Not very precise or informative, but you get the point:
(source)
More interesting maps on press freedom are here. More human rights maps in general are here.
Tag Archives: free press
Human Rights Ads (72): The Power of Pencils
Reporters Without Borders "Power of pencils" campaign featuring Robert Mugabe
(source, where you can find some variations)
If only this were true. An interesting although completely unrelated story about Mugabe and balloons is here. And this is a weird variation on the pencil theme:
The power of pencils … to erase the police??
More about Mugabe and Zimbabwe, and about press freedom. More human rights ads.
Human Rights Ads (69): Tienanmen Tank Man Spoof
(source)
The original is here. For the story on the Tienanmen Square protests and the violent crackdown, see here. More on freedom of the press here.
This is another one:
(source, where you can find even more)
The original. More human rights ads.
Human Rights Maps (149): Freedom of the Internet
Lots of authoritarian regimes impose restrictions on the types of information their citizens can access or publish on the internet. Some countries systematically limit the available websites, and others only do so when their citizens use the internet to organize protest actions (as was recently the case in Iran, Tunisia and Egypt).
China is often criticized for its large-scale and systematic filtering (dubbed the Great Firewall of China), but the phenomenon is relatively widespread. Here are some maps showing the extent of internet censorship:
internet filtering of social content
internet filtering of security content
internet filtering of political content
(source, where you can also find more detailed information)
And this is the index of Reporters Without Borders:
reporters without borders map of internet censorship
And the 2011 version:
map of internet censorship
(source)
More data on this are here and here. More on free speech and the internet is here. Something about the related topic of internet access rights is here. More human rights maps in general are here.
Related Articles
- In Egypt: Access denied – Washington Post (news.google.com)
- Online Censorship Grows in 2010, Showing Power of Netizens (pbs.org)
- Is Internet access a human right? (technolog.msnbc.msn.com)
Human Rights Maps (94): Internet Censorship in China
internet censorship in China
(source, click the image to enlarge)
There are more statistics on internet filtering in China here. And a more polemical post on the Great Firewall of China is here. And don’t forget that there is also non-internet censorship in China.
More on censorship and freedom of the press. More human rights maps.
Political Graffiti (92): The Risks of Free Speech
(source)
Here, here and here is something more specific about the ways in which freedom of speech may get you killed. And here is a more general post on the freedom of the press. Want to see more political graffiti, go here.
Political Graffiti (89): Freedom of Speech
Something on the right to free speech (and to a free press), and something on the possible limits of this right. More political graffiti.
Political Graffiti (87): Ban Censorship
More on censorship and on press freedom. More political graffiti.
Political Graffiti (81): No To Media Monopolies
Here, here and here are some more descriptive posts on the freedom of the press. More political graffiti.
Iconic Images of Human Rights Violations (32): Book Burning in Nazi Germany
(source, read the full story here)
More iconic images of human rights violations are here. Something about freedom of speech is here. And here is a case of quasi book burning. And here’s a nice cartoon to remind us that this isn’t something that only happened in a certain country at a certain time:
book burning in the USSR and Nazi Germany
(if you don’t recognize the figure on the left, it’s Nikita Khrushchev holding a paper about the Pasternak controversy, one of many instances of book banning in the USSR; of course, book banning isn’t quite the same as book burning, but in a sense it’s even worse)
Human Rights Quote (72): Censorship in China
Tien-An-Men Square, by http://www.graffiti.bbdo.ro
(source)
From a “letter to the editor” of The Economist:
SIR – I thought your readers would be interested to learn that I bought a copy of The Economist at Shanghai airport intending to read the article on the 20th anniversary of Tiananmen listed in the contents (“Silence on the square“, May 30th). The article was missing. I went back to the news stall and checked all the other copies only to find the same page had been removed from all of them, and some had been reassembled with the pages in the wrong order.
I complained to a member of staff tongue in cheek that I should not have to pay full price for a publication with pages missing, and was amazed when she agreed and, after talking to her superior, offered a discount of 5%. Chris Lowsley, Bidborough, Kent
What a concise description of the typical Chinese combination of authoritarianism and a shrewd business sense.
More on Tienanmen. More on China in general. More on censorship in general.
Censorship, A Collection of Images
banning of RSF website in China
(source)
self-censorship during the war on terror
(source)
classified memo
(source unknown)
censored nudity
(source)
censorship of nudity
(source)
military censorship of soldiers' mail
(source)
book burning in Nazi Germany
(source)
More on censorship. More collections of images.
Human Rights Cartoon (52): Human Rights Depend on the Media
(source)
The war between the Sri Lankan government and the Tamil rebels seems to be at an end now. While the war itself was probably and to some extent a just war, given the atrocities committed by the rebels, the way in which it was fought certainly wasn’t very just. The government forces caused many unnecessary civilian casualties, especially in the latter stages of the war. Given the outcome of the war, it is now up to the Sri Lankan government to win the peace, and do something about some of the legitimate concerns of the Tamil people:
And now the hardest part: can the Sinhalese majority bring itself to treat the defeated Tamil minority charitably after a quarter century of brutal war and nearly 100,000 deaths? Stay tuned. Kevin Drum (source)
For example, will it be possible to grant the region some kind of autonomy?
In all wars, it’s extremely difficult to find out what is happening, but in this case the government seems to have done all it could to make it as difficult as possible (including murdering journalists). Satellite pictures had to come to the rescue.
In general, it’s important to be able to monitor rights violations and to get as much information as possible in the press. Read more about how human rights depend on the media here and here. And more on the problematic relationship between the media and human rights violations is here.
Human Rights Maps (45): Journalists Killed
(source)
Look here for more recent data. The killing of journalists violates freedom of speech in several ways. Obviously the freedom of speech of the journalists concerned is violated, but the purpose of these killings is the message it sends to other journalists (close colleagues of those who are killed but all other journalists as well) and to the general public: “shut up if you want to be safe”. It’s the ultimate chilling effect.
The Causes of Poverty (18): Amartya Sen, Famines, and Democracy
Amartya Sen
(source, photo by Mary Lee/Harvard News Office)
Famines are easy to prevent if there is a serious effort to do so, and a democratic government, facing elections and criticisms from opposition parties and independent newspapers, cannot help but make such an effort. Not surprisingly, while India continued to have famines under British rule right up to independence … they disappeared suddenly with the establishment of a multiparty democracy and a free press. … a free press and an active political opposition constitute the best early-warning system a country threaten by famines can have. Amartya Sen
victims of a famine in India
Amartya Sen argues that democracy (which is a subset of human rights) is the best way to avoid famines. Of course, a well-functioning democracy is not a sufficient condition for the absence of famines. Other mechanisms also contribute to famine prevention, so it’s not impossible to see famines in democracies.
What is a famine?
G. B. Masefield states:
On balance it seems clear that any satisfactory definition of famine must provide that the food shortage is either widespread or extreme, if not both, and that the degree of extremity is best measured by human mortality from starvation. (source)
A famine occurs when there is a sudden collapse of the level of food availability and consumption (measured in terms of calorie intake). Sen’s argument is that a focus on lack of availability isn’t enough. Actual consumption is what counts. And consumption can drop when availability doesn’t (this was the case in the Bengal famine of 1943 for instance). Famines occur not only from a lack of food, caused by drought, crop failures or floods, but also from a lack of information. Rumors of a famine, even false rumors, are often enough for people to start hoarding and panic buying, which pushes up the price of goods, and which makes it impossible for poor people to get enough food. As a result, they may starve in the midst of abundance. A war may have the same effect or make it worse. And so can ineffective food distribution mechanisms.
Inequality
An important point about famines is therefore inequality:
While Famines involve fairly widespread acute starvation, there is no reason to think that it will affect all groups in the famine-affected nation. Indeed, it is by no means clear that there has ever occurred a famine in which all groups in a country have suffered from starvation, since different groups typically do have very different commanding powers over food, and an over-all shortage brings out the contrasting powers in stark clarity. Amartya Sen (source)
Information
Free information can counter these risks. It can debunk myths and rumors about food availability. It can inform accountable governments of certain risks and force them to act in order to remedy the food distribution, to impose price controls etc.
Price controls, however, are a risky business. Higher food prices may lead to a larger volume of food production because food producers will be encouraged to produce. Hence, higher prices may increase the overall availability of food and reduce the risk of famine. However, as we have seen, availability is not enough to stop famines. Distribution and equality of availability is just as important, and higher prices may result in very unequal availability and may put poor people at risk. But then, again, these poor people may find a better paying job in food production if food prices are higher… This is all very complicated indeed. For some light on the matter, look here.
More on famine here.
Human Rights Maps (11): Free Press
Here’s the Reporters Without Borders 2005 Press Freedom Ranking:
And for 2007:
2013:
And this is the ranking of Freedom House:
green is free, yellow is partly free and blue is not free
And for 2010:
Limiting Free Speech (1): Introduction
(source, artist: Ares)
I’m a strong defender of human rights in general and of free speech in particular. But I’m also convinced that the system of human rights is not a harmonious whole and that some rights can conflict; some rights may harm other rights, in which case one right has to be limited for the sake of the other. If you feel the urge of yelling “Fire!” in an overcrowded room, this expression of yours will cause panic and will therefore harm the right to life and bodily integrity of the people in the crowd.
This example is taken from a famous quote by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes:
The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic. (source)
Oliver Wendell Holmes
(source)
I don’t claim that the choice for one right over the other is always as clearcut as in this example. Indeed, it can be a difficult and controversial choice, better left to impartial judges. But those choices have to be made. Here’s a previous post on the limits of human rights. NO OTHER LIMITS on rights are acceptable. Rights can only be limited by and because of other rights, not because of prudishness, political correctness, insult, humiliation or whatever.
This blog series examines some of the existing or proposed limits on the right to free speech, such blasphemy laws, hate speech laws, holocaust denial laws, pornography, derogatory speech laws, libel laws etc.
Free speech is an extremely important human right. You can check out this post on the importance of free speech for thinking and correct thinking according to Kant. In the same post you can find the argument by John Stuart Mill in which he correctly states that permitting the expression of errors or even lies encourages us to revisit the grounds of our own beliefs and thus strengthening those beliefs.
The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth; if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error. John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
(source)
When we are confronted with opposing and controversial views, we benefit from having to justify our own views.
Given all this, any proposed or existing limitations on free speech should be strongly argued and the benefits of limitations should clearly and not marginally outweigh the harm. Any limit should also be very specific and not general. He or she who proposes a limit should prove that no other measures short of limiting rights can provide the same result. Limits can only be necessary for the protection of other rights or the rights of others. No other reasons are valid.
When two rights come into conflict, and a decision has to be made to limit one or the other right, one can look at the value that is being protected by either right. A journalist’s right to free speech can conflict with a politician’s right to privacy. If the expression by the journalist does not serve any important value, such as accountability, exposure of corruption etc. then the decision will be in favor of the right to privacy. If, on the other hand, the politician is corrupt, his privacy will be outweighed by the public interest of having a political class that does not engage in corruption.
When proposing a limit on rights, one should also be aware of the fact that this will probably not be enough to solve the problem that one is facing. Making the use of a right in a certain way a criminal act is not always enough to make that use go away. Racism, for example, will not disappear by making racists who engage in hate speech shut up. The underdog effect may even make them stronger. One should also try to do something about the causes of racism (poverty, education, etc.). The suppression of those who use rights against rights must be combined with the identification and elimination of the reasons why these people use rights against rights. Healing the symptoms but not the disease is inefficient, but some symptoms are so bad that something must be done, without losing sight of the causes of the symptoms.
(source)
Human Rights Facts (12): Support for Human Rights
In a previous post, I gave some data showing the quasi-universal popular support for democracy as the best form of government.
In the current post, I try to do the same for some aspect of other, non-political human rights, such as the freedom of religion, free speech and press, and fair judiciary.
Most of the data are taken from the 2003 report of the Pew Global Attitudes Project.
The data show that for 4 groups of countries in 4 continents, there are clear majorities for the desirability of these rights. They also show the gap between desires and reality. Most of the respondents in these countries feel that their governments do not protect their rights adequately.
In the U.K. there is currently some controversy over a series of infringements on human rights, mostly following 9-11 and the London bombings. Here’s a survey of the way in which these are received by the public:
Human Rights Poem (34): A Task
Czeslaw Milosz, photo by Dennis Wile
A Task, Czeslaw Milosz
In fear and trembling, I think I would fulfill my life
Only if I brought myself to make a public confession
Revealing a sham, my own and of my epoch:
We were permitted to shriek in the tongue of dwarfs and demons
But pure and generous words were forbidden
Under so stiff a penalty that whoever dared to pronounce one
Considered himself as a lost man.
Human Rights Facts (5): Free Press
I discussed the freedom of the press before on this blog. There’s a post on the importance of the press for a democracy, there’s one on the importance for the struggle against poverty, and finally one on the importance for a well-functioning economy.
Definition of press freedom
The post you’re reading now contains some factual information on press freedom in the world. First, though, a word on the definition of freedom of the press. This freedom is a subset of the more general freedom of expression. Freedom of the press doesn’t only include the freedom of journalists (and, increasingly, bloggers) to publish information without fear of repercussions. It also includes the freedom to gather the information, as well as the freedom of the public to have access to the published information. This is explicit in article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights:
Everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of his choice.
(Article 19 of the Universal Declaration entails a similar message). The freedom of the press is closely linked to the freedom of movement. Without free movement, information gathering and investigative journalism is very difficult. Freedom of movement also includes free access for foreign media. Foreign media are often necessary for global exposure of a problem because the local media may be under the sway of the government.
Country ranking
Here’s the Reporters Without Borders 2007 Press Freedom Ranking:
And this is the ranking of Freedom House (green = free, yellow = partly free and blue = not free):
Freedom House estimates that 1 billion of the worlds population of 6 billion lives in a country with a free press, and another 2.5 billion have a partly free press.
Means of limiting press freedom
Governments use an increasingly large array of weapons to limit the freedom of the press and to apply some sort of overt or covert CENSORSHIP:
1. Intimidation of journalists
Journalists are often intimidated by way of death threats, kidnapping, torture etc. This is a graph shows the jailing of critical journalists:
(source)
Sometimes this isn’t enough, as is shown by the number of outright murders of journalists:
(source)
The killing of Anna Politkovskaia in 2006 in retaliation for her writing on Chechnya, or the killing of Hrant Dink because of his writing on the Armenian genocide, are perhaps the best known examples.
2. Banning of foreign media
Currently, and for some time to come, the most grotesque examples are Burma and North-Korea.
3. Legislation limiting free speech
While I admit that freedom of expression is not absolute and can come into conflict with other human rights (for example the right to privacy) – in which case it can be necessary to put legal limits on the freedom of expression – it still is an extremely important important value and instrument and deserves better protection. Some examples of the way in which legislation is misused to limit the freedom of the press:
- Laws that make hate speech or “glorification” or “apology” of terrorism a crime. Incitement to commit a crime is normally, and justifiably, regarded as a crime in itself. But prosecutors have to show that a speaker intended to directly encourage someone to commit a crime, and that there is either a causal relation between the incitement and the crime itself, or the likelihood that incitement will cause an imminent crime. In reality, both the laws and the prosecution of “crimes” are intentionally vague, most likely because the state wants to use these laws, not for security, but to silence opponents.
- Laws which make insults, defamation or libel a crime. Such laws do not simply criminalize speech that may cause imminent violence, discrimination etc. but rather speech that merely insults. Freedom of expression exists to protect offensive speech. Inoffensive speech really doesn’t need protection. The archetypal example is the case of the Danish Muhammad cartoons leading to calls for the reinstatment or “activation” of blasphemy laws which, in the West, were either repealed or dormant. It is difficult to see how insults or offensive speech, even when done in bad taste, can harm the rights of anyone. Such laws would spell the end of freedom and would catapult us back from the age of rights to the age of honor.
- Something similar can be said of the crime of genocide denial, although in this case one can make the point that this kind of denial is part of the construction of a radical ideology which, when it is allowed to flourish and perhaps take over power, would surely try to reproduce the genocides it denies.
4. Legislation limiting access to government information
Although many governments are subject to so-called “sunshine laws” or freedom of information laws, the same governments often enact “official secrecy acts” preventing journalist from accessing certain government documents. Governments often point to the need for secrecy regarding anti-terrorism or “homeland security” programs. Journalists publishing information on such topics are told that they endanger national security. This can be justified (one shouldn’t allow an “embedded” journalist for example to publish information on troop movements in a time of war; that would be aiding the enemy), but in many cases governments misuse these laws to cover up inconvenient facts. Moreover, the fear of being labeled “unpatriotic” can lead to self-censorship on the part of journalists.
5. State control of mass media and television chains
Russia is a prime example of a state where the government has gradually taken over the different media and squeezed out the rest. The media only propagate the government’s point of view. Policy debate or investigative journalism all but disappears. A telling example of state control is the limits some governments impose on internet access for publishers and readers. In China, some 50.000 internet police are constructing the so-called Great Firewall of China, shutting down sites or blocking access to foreign sites, closing down internet-cafés on dubious grounds such as pornography etc. But China isn’t the only country engaging in this kind of censorship. Here’s a map of the internet usage around the world:
This is an indicator of the freedom of the press in the sense of the freedom of the public to access the press. Two caveats, however. This map should of course be correlated with the map of the population concentration. The fact that few people in Siberia have internet access is not necessarily a violation of the right to freedom of information or an indicator of censorship. It’s just an indicator of the fact that there are few people in Siberia.
Secondly, this map may just point out that the infrastructure necessary for internet access is not available everywhere. So it’s not always an indicator of active censorship of the internet but rather an indicator of government inability to provide access. This inability, however, even if it doesn’t amount to censorship, does limit the freedom of the press.
Blocking access to satellite television is a similar kind of censorship.
6. Inadequate protection of sources
This is especially important for investigative journalism, a kind of journalism necessary for good governance (it uncovers corruption or other illegal activity by government officials or other individuals).
Besides these active government policies, there are of course other elements limiting the freedom of the press. Many journalists are under economic pressure. They find it hard to “bite the hand that feeds them”. Running investigative stories on companies that sponsor them with advertising is difficult. Armed conflict, poverty etc. also hamper the press.
Why Do We Need Human Rights? (7): From Democracy to Prosperity
In a previous post I commented on the beneficial influence of prosperity on democracy – democracy being one human right among many. Here are some reasons why democracy is good for prosperity. The squeaky hinge gets the oil. Only in a democratic society in which human rights are protected, can an economic injustice be exposed and can claims for its abolition be heard and implemented. People can use human rights to call on the government or the international community to fulfill its duties and to implement certain economic measures. Most governments, including democratic governments, act only when they are put under pressure. The freedom of expression, the freedom of assembly and association (associations such as pressure groups, labor unions or political parties) and the right to choose your own representatives are instruments in the hands of the economically disadvantaged. They can use their rights and the democratic procedures to influence economic and social policy. Poverty must have a voice.
It is true that without a minimum degree of prosperity, human rights and democracy lose a lot of their value. If you have to struggle to survive, then you do not have the time to form an opinion, let alone express it. “Primum vivere, deinde philosophari”; first you make sure you live, and only then can you philosophize. However, life is more than just living. In a situation of poverty, it is indeed difficult to use rights and democracy, but without rights and democracy it is much more difficult to fight poverty.
If there are no free flows of information, no accountable government that needs to justify its actions in order to be re-elected, and no free press, then you are likely to have more corruption, more embezzlement of public funds and more people who acquire an unfair advantage from the proceeds of natural resources and other sources of prosperity. The rule of law and the openness of government, which are typical of democracy, limit not only corruption but also the ineffective management or outright squandering of natural or other resources by untouchable governments.
Economic development is supported by free flows of information and freedom of movement, both typical of democracies. A free press encourages the economy because it allows entrepreneurs to make informed decisions.
Democracy also guarantees the rule of law, which means legal security and predictability. The number of investments – foreign and local – will grow when investors are certain that their contracts are guaranteed by the law and enforceable by a judge, when oppression does not cause violent revolt and when investors are relatively certain that their property will not be stolen without punishment or will not be nationalized by some new revolutionary government.
The rule of law creates a limited state and a society that is relatively free and independent of the state. This means that economic activity is also relatively independent. A certain limit on state interference in the economy is traditionally considered as beneficial for economic development. In a free civil society, everybody can be economically active. In many authoritarian states, only a handful of privileged persons can be economically active, and these persons are not always the ones most suitable for this kind of activity (for example: large landowners, members of the official “nomenclatura” etc.). A free civil society, guaranteed by the rule of law, which in turn is guaranteed by democracy (although not only by democracy), allows everybody to be creative, to cooperate and to exchange on a relatively level playing field. This increases the chances that the best man is in the best place, which in turn encourages economic development. Furthermore, by pumping in as many people as possible in the economy and by letting them move and communicate freely, the economically most efficient and profitable transactions can take place.
The link between the rule of law and prosperity is not only a theoretical one. This chart shows the actual correlation:
(source)
What is Democracy? (22): Free Media
Ideally, the free press in a democracy should do the following:
- Allow the different points of view in political debate to appear and to debate each other (different political parties and different candidates each with their own ideas qbout how best to govern the country)
- Facilitate the accountability of elected officials: elected officials have to present their achievements before the next elections, and opposition candidates have to criticize these achievements
- Expose wrong doing by elected officials and their appointees (investigative journalism in the style of “Watergate”)
- Reflect public opinion in general, especially new public concerns which haven’t yet made it into the political debate.
A prerequisite for all this kind is pluralism in the media and the absence of information monopolies; the absence of government control on the media or control by wealthy groups which want to push their own agenda; critical and unbiased journalists; protection of sources in the case of investigative journalism; airtime for political debate; restrictions on political publicity in order to guarantee equal airtime for less wealthy groups…
The Causes of Poverty (4): Governance
Amartya Sen
No substantial famine has ever occurred in any independent and democratic country with a relatively free press. Amartya Sen
If there are no free flows of information, no accountable government that needs to justify its actions in order to be re-elected, and no free press, then you are likely to have more corruption, more embezzlement of public funds and more people who acquire an unfair advantage from the proceeds of natural resources and other sources of prosperity. The rule of law and the openness of government, which are typical of democracy, limit not only corruption but also the ineffective management or outright squandering of natural or other resources by untouchable governments.
Furthermore, there is a link between corruption and squandering. Corrupt governments will be more inclined to set up grandiose but foolish and wasteful mega-projects, because this gives them more opportunities for corruption. Corruption is also a tax on investment, which is why it hampers investment and economic growth. Especially the often all-important foreign investments (the import of technology and knowledge) diminish as corruption increases.
