Seventeen journalists have been killed so far this year and many more are battling against repressive regimes which try to prevent them from reporting the facts. Michael Foley marks their brave struggle on World Press Freedom Day
It was the French historian Alexis de Tocqueville who suggested that in order to enjoy the "inestimable benefits that the liberty of the press ensures" it is necessary to accept the "inevitable evils it creates". There are those who might maintain that the "inevitable evil" now outweighs the "inestimable benefits" but still for many journalists the reality of life is one of harassment, imprisonment and even death.
Since the last World Press Freedom Day, we in Ireland have had cause to ponder that reality, following the murder last year of Martin O'Hagan, of the Sunday World, the first journalist to be killed in Northern Ireland. Martin O'Hagan's death, as with Veronica Guerin's in 1996, confirms that the journalist most likely to be killed for what they write or broadcast is a local journalist, one whose work is read by those most affected by the stories covered.
They write for ordinary people, they tell people what is happening in their own communities and challenge criminals, at great risk to themselves.
Only three days ago, the New York-based Committee for the Protection of Journalists (CPJ) reported the death of Valery Ivanov, editor of the newspaper Tolyatinskoye Obozreniye in the southern Russian city of Togliatti.
He was shot eight times in the head at point-blank range outside his home. Ivanov's colleagues believe the crime was connected to his work. Tolyatinskoye Obozreniye is well known for its reports on local organised crime, drug trafficking and official corruption.
So far 17 journalists have been killed in 2002, according to the International Press Institute. Fifty-five died last year, including Daniel Pearl of the Wall Street Journal.
While death is the ultimate censorship, harassment can also work, which is why journalists are routinely imprisoned, have their press cards confiscated and are otherwise stopped from covering events in places such as Palestine and Zimbabwe.
In Colombia, probably the most dangerous place to work as a journalist, the CPJ reports that five journalists have been killed since the start of the year.
Others have been threatened and four have been forced to leave the country, including the country's most well-known news anchorwoman.
Meanwhile, the law is used to ensure that journalists are not allowed to publish and broadcast. In many countries tax laws are used to close newspapers, radio and television stations.
In others the state maintains a monopoly on distribution, printing and the airwaves, thereby ensuring it can control the press and journalists.
The CPJ has listed some of the more bizarre press laws. In Zimbabwe journalists can be charged with "publishing materials likely to cause alarm and despondency". The Mozambican Press Law stipulates that in cases of defamation of the president, "truth is not a defence".
In Ethiopia a few years ago, Bizunish Debebe, publisher of the weekly independent Zegabi, was sentenced to one year in prison for failing to publish the name of her newspaper's deputy editor. Cuban journalist Jesús Joel Díaz Hernandéz was given four years in prison after being convicted of "dangerousness".
In Burma it is a crime to listen to short-wave foreign radio broadcasts and to use a fax machine. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo a death sentence can be handed down for "insulting the army" and "demoralising the nation".
Which brings us neatly to Ireland and our libel laws, now considered the most draconian in the west and which could easily fit into the CPJ's list of bizarre press laws.
There is little need to go into the details of the law here. Suffice to say that it is now over 10 years since the Government-appointed Law Reform Commission recommended sweeping changes. That report has never been acted upon.
In the meantime, there is a growing body of jurisprudence within the context of the European Convention of Human Rights and its court, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, which recognises the importance of the media in a modern democracy, even the "necessary evil".
We still await the incorporation of the Convention into Irish law. We are now the last country in Europe to do so.
It would, of course, be too much to expect issues of press freedom to be an election issue. Fine Gael did publish a policy document outlining its proposals for a voluntary press regulatory system and changes in the defamation law. If it was thought such a policy document, however flawed, might stimulate a debate, it never happened. You cannot have a debate if no one else will take part.
In 1859 John Stewart Mill wrote, rather optimistically: "The time, it is hoped, is gone by when any defence would be necessary of the liberty of the press as one of the securities against corrupt or tyrannical government."
On World Press Freedom Day we realise that time has not yet gone.
Michael Foley is a lecturer in Journalism at the Dublin Institute of Technology