The rise of popularly-elected autocrats worldwide is presenting an alarming new model for government control of the press, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has warned. These leaders stand for election and express rhetorical support for democratic institutions while using measures such as punitive tax audits, manipulation of government advertising, and sweeping content restrictions to control the news media. These “democratators” tolerate the façade of democracy — a free press, opposition political parties, an independent judiciary — while gutting it from within.
CPJ’s new analysis of international press conditions, Attacks on the Press 2006, says these leaders emerged as the authoritarian response to positive historical developments. The end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union discredited a political system that not only necessitated state control of information but also justified it in moral terms.
Joel Simon, CPJ Executive Director, wrote in the report’s preface, “Even repressive governments are now compelled to present themselves as democracies in order to gain international legitimacy. That’s a big advancement for press freedom and human rights, but the democratators’ new techniques cannot be underestimated.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez embody a generation of sophisticated, elected leaders who use laws to control, intimidate and censor the media. In November 2006, Chavez accused news broadcasters of attempting to “divide, weaken and destroy the nation” and threatened to pull their licenses, while in Russia in July last year Putin signed a measure that “equates journalism with terrorism.”
Leaders who jail journalists sometimes argue that they are complying with international law and are respectful of due process. The Ethiopian government raised the spectre of the slaughter in Rwanda when it arrested and jailed more than a dozen journalists on charges of attempted genocide. In a meeting with a CPJ delegation in March, Prime Minister Meles Zenawi insisted he was acting within the law to protect the state. But CPJ’s review of the evidence found the charges entirely without merit.
Other nations are taking a revolving-door approach, imprisoning journalists and releasing them before an international outcry, Simon said. Since 2000, Iranian courts have banned more than 100 publications and jailed dozens of journalists; most were freed after relatively short periods but with the official threat of re-arrest hanging over their heads. In August, Akbar Ganji, one of the few Iranian journalists to spend an extended period in prison, visited CPJ’s office and argued that the debate over Iran’s nuclear ambitions has obscured the government’s efforts to destroy civil society and wipe out a once-vibrant independent media.
There are other nations whoch are manipulating state advertising to reward supportive news outlets and to punish the critical ones. In countries where government agencies and national companies are economic engines, the practice can be devastating to media organisations that ask tough questions, Simon said. In Argentina, President Néstor Kirchner’s administration directs an advertising budget of 160 million pesos without clear safeguards against partisanship. An independent Argentine research group said the advertising practices have caused serious damage to press freedom.
Moreover, there are countries that still rely on brute force; Cuba and Eritrea, where dozens of journalists are imprisoned, are among them. But overt repression, more and more, has given way to other techniques.
In “Deadly News,” CPJ researchers found that 85 per cent of journalist murders in the last 15 years were committed with complete impunity. Even when some convictions were obtained, masterminds were brought to justice in just 7 per cent of cases. This unsolved violence provokes massive self-censorship. And that suits many governments just fine, Simon said.
Thirteen journalists in Russia, including investigative reporter Anna Politkovskaya, have been murdered since President Vladimir Putin took power in 2000. None of the killers have been brought to justice. This record causes reporters to ask fewer questions, to probe less deeply, to pass up risky stories. After all, one reporter told CPJ, to follow in Politkovskaya’s path would be “taking on a suicide mission.” Putin, while professing concern, benefits from this state of fear.
In Colombia, a long history of impunity has blunted critical reporting in provincial areas where violence remains rampant. President Álvaro Uribe Vélez had publicly denied the prevalence of self-censorship until he met a CPJ delegation in March 2006. After some prompting, Uribe acknowledged the problem and recognised that government officials who interfere with the press are “committing a crime against democracy.”
In an era in which even US officials describe the Geneva Conventions as “quaint,” protections for journalists increasingly exist in name only. The breakdown of international norms is reflected in many ways. In southern Lebanon, Israel refused to make any provision to allow news coverage during the summer offensive, and, in several instances documented by CPJ, its forces actually targeted press vehicles.
In Iraq, insurgents so routinely target reporters that more than two-thirds of media deaths are murders, not acts of war. Fourteen journalists have been killed by US forces’ fire; while CPJ has not found evidence that the killings were deliberate, none were adequately investigated by the military. US forces have also detained at least nine Iraqi journalists for months at a time without charge or due process.
The state of affairs is deeply disturbing because it means that the public knows little about vital issues—from the goals and leadership of the Iraqi insurgency to the implications of China’s breakneck economic development. Even as China builds a modern and prosperous economy, it is depriving its citizens of basic information. More than 120 million people are online in China, but the government has erected massive firewalls and, at times, enlisted corporate cooperation to control the medium.
