Shortly after the hijacked planes slammed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, thousands of Palestinians poured into the streets in the West Bank city of Nablus to celebrate by honking horns, handing out sweets, and firing their guns into the air. The demonstrators may not have represented the sentiment of the majority of Palestinians, but the protest was a newsworthy event, and journalists were there to record it.
Later that day, officials from the Palestinian National Authority summoned a cameraman from The Associated Press who had filmed the demonstration and told him that he would be in danger if the images were broadcast. Fearing for the cameraman's safety, the AP decided not to air the footage. A few days later, Palestinian authorities confiscated film from journalists covering a rally at a Gaza refugee camp supporting suicide bombers.
The incidents in the Palestinian territories marked the onset of a global crackdown on press freedom. Fearing international ostracism or an angry response from the U.S., some governments have suppressed coverage of public support for radical Islam or opposition to U.S. policies. At the same time, repressive regimes around the globe are taking advantage of the new international climate to suppress coverage of political opponents or ethnic tension under the guise of protecting national security or combating terrorism.
Even more alarming, many of these governments are citing the U.S. response to the September 11 attacks to justify their repressive measures.
Only a few days after the attacks, the U.S. State Department contacted the Voice of America and expressed concern about the broadcast of a report featuring an exclusive interview with the Taliban leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar. "We didn't think that the American taxpayer . . . should be broadcasting the voice of the Taliban," explained the State Department spokesman, Richard Boucher.
Then on October 3, Secretary of State Colin Powell asked the Emir of Qatar to use his influence to rein in Al-Jazeera, the Arabic-language satellite station that is broadcast out of Qatar and bankrolled by the government. The request from Powell followed a formal diplomatic protest by the U.S. Embassy in Qatar, which expressed concern about the station's alleged anti-American bias and its repeated airing of a 1998 exclusive interview with Osama bin Laden.
A week later, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice spoke with a group of U.S. television executives by phone and asked them to use caution when airing pre-recorded messages from bin Laden and his associates. Rice noted that such statements were at best propaganda, and could contain coded instructions to terrorist cells.
The pressure tactics used by the U.S. government seem to have inspired leaders across the globe to take a similar but more aggressive approach with their own media. The new restrictions range from the brazen to the bizarre, but all are justified as necessary measures in the "war against terrorism."
- In Uganda, journalists have been barred since October from photographing the president, even during public functions, because, as he explained, "I am a useful person, and I cannot allow these people to blow me up."
- In China, a nominal U.S. ally in the war on terrorism, the government has banned anti-American reporting from its government-controlled press.
- In Indonesia, the police beat four journalists covering an October anti-U.S. demonstration.
- In the tiny West African country of Benin, three journalists were arrested for reporting that bin Laden had contacts there.
- In Israel, the state radio was banned from airing live interviews with Palestinian militants.
- And in Russia, a presidential adviser, Sergei Yastrzhembsky, said the Putin government planned to study the American response to media reporting about terrorists in order to develop rules for Russian media.
In some cases, countries with a long history of animosity toward the press are opportunistically using the new climate to justify further restrictions. In Zimbabwe, for example, information minister Jonathan Moyo, who is leading a systematic and sometimes violent campaign against the independent media in Zimbabwe, invoked the U.S. in trying to justify ongoing restrictions on visas for foreign correspondents.
"We are watching events in the United States and Britain closely as pertaining to media freedom," said Moyo, according to a local report. "These countries, especially the U.S.A., have unashamedly limited press freedom since September 11 in the name of safeguarding the national interest . . . . If the most celebrated democracies in the world won't allow their national interests to be tampered with, we will not allow it too."
Even more disturbing, some countries that have generally encouraged independent media are imposing new restrictions. In India, anti-terrorism legislation that was being debated before Parliament at the end of the year would make it a crime punishable by up to three years in prison for journalists not to inform authorities about information that could be used to prevent a "terrorist act." Journalists and media organizations in India have denounced the provision, arguing that journalists cannot play the role of policeman.
Governments have long used concerns about national security as a pretext to restrict reporting on conflicts. The argument is a red herring: governments are hard-pressed to point to any instance in which journalists genuinely compromised national security through their reporting. What ends up being suppressed is reporting about the grievances of the "enemy" or critical coverage about the prosecution of the war.
The forcible suppression of dissenting voices is an understandable impulse during wartime, but it is ultimately self-destructive because it deprives the public of the ability to understand and analyze the causes of the conflict and to assess the efficacy of the military response.
At several points in its history, the U.S. government has itself imposed severe restrictions on the press during war, notably during World War II, when the Office of Censorship kept careful tabs on the media. The legality of such measures has never been definitively settled by the Supreme Court, although many First Amendment scholars believe that censorship, even during wartime, is unconstitutional. After all, the limitations imposed on the government by the Constitution apply equally during war and peace.
It is worth noting that the Constitution itself was drafted during a time of conflict and turmoil, and Thomas Jefferson believed that a free press could prevent future conflicts by bringing public officials before the "tribunal of public opinion," a process which "produces reform peaceably which must otherwise be done by revolution."
In the last half century the notion that an unfettered press is an essential element of any free society has become universalized, enshrined in national constitutions around the world and recognized in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Because America's First Amendment is the gold standard of press freedom guarantees, even limited efforts by the U.S. government to influence the work of the press have an enormous ripple effect around the globe. While U.S. media are in a strong position to resist government pressure, the same cannot be said for journalists in such countries as Zimbabwe, Russia, or Indonesia, who face growing pressures from their leaders.
