For the last six years, the French NGO Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans frontières − RSF) has compiled a World Press Freedom Index. Guyana, which is listed for the first time this year, lies at 88 out of 173 (for context: Jamaica is ranked 21, Suriname 26, Trinidad 27, Brazil 82 and Venezuela 113). The ranks are based on wide-ranging questionnaires, sent to fifteen partner organisations throughout the world, that consider such variables as whether journalists have been “forced to stop working through harassment, threats or political pressure” or prevented from reporting on taboo subjects (“the armed forces, government corruption”) or whether there has been any “[u]se of withdrawal of advertising… to boycott media outlets.”
In its preface to this year’s index the RSF website commends “the very respectable ranking achieved by certain Central American and Caribbean countries” and points out that although European countries occupy all but two of the top 20 slots, Jamaica, Trinidad and Suriname have done better than France (35), Spain (36) and Italy (44) − “countries held back again by political or mafia violence.” The main reason for this happy outcome appears to be an absence of armed conflict. Not even robust democracies seem to survive the internal pressures that come with civil conflict or war – the US (36) is probably the most prominent example but Georgia (120) and Russia (141) are also good examples of what happens in less open societies. The contrast is perhaps most vivid within Africa where Namibia (23) is “a large and now peaceful southern African country” but Niger has fallen sharply (from 95 to 130) in a single year.
In all-out war zones, the human cost of gathering information is appalling: 222 journalists and media assistants have been killed in Iraq since the US-led invasion in 2003, a further 14 have been kidnapped and two remain missing. Most of these killings have been quite deliberate − last year, RSF warned that in Iraq “Armed groups [have] targeted journalists sympathising with their religious rivals and those working for organs connected with foreign media or funded by foreigners.” But in other countries, far away from the front lines, the situation is not much better. In 2007, more than 1,500 journalists were threatened or physically attacked, 37 bloggers were arrested and nearly 2,700 websites were suspended or closed down for political reasons.
Body counts and freedom indexes are useful, but there are other, less dramatic arguments for an independent press. The freedom to access public information, however desirable or problematic it may prove in political terms, has an undeniably positive effect on human development and the economy. Article 19, the free speech advocacy group, points out that “In mature democracies, the business sector has shown itself to be the largest active user of access to information laws as companies attempt to obtain documents informing them of upcoming public procurement tenders and the details of successful past bids.” Transparent governance not only levels the playing field for businessmen, it also helps with reform: “In a world where stakeholders are increasingly impacted upon by big business… there is a growing argument that companies themselves must become more open and transparent in order to avoid the scandals and negative publicity that damage their reputation.” Freedom of information in these contexts has nothing to do with politics, as the word is usually understood, but everything to do with the state’s interests. A more vigilant press could, for example, have exposed the slipshod regulation of mortgage-backed securities in the US long before the housing bubble became a national crisis.
The continuing trials of the alleged killers of Hrant Dink, in Turkey, and Anna Politkovskaya, in Russia, are stark reminders of what can happen to editors and journalists who refuse to dodge dangerous subjects. Even so, both Dink and Politkovskaya began conversations that have outlasted their own deaths and will long outlive their murderers. Perhaps this is the aspect of press freedom that scares governments most. Cuba, Myanmar, Turkmenistan, North Korea and Eritrea lie at the bottom of the World Press Freedom Index. In many ways these places bear the most eloquent witness to the value of an independent press, for they have surrendered more than the opportunity to criticise a government − in several cases they seem to have lost the habit of public discussion altogether. Taken together they constitute an unanswerable case for press freedom. A free press may give voice to quarrelsome, shallow and wrongheaded elements in any given society, and public officials can occasionally be forgiven for saying so, but who, having visited any of these countries would dare to lessen that freedom?