deal irregularities. In most cases, the murderers will get away with it. Governments show little interest in extending press freedom, even when it acts as a bar to international recognition. Countries such as Belarus and Ukraine, for instance, care little for world opinion when it comes to harassing independent journalism. In many countries journalists produce newspapers and broadcast on primitive equipment because the legal and cultural environment dissuades investment.
In Russia, a subsidiary of the state-owned gas company has taken over the only independent national television channel, NTV, which had been critical of government policy, especially in relation to Chechnya. Russia is now top of the most dangerous place in Europe for a journalist with six dead. The apparent failure of the government to investigate properly these murders has done little to help the media.
Many African governments, according to the International Press Institute, have a deep-seated antagonism towards the media. Countries such as the Ivory Coast, Liberia and Malawi make use of their police and military to intimidate and harass journalists; Algeria is considering strengthening criminal penalties for defamation.
According to the institute, "dangers for the media still exist in Europe where a culture of secrecy continues and laws have been used to impede journalists and prevent them from informing the public".
In Ireland this year there has been some good news. The new broadcasting legislation has abolished the censorship of Section 31. Under a provision of the Refugee Act, ministerial permission before an asylum-seeker could be identified on radio or television or in the newspapers was dropped. Journalists here are, however, working under the worst libel laws in Western Europe. Despite the reforms recommended by the Law Reform Commission and 10 years of campaigning by media organisations, there is no sign of any willingness on the part of the Government to examine media legislation. Successive governments have had a real problem in seeing the media in its true role as watchdog of government on behalf of the people, a role ascribed by the European Court of Human Rights. All governments, including the Irish, should heed the words of Albert Camus, who wrote in 1960: "A free press can be good or bad, but most certainly without freedom. it can never be anything but bad."
Michael Foley is a lecturer in journalism at the Dublin Institute of Technology and a media commentator
