Each year on May 3rd, the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) sponsors World Press Freedom Day to celebrate “the fundamental principles of press freedom, to evaluate press freedom around the world, to defend the media from attacks on their independence and to pay tribute to journalists who have lost their lives in the exercise of their profession.”
This year’s events come at a particularly precarious point in the struggle for worldwide press freedoms. According to Freedom in the World 2011: A Global Survey of Media Independence, an independent study released in conjunction with World Press Freedom Day’s events in Washington DC, “global media freedom has reached a new low point, contributing to an environment in which only 1 in every 6 people live in countries with a Free press.”
2011: A Window of Opportunity?
While the study notes marked improvements in sub-Saharan Africa, parts of the former Soviet Union and South Asia, alarming trends have emerged throughout Hispanic America, Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and West Africa. In fact, over the past five years, countries with substantial declines in media freedom have outnumbered those with corresponding gains by more than 2-to-1. Some of the deterioration has come from long-standing, non-democratic countries such as Iran, Russia, and Venezuela moving in “a more deeply authoritarian direction.” Most of the declines, however, have been seen in fledgling democracies tested by conflict.
“A country where journalists cannot report freely without fear of interference, by the government or other actors, has little hope of achieving or maintaining true democracy,” noted David J. Kramer, executive director of Freedom House, the watchdog organization that commissioned the study.
Civil protests seeking democratic reforms in authoritarian regimes across North Africa and the Middle East, in particular, could determine whether gains outweigh losses in 2011 and perhaps even reverse the overall global decline. “In 2010, we saw how readily governments in the Middle East turned to repression of the media,” said Karin Deutsch Karlekar, managing editor of the study. “For the recent political openings to be consolidated, broad and sustained reforms of the media sector need to be swiftly implemented. Otherwise, this window of opportunity will be lost.”
The Worst and the Rest
Of the 196 countries and territories represented in the study, one-third of them fall into the “Not Free” category, including Mexico as a result of rising violence associated with drug trafficking. In terms of population, 43% of the world’s people live in Not Free countries, while only 15% live in “Free” countries. The United States is ranked17th along with five other countries: Germany, Marshall Islands, Portugal, St. Vincent and Grenadines, and San Marino.
The report’s “Worst of the Worst” category identifies 10 countries in which “independent media are either nonexistent or barely able to operate, the press acts as a mouthpiece for the regime, citizens’ access to unbiased information is severely limited, and dissent is crushed through imprisonment, torture, and other forms of repression.” The bottom 10 are: Belarus, Burma, Cuba, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.
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World Press Freedom Day: Surveying Freedom in 2011
May 3, 2011
Each year on May 3rd, the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) sponsors World Press Freedom Day to celebrate “the fundamental principles of press freedom, to evaluate press freedom around the world, to defend the media from attacks on their independence and to pay tribute to journalists who have lost their lives in the exercise of their profession.”
This year’s events come at a particularly precarious point in the struggle for worldwide press freedoms. According to Freedom in the World 2011: A Global Survey of Media Independence, an independent study released in conjunction with World Press Freedom Day’s events in Washington DC, “global media freedom has reached a new low point, contributing to an environment in which only 1 in every 6 people live in countries with a Free press.”
2011: A Window of Opportunity?
While the study notes marked improvements in sub-Saharan Africa, parts of the former Soviet Union and South Asia, alarming trends have emerged throughout Hispanic America, Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and West Africa. In fact, over the past five years, countries with substantial declines in media freedom have outnumbered those with corresponding gains by more than 2-to-1. Some of the deterioration has come from long-standing, non-democratic countries such as Iran, Russia, and Venezuela moving in “a more deeply authoritarian direction.” Most of the declines, however, have been seen in fledgling democracies tested by conflict.
“A country where journalists cannot report freely without fear of interference, by the government or other actors, has little hope of achieving or maintaining true democracy,” noted David J. Kramer, executive director of Freedom House, the watchdog organization that commissioned the study.
Civil protests seeking democratic reforms in authoritarian regimes across North Africa and the Middle East, in particular, could determine whether gains outweigh losses in 2011 and perhaps even reverse the overall global decline. “In 2010, we saw how readily governments in the Middle East turned to repression of the media,” said Karin Deutsch Karlekar, managing editor of the study. “For the recent political openings to be consolidated, broad and sustained reforms of the media sector need to be swiftly implemented. Otherwise, this window of opportunity will be lost.”
The Worst and the Rest
Of the 196 countries and territories represented in the study, one-third of them fall into the “Not Free” category, including Mexico as a result of rising violence associated with drug trafficking. In terms of population, 43% of the world’s people live in Not Free countries, while only 15% live in “Free” countries. The United States is ranked17th along with five other countries: Germany, Marshall Islands, Portugal, St. Vincent and Grenadines, and San Marino.
The report’s “Worst of the Worst” category identifies 10 countries in which “independent media are either nonexistent or barely able to operate, the press acts as a mouthpiece for the regime, citizens’ access to unbiased information is severely limited, and dissent is crushed through imprisonment, torture, and other forms of repression.” The bottom 10 are: Belarus, Burma, Cuba, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.
