Contextualizing World Press Freedom Day

Tuesday, 03 May 2011 00:38

Written by Danilo Araña Arao

In case you don’t know, today (May 3) is World Press Freedom Day. Perhaps there’s another fact that would surprise you: This celebration has been going on for exactly 20 years now!

The first World Press Freedom Day happened in 1991 in Namibia, a country in Africa. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) held a “Seminar on Promoting an Independent and Pluralistic African Press” in Windhoek, Namibia from April 29 to May 3 of that year.

Toward the end of the five-day seminar, the Windhoek Declaration was signed by the participants stating, among others, that “establishment, maintenance and fostering of an independent, pluralistic and free press (are) essential to the development and maintenance of democracy in a nation and for economic development.”

They needed to stress the obvious in the wake of media repression. The declaration provides a vivid description of what was happening in Africa then: “(D)espite the positive developments in some countries, in many countries journalists, editors and publishers are victims of repression—they are murdered, arrested, detained and censored, and are restricted by economic and political pressures such as restrictions on newsprint, licensing systems which restrict the opportunity to publish, visa restrictions which prevent the free movement of journalists, restrictions on the exchange of news and information, and limitations on the circulation of newspapers within countries and across national borders. In some countries, one-party States control the totality of information.”

For journalists and human rights advocates who are well aware of violence against media, this part of the declaration may have an eerily familiar feeling: “(A)t least 17 journalists, editors or publishers are in African prisons, and 48 African journalists were killed in the exercise of their profession between 1969 and 1990.” Clearly, the state of the press at that time in Africa is no different from what is currently happening in Myanmar and the Philippines, just to cite a couple of countries worldwide whose state of press freedom is dismal to say the least.

In its 2010 study of freedom of the press worldwide, Freedom House stressed that out of 196 countries and territories, only 69 (or 35 percent) were deemed to be “free.” The group added that only 16 percent of the world’s inhabitants get to benefit from a free press. Freedom House sums up the situation worldwide: “Global press freedom declined in 2009, with setbacks registered in nearly every region of the world. This marked the eighth straight year of overall deterioration, and produced a global landscape in which only one in six people live in countries with a Free press.”

Indeed, there had been no substantial gains in the 20^th year of World Press Freedom Day as the circumstances in Africa in 1991 reflect the current plight of journalists in many countries.

More than a review of what was declared 20 years ago in Windhoek, Namibia, the challenge remains for journalist worldwide to continue the fight for press freedom and to use their professions to expose those who dare to suppress the people’s basic freedoms.

It is important for journalists to always remember a particular provision in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that pertains to freedom of expression and of the press. Article 19 clearly states: “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”

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