Carl Bernstein claims attacks on the press are intended to cause self-censorship

http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/02/10/18569402.php

Carl Bernstein claims attacks on the press are intended to cause self-censorship

by al-masakin
Tuesday Feb 10th, 2009 3:56 PM

Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) press conference at the United Nations claims there is a new kind of extremism targeting the press.

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By Edward Campbell

Missoula, Feb. 10 (Al-Masakin)—Carl Bernstein told reporters today at the United Nations in New York that “The most depraved acts against journalists have become more and more routine, because it is the one effective way of stopping the press under the most horrible of circumstances—including kidnappings of reporters’ families, targeting journalists for execution.”

The U.N. Headquarters Press Conference was organized by the UNESCO to coincide with the release of the Committee to Protect Journalists’ (CPJ) release its report Attacks of the Press 2008.

Mr. Bernstein noted that the most depraved actors and acts had come together in a “kind of extremism in the pursuit of shutting down the truth.”

He also said that incarceration has in recent years become another means of intimidating the press. “A journalist in Burma has been condemned to 59 years in jail for threatening the public atmosphere by reporting on the cyclone.”

In addition to attack on the press perpetrated by government authorities, the veteran

reporter noted that both number of kinds of institutions and the severity of the attacks had both increased, and that fighting that trend was the responsibility of journalists in the west.

CPJ Chairman Paul Steiger said that some progress has been made in the past two years on account of the fact that the number of journalists killed in Iraq had fallen sharply, but that there had been a significant increase in deliberate killings. 70 per cent of the murders in the past two years were deliberate killings and assassinations.

Mr. Steiger said that he penned a letter to President Obama asking the President to affirm that journalists have the right to work without being beaten, shot, or imprisoned, and said that support for that right had slipped at the highest levels of government, that the time had come to investigate the deaths of journalists killed by U.S. forces and to end long-term incarceration of journalists in Iraq.

The CPJ’s Executive Director Joel Simon said that the effect of the War on Terror on the free reporting of journalism had been devastating, and that the number of journalists killed or imprisoned had “skyrocketed” claiming that the United States had killed 16 journalists in Iraq and that those killing have not adequately been investigated.

He said that Eritrea and Cuba had launched a crackdown on journalists, and that the United States jailed an Al-Jazeera reporter in Guantanamo.

The CPJ said that the number of journalists killed on the job in 2008 was 41, down from 67 in 2007, and the number of journalists incarcerated for their work was 127.

Mr. Simon said that technology has changed the face of journalism and that has caused governments around the world to become more interested in suppressing online journalism, noting that 56 online journalists are now in jail.

“Viet Nam, Burma and even Thailand are following China’s censorship model to control the Internet,” the Executive Director said. He said that in the Middle East satellite news was being suppressed, in Europe, the Russian Federation and Georgia had both taken control of the air waves in order to drum up support for military action. He also noted that text messaging has become an important tool for African journalists, but the “bad guys” use the same technology to threaten them.

When asked how press freedom had fared under the Bush administration Mr. Steiger said CPJ had been founded by United States foreign correspondents in 1981 and had since then carried the torch for freedom of the press, and that some criticism of the press in United States in the run-up to the Iraq war was justified, but since then there has been massive coverage of both sides of the debate with “lots of aggressiveness.”

Mr. Bernstein noted that although the Bush regime was very secretive, everything learned about it had been a direct result of the press.

Mr. Steiger said that restricting the movements of the press in the Iraqi theater of war was a “terrible thing,” and asserted that imposing blanket restrictions on reporting deprived the public of their right to know.

Mr. Simon said that Israel’s claim that the press was being restricted out of concern for their safety was merely an excuse since many journalists were willing to take the risk.

The CPJ claims to use a “common sense approach” to the definition of the word ‘journalist,’ which includes bloggers, stating that if something reads like journalism it would be considered journalism by the CPJ noting that the organization distinguishes between artistic forms of writing such as poetry and journalism.

Executive Director Joel Simon said that he was concerned that Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the United Nations Special Representative in Somalia, had compared media reporting there to those who incited genocide in Rwanda, saying that the “specter” of Rwanda was used periodically by repressive regimes to justify suppression of free speech, and called it an “intimidating pretext.”

Responding to a question whether the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) had been correct in calling for a news black-out on the kidnapping of one of their journalists in Afghanistan who was later released, Mr. Simon said it was a thorny issue, and that the CBC made a compelling case for not covering the story, out of fear for the journalist’s life.

It was not an easy decision, but the risk of reporting had been clear. Mr. Bernstein added that there was no blanket rule in such a case. Common sense should be applied and one should consider whether reporting such an incident would serve a greater purpose.

Answering questions about repression of journalists reporting through new technologies, Mr. Simon said that Asia, including China, Viet Nam, Myanmar and Thailand, were focal points of an Internet crackdown.

He noted that Cuban journalists do not have access to the Internet, but instead use the telephone for their reporting and were, therefore, considered online journalists. As for Iran, he said the independent media has disappeared, and that the country was highly repressive towards journalists. According to him what remains there are “bloggers.”

Joel Simon said that the Russian Federation was for the press very difficult and very violent, noting that a fourth reporter for Moscow’s Novaya Gazeta had been murdered, sending a message to that newspaper.

Mr. Steiger noted that when the third Novaya Gazeta journalist had been killed the Editor wanted to close the paper out of concern for the safety of his staff, but the staff rejected the proposal. “That is a level of courage that you don’t often see,” he said.

Mr. Bernstein concluded the press conference by noting that technology has consistently made it possible to circumvent old methodologies used by despots to suppress the news and that as these old methods failed the “most awful of these practitioners have become more and more willing to engage in the most horrendous of acts against their fellow citizens who are journalists.”

Those who practice the craft of journalism in better environments are obligated to support their colleagues in those “outposts,” the reporter finished.

EHC / EHC
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