May 4, 2005
Santa Cruz Sentinel World Press Freedom Day is an important reminder for Americans to appreciate what we’ve got — and what we don’t want to lose.
Tuesday marked the celebration of World Press Freedom Day, a day that’s designated by the United Nations as a date to celebrate and advocate for the freedom of expression unfamiliar to many parts of the world.
We occasionally have complaints about those locally or nationally who try to keep a lid on the free flow of information, but we’re also mindful that this country has a record of press freedom, and that’s something to celebrate.
In much of the world, journalists risk arrest or even death merely by attempting to bring the light of day to their own country’s ways of doing business.
This year, a Chinese editor was to have been honored at a press freedom conference sponsored by the UNESCO in Dakar, Senegal. However, just before the conference was to begin, the editor, Cheng Yizhong, told conference organizers that he could not attend. The South China Morning Post of Hong Kong cited an unidentified source as saying that Cheng was ordered not to attend.
The Chinese journalist was to have been presented with $25,000 for his newspaper’s work on stories about the outbreak of SARS and on a fatal police beating.
Reporters in the United States simply don’t have to deal with the problems suffered by Cheng, who was detained for five months last year along with two of his newspaper colleagues. According to The Associated Press, the journalists had been questioned in a corruption case, but journalists knowledgeable about the case said the arrest had more to do with silencing the reporters. Cheng ultimately was released, but one of his colleagues got an 8-year prison term.
Journalists in other countries face even worse risks, including savage beatings and murders.
World Press Freedom Day was established in 1993 by the U.N. General Assembly, and it’s administered by UNESCO. There are other organizations as well that try to remind the public of the risks involved in doing journalism in many parts of the world.
Those actions elsewhere serve as a reminder that even here in the United States, curtailing press freedom is the first step down a road that we don’t want to travel.
We, like others, occasionally criticize the practices of the news media here. But we’d rather be in the position of criticizing than of not knowing the good, bad and otherwise of how the purveyors of information get the word out.
Press freedoms even in this country are under scrutiny even more than usual. The explosion of free expression on the Internet has brought on a new series of questions about protections for journalists — and even what a journalist is.
It’s our contention that press freedoms must be extended to those who are outside the boundaries of mainstream journalism. We have long reluctantly supported the rights of smut peddlers to publish what they want, and we also support the rights of anyone, credentialed or not, who sits at the keyboard and tells a story to send to others.
Are there limits to free expression? Of course, and court decisions have made clear that libel, invasion of privacy and even intentional falsehoods don’t have to be tolerated.
But the lesson from around the world is that cutting back on our freedom to write and speak is an unfortunate step down the road toward tyranny.
Yan Sham-Shackleton Online 