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Freedom of the Media Declines Worldwide, Report Says
"Global declines in press freedom" persisted last year, with setbacks highlighted in Israel, Italy, Taiwan, Hong Kong and elsewhere across the world, an annual survey said Friday.
Palestinian journalists protest with stickers reading: "Don't shut journalists' mouths" at a refugee camp in Gaza. A report by media rights group Freedom House has rated several countries including China, Eritrea, Iran, Libya, Myanmar, North Korea, the Palestinian territories and Turkmenistan as being among some of the worst-rated states for press freedom. (AFP/File/Said Khatib) Freedom House, a nongovernmental organization that supports democracy and freedom of the media, said in its annual press freedom survey that "negative trends" outweighed "positive movements in every region, particularly in the former Soviet Union, the Middle East and North Africa."
"This marked the seventh straight year of overall deterioration. Improvements in a small number of countries -- including bright spots in parts of South Asia and Africa -- were overshadowed by a continued, relentless assault on independent news media by a wide range of actions, in both authoritarian states and countries with very open media environments."
Israel -- once the only country to be consistently rated free by the group in the Middle East and North Africa -- was ranked as "partly free" because of the Gaza conflict.
The report cited "increased travel restrictions on both Israeli and foreign reporters; official attempts to influence media coverage of the conflict within Israel; and greater self-censorship and biased reporting, particularly during the outbreak of open war in late December."
Elsewhere in the Middle East, there are concerns about harassment of journalists and bloggers in Libya, Iran, Syria, Tunisia and Saudi Arabia. The drop in violence in war-torn Iraq helped journalists move around the country, and a new law in the Kurdish region gave journalists "unprecedented freedoms."
Hong Kong, which is part of China, also dropped in rankings from free to partly free, a reflection of "the growing influence of Beijing over media and free expression in the territory."
"Of particular concern were the appointment of 10 owners of Hong Kong media outlets to a mainland Chinese political advisory body, increased restrictions on film releases in the period surrounding the Olympics, and reports that critics of Beijing encountered growing difficulty in gaining access to Hong Kong media platforms."
The report cited deterioration of of freedoms in Taiwan, which has been characterized as East Asia's freest media environment. That's because of "legal pressures and attempts to control broadcast media outlets."
Italy dropped from free to partly free because of the "increased use of courts and libel laws to limit free speech, heightened physical and extralegal intimidation by both organized crime and far-right groups, and concerns over media ownership and influence," the report said.
It cited fears about media magnate Silvio Berlusconi becoming prime minister again. There are concerns about "the concentration of state-owned and private outlets under a single leader."
In the former Soviet Union, "legal pressure and attempts to control broadcast media outlets" were cited in Russia, Armenia and Kyrgyzstan. The report noted other problems in Russia, saying "reporters suffer from a high level of personal insecurity, and impunity for past murders or physical attacks against journalists is the norm."
Across Africa, there were "some improvements," citing developments in Comoros, Sierra Leone, Angola, and Liberia. But there were continued problems in places like Zimbabwe and Eritrea.
"Senegal took a significant step backward due to a dramatic increase in both legal and extralegal action against journalists and media houses, accompanied by overtly hostile rhetoric from the president and other officials," the report said.
The report cited strides in South Asian nations, ranking the once "not free" Maldives to "partly free." It mentioned a "new constitution protecting freedom of expression, the opening of additional private radio and television stations, the release of a prominent journalist from life imprisonment, and a general loosening of restrictions after the country's first democratic presidential election in October."
It said Bangladesh and Pakistan reversed declines in freedom of the media. But there were setbacks in Afghanistan and Sri Lanka, two countries racked by warfare.
In some countries in the Americas, such as Mexico, Bolivia and Ecuador, "attacks and official rhetoric against the media escalated." Venezuela and Cuba were ranked as not free, and there were "high levels of intimidation and self-censorship" in Colombia and Guatemala. Positive developments were noted in Guyana, Haiti and Uruguay.
The worst-rated countries in the world are Myanmar, Cuba, Eritrea, Libya, North Korea and Turkmenistan.
"Given the current economic climate, which is certain to place a further strain on media sustainability and diversity in rich and poor countries alike, pressures on media freedom are now looming from all angles and are increasingly threatening the considerable gains of the past quarter-century," the report said.
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16 Comments so far
Show AllWe still have the Internet. But for how long?
What about America, where most people think the press is free?
The US corporate media is the mouthpiece of the Government, never providing analysis or investigative reporting. It is no different to Pravda during the Cold War.
At least we still have decent independent reporters, many of whom we read here at CD (thank you, CD). Chomsky, Frisk, Hersch, Klein, Goodman, Cole, Monbiot, McGovern, Ritter, etc. The major problem is that they are rarely referenced in the MSM.
Never criticize a man until you've walked a mile in his moccasins - Native American proverb.
That was my point...the media here isn't free, but nearly all believe that it is.
Do you that there's absolute proof of the liberal left bias in the media ?
___ We always read from left to right ___
And TANSTAAFL ( There aint no such thing as a free lunch ),
FREE is worth what you have to pay for it.
Namaste
Rupert Murdoch has the 'freedom' to publish whatever he wishes as if it were true.
It's all streight from the Ministry of Truth - or the Times or JPost or FauxNews or ...
On any given issue - political, legislative, religious, economic, medical, and so on - we all have the power within us, if we band together in an organized way, to repudiate those we've lent power to and usurp those whose policies and doctrines consistently run contrary to the overall well-being of the populace. We, as a larger body of people, do not have to allow or stand-by helplessly while citizen-granted leadership is making changes in our lives that largely place us at risk.
If we don't force them into the same position they're attempting to force the citizens into, we might as well hand over the entire world to them and walk into the sea.
By not actually taking part in actions on issues such as the one above, becoming steadfast in a solution to nefarious leadership, they will only continue to gain momentum and you will have lost any footing you've ever had, for good!
Of course, any pressure and ousting should be done within legal boundaries.
The main stream media has to make a choice, report real news events as they really are or join the stazi police network and loose all power.
Liberal vs Conservative
The main stream media has done a great injustice to America.
Their total combined factual reporting has been controlled and managed by the elite to brainwash our ability to think for ourselves.
Right vs. left, liberal vs. conservative, gay rights vs. hetero rights, war on terror vs. organized crime.
Fact , our war on Terror has created a huge militant movement in the middle east for a fight to control their lands.
This war has nothing to do with Terror , that's a cover up story to hide the fact that people have united in Pakistan and Afghanistan to drive us from their homeland.
We drove these so called terrorists into another country,one that has nukes, where they have regrouped and recruited into their ranks freedom fighters.
Hey America, say it with me, FREEDOM FIGHTERS.
What a mess, we will pull out, after we have put in puppet regimes and that will last only a short time.
I am not a world leader, but boy did Bush/Cheney screw the American public with their neoconservative imperialistic foreign policy disaster.
While they and their buddy's got super rich, we end up with bailouts, a failed economy, and a war of occupation, not a war on terror.
Not to mention a new stazi society, their goal, 1 in very 25 Americans will be a spy. Infragard, Americorps, Citizen corps, DHS, warrant less surveillance, we are slowly becoming a full blown police state.
IF WE HAD REAL REPORTING FROM THE MAIN STREAM MEDIA DAY ONE AFTER 9/11. KEPT A CLOSE EYE AND HELD ALL DECISION MAKERS ACCOUNTABLE FOR THE 9/11 INVESTIGATIONS AND THE WAR DECISION PROCESS, WE COULD HAVE MADE INTELLECTUAL DECISIONS TO AVOID ALL WAR.
Maybe the terrorists could have been tracked and captured using a global police network to infiltrate and destroy from within.
This would have taken many years, but it would have been far more effective to have a global network of highly trained terrorist hunters while their TERRORISTS ranks were small in numbers, than what we have created now.
Apparently , the only people who know whats best for America are Oil company's and the military industrial complex with our elected officials in tow.
FREEDOM OF THE PRESS IS AN ILLUSION ALLOWED TO EXIST FOR THE ELITE TO RIDE HEARD OVER THEIR CATTLE.
But , the choice is theirs, the main stream media can start our revolution, fight the stazi take over, end warrant less surveillance, How?????
Real reporting of the TRUTH, no matter what.
Bornfreemen
"FREEDOM OF THE PRESS IS AN ILLUSION ALLOWED TO EXIST FOR THE ELITE TO RIDE HEARD OVER THEIR CATTLE" - Bombfreeman
According to Freedom House, Cuba and Venezuela are not free.
Joe McCarthy agrees.
Freedom House is a highly suspicious source, honestly.
and " they hate us for all of our Freedoms", too … honestly.
Namaste
I wrote a very good letter to the editor of our local paper.
Our Republicans were out in force, rallied by FOX news. I told the real reason for the "Tea Party".
Simply, banks devised moneymaking schemes based on YOUR mortgages and loans and your promise to pay them back.
When they lost, we (the taxpayer) bail out the banks so they can loan us more money as opposed to securing those assets and investing in communities so people could continue paying off and making good on the loan.
They will NOT print the truth! My comment never made it!
Our local newspaper is there to protect it's owners, not the readers!
Owners, advertisers, sources -- Chomsky and Herman's analysis still pretty much says it.
Today is the second time within a few weeks that I have found on the Common Dreams web site a news story which, although apparently progressive in its outlook, actually is very much in keeping with a neoconservative worldview.
After the first such incident, I e-mailed a message to the folks at OCD; I received no reply.
This time I shall post my concern, in hope of a response. The article in question concerns a recent report on the state of freedom of the press, around the world:
"Freedom of the Media Declines Worldwide, Report Says"
Published on Saturday, May 2, 2009, by CNN
This article's inclusion makes clear that OCD has considerable faith in the credibility of both the article's author, CNN, and the report's author -- an organization known as "Freedom House."
In the late 1960s, Freedom House denounced as "communists" those who criticized U.S. policy in Southeast Asia. These critics included the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.
To cite a more current example of Freedom House's right-wing ideology, I append the first part of a news story which appears on the web site of a group called "Media Transparency":
{{ "Freedom House receiving U.S. government money 'for clandestine activities inside Iran'"
by Bill Berkowitz April 4, 2006
{{ While Mohamad ElBaradei, the atomic energy chief of the United Nations, urges restraint, Michael Ledeen, an American Enterprise Institute neocon, advocates "regime change" in Iran and charges the Bush Administration with being asleep at the wheel.
{{ Regardless of what Michael Ledeen thinks of conflict in the Middle East, Iran has been in George W. Bush's sights for quite some time. Recently Bush Administration officials and some members of the European Union have been warning that conflict with Iran over its nuclear program may be inevitable, particularly if Iran doesn't cease its effort to perfect uranium enrichment.
{{ On March 30, 2005, the Financial Times (London) reported that at a speech at New York's Freedom House, Bush "stepped into an intense debate among democracy activists in the U.S. and Iran over how U.S. dollars should be used to carry out the administration's policy of promoting freedom in the Islamic republic."
{{ Freedom House is one of the organizations that is receiving money from the Bush Administration "for clandestine activities inside Iran," according to the Financial Times.
{{ A Freedom House research report concluded that "Far more often than is generally understood, the change agent is broad-based, non-violent civic resistance -- which employs tactics such as boycotts, mass protests, blockades, strikes and civil disobedience to de-legitimate authoritarian rulers and erode their sources of support, including the loyalty of their armed defenders."
{{ Like Iraq, right-wing think tank-connected neoconservatives -- particularly the American Enterprise Institute's Michael Ledeen -- are pushing for regime change.
{{ In "Machiavelli on Modern Leadership: Why Machiavelli's Iron Rules Are As Timely and Important Today As Five Centuries Ago," Ledeen wrote: "Change -- above all violent change -- is the essence of human history." In a story posted at National Review Online he asserted, "Creative destruction is our middle name. We do it automatically. . . it is time once again to export the democratic revolution." }}
OCD has posted an article whose author is CNN -- a news organization whose parent firm, Time Warner, is one of the huge, transnational media conglomerates which increasingly dominate the media landscape, in the United States and globally. Why is Our Common Dreams offering legitimacy to this firm and its ideology?
Perhaps a name change is in order: OCN (Our Common Nightmares).
William S. Solomon
Associate Professor
Department of Journalism and Media Studies
Rutgers University
New Brunswick, N.J. 08901
Sioux Rose
Great points & observations: WTF, HUMBABA & BSOL