Last summer, when I told people I was joining the Committee to Protect Journalists, I often got a cynical response. "Shouldn't that be 'the Committee to Protect People from Journalists?" many deadpanned. Such was the view of our profession in the United States, as the Starr investigation into the Clinton-Lewinsky matter moved toward its congressional denouement at the end of 1998.
In this book, our annual accounting of press freedom around the world, we take you beyond that U.S. perspective, to countries where a journalist can land in jail for publishing something truthful, but unflattering, about the president.
We introduce you to some genuine heroes who make journalism a highly respected profession. In many countries of Latin America, for instance, public opinion polls rank the press as the second most admired institution after the Catholic Church. And we document the imprisonment, the torture, even the
assassination, of journalists determined to expose crime or government corruption. Even a random look through these pages yields stories of high drama:
Larisa Yudina, a newspaper editor murdered for her outspoken opposition to the dictatorial ruler of Kalmykia; her killing silenced the only public voice to challenge what amounts to a political fiefdom that operates largely beyond Moscow's control in southern Russia;
Nizar Nayyouf, now in his seventh year in a Syrian prison, denied medical treatment for Hodgkins disease until he renounces his critical coverage of Syria's human rights record;
Pradeep Kumara Dharmaratne, a Sri Lankan newspaper correspondent hospitalized after police tortured him for exposing their role in selling bootleg liquor; later, Dharmaratne's house was burned to the ground.
You will also meet Nosa Igiebor, a Nigerian editor whose three-year-old daughter had a gun held to her head when security agents came to arrest her dad; Anna Zarkova, a crime reporter in Bulgaria who was blinded in her left eye after an assailant doused her face with acid; and Grémah Boucar, a radio broadcaster from Niger who received one of CPJ's 1998 International Press Freedom Awards.
We knew Boucar had suffered harassment, that his offices had been looted, in a country where the military government was determined to silence his radio talk shows because they are the only outlet for opposition voices. What we did not know, until he arrived in New York to receive his award last November, was the harrowing tale of the night Boucar spent stuffed inside a sack, from which he could hear police officers debating how to kill him. His life was saved, he said, only when one policeman pointed out that since Boucar's family had witnessed his arrest they would be able to identify the killers. The story came up during a casual conversation, and Boucar's account was so straightforward, so matter-of-fact, that he might have been describing some minor change in his radio station's program lineup. In other words, a story that made us gasp was an event treated as almost normal by this journalist, who somehow manages to keep operating his independent radio station, newspaper, and magazine, under the nose of military thugs.
As I do so often in this work, I wondered what I would do in Boucar's place. You are likely to confront the same question as you read some of the hundreds of stories of attacks on the press during the year in 118 countries.
Verifying individual attacks on journalists and the newspapers, magazines, radio and television stations they work for is the bedrock of our work. It is on the basis of this meticulous reporting, carried out according to the highest journalistic standards, that CPJ is able to advocate on behalf of our colleagues around the world. And that advocacy is effective because we do it in the way that journalists know best: getting the story out clearly and forcefully in media campaigns and appeals to governments.
Equally important is the moral support that CPJ offers to besieged colleagues who are determined to fight for their right to freedom of expression. I hope you will read this book for the very human stories that it tells, about people taking risks, sticking by principles, and confronting decisions that rarely face journalists working in the comparative safety of industrial democracies such as the United States, France, or Japan. They are the stories of journalists who think and act independently, who do vital work in countries ruled by dictators, or lacking in strong press freedom safeguards. Their stories are not just a record of the state of press freedom, but also a tribute to colleagues who share our profession, but not our protections.
Of course, these stories also make up a kind of report card for the year: Just how dangerous was it for journalists, and where were there gains or losses for press freedom?
Among the gains: Dictators who had waged ruthless campaigns of suppression against the press fell in Indonesia and Nigeria, allowing journalists in both countries to breath freer than they had for years. Indonesia's new government lifted most press restrictions, and the military men in charge of Nigeria released all but one of the 17 journalists who had been imprisoned at the beginning of 1998. But in both countries, journalists cautioned that true reform was far from guaranteed.
Some of the setbacks: Onerous new press laws in several countries, including Jordan and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, slapped fresh restrictions on the media. The end of the year brought an explosion of violence against journalists in Sierra Leone and the Democratic Republic of Congo, countries riven by civil war. And the lawlessness that chronically plagues Colombia made it the deadliest country for journalists. Four were assassinated by gunmen on the street, sending chillingly public messages to colleagues who dare investigate Colombia's organized crime, government corruption, or drug trafficking.
Worldwide, 24 journalists were murdered because of their work, two fewer than in 1996 and 1997. These numbers are down significantly from the early 1990s, when the annual death toll was two or three times greater, in large part because of the targeting of journalists by factions at war in
Algeria and
Tajikistan.
At year's end, we recorded 118 journalists in prison for their work -- a small but significant decline from the 129 imprisoned a year earlier. That's progress, but not nearly enough. With more countries wielding insult laws and criminal libel statutes to muzzle expression, more journalists than ever face a stark choice: Exercise self-censorship or risk going to jail for hard-hitting reporting.
As the name of our book signals, its subjects include repression and violence. But it also contains stories of some encouraging new trends emerging in the global fight for greater press freedom. Journalists throughout the world, recognizing the strength that comes from solidarity, are organizing press freedom advocacy groups. And CPJ has been the model and mentor for these new organizations. With our help, Mexican journalists launched their own press freedom monitoring organization, joining similar groups in Peru and Argentina. In November, CPJ lent support and expertise to the founding conference of the Southeast Asian Press Alliance, whose mission is to promote press freedom throughout Southeast Asia.
Such transnational contacts are compelling for today's journalists, who recognize that the permeability of borders in the electronic age allows democratic inclinations into places long hermetically sealed against ideas of freedom. For example, when Nigerian journalists gathered in Ghana last summer under CPJ's auspices to take stock of their past under the late dictator Gen. Sani Abacha and contemplate their uncertain future, they listened to the Argentine editor Horacio Verbitsky tell of how his country's journalists have weathered the transition from military dictatorship to democracy.
The multiplier effect of local journalists actively defending press freedom has already had reverberations throughout the world. It has brought members of our profession together across time zones and national boundaries to share strategies for countering the forces of repression. We believe these local and regional press monitors will be vital in further illuminating news of attacks on the media. The brighter the spotlight we shine on abuses, the greater our chances of ending them.
Ann K. Cooper is the executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists. Before joining CPJ in 1998, she was a foreign correspondent for National Public Radio for nine years, serving as bureau chief in Moscow and
Johannesburg. She is co-editor of Russia at the Barricades, a collection of eyewitness accounts of the August 1991 coup in the Soviet Union. In 1995-96, she was the Edward R. Murrow fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. She has also worked as a reporter for The Sun in Baltimore and National Journal magazine, among other publications.
