Category: Cross Border

When oligarchs go shopping…

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CP 20 juillet 2016_EN

“IT IS a worldwide trend. From Turkey and Russia to China and India, new media empires are emerging, usually with governmental blessing. Their owners comply with capitalist laws of supply and demand and the need for technological development. But, at the same time, they take strict control of news coverage or replace journalistic content with entertainment.”

In its latest report, “When Oligarchs Go Shopping,” Reporters Without Borders (Reporters Sans Frontieres) looks at this curious, dangerous phenomenon. Excerpts from the report follow:

IMAGINE a world in which the mass media were the exclusive property of a handful of people, all business tycoons. Many people think that world has already arrived. Businessmen of every kind have been seized by the disturbing desire to buy up large numbers of major newspapers, TV channels and radio stations around the globe. No country, no continent – neither India, China, the United States nor Europe – seems to escape the appetite of these new oligarchs for media acquisitions.

Their latest feats include Jack Ma’s purchase of the South China Morning Post, one of the last champions of the free press in Hong Kong, a newspaper that did not hesitate to criticize the government in Beijing. Ma is the owner of the Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba.

Where will these new media owners stop? Their ambition often matches their financial resources, which are limitless. In a recent book, Indian historian Nalin Mehta said his country, “the world’s biggest democracy,” has around 800 TV channels but all those that provide news coverage are owned by shadowy billionaires – including real estate barons, politicians and captains of industry – and that some of these channels are used to blackmail, promote personal interests and even launder money. “There is a coup underway in India,” writer and journalist Manu Joseph says. “Some people who are inconvenienced by democracy have taken over nearly all the country’s television news channels.”

Some of these billionaire businessmen boast of being able to make and unmake governments. Others enter into alliances with governments, offering them mass media support in return for economic favours. In all cases, their financial power combined with their control of media flagships gives them almost limitless influence, one far removed from the journalistic principles that their employees sometimes try to defend.

The victims of such unholy alliances include Turkey’s leading media, which are subjected to censorship that is much more insidious and sophisticated than the government’s usual repressive methods, censorship in which the oligarchs are accomplices.

“While the world is focused on the issue of jailed journalists in Turkey — almost all of whom are Kurds — the kiss of death to our profession has been bestowed by owners who consciously destroy editorial independence, fire journalists who voice scepticism and dissent and block investigative reporting3,” Yavuz Baydar wrote in 2013, while ombudsman of the daily Sabah after holding the same position with Milliyet.

Along with dozens of other journalists, he was fired for being too critical of the Erdogan government, which did not need to intervene because the media owners anticipated its wishes.

These new media oligarchs have prospered under Prime Minister and now President Erdogan, who anointed them and to whom they have remained loyal. “The problem is simple: one need only follow the money,” Baydar says. As in so many other countries, the leading media in Turkey have wound up in the pockets of businessmen active in such strategic sectors as telecommunications, banking and public works, a sector described by Baydar as a “fertile ground for carrot-and-stick policies.”

Media owners who support government policy can count on being rewarded with state contracts, licences, advertising and even tax concessions. The critical ones are silenced slowly and quietly. President Erdogan’s current “best friends” include such oligarchs as Ferit F. ?ahenk, the head of the very powerful Dogus Group (which controls NTV), Turgay Ciner, an energy sector billionaire who owns Haberturk TV and the Haberturk newspaper, and Yildirim Demirören, the CEO of an oil, gas, tourism and public works conglomerate who bought the prestigious big-circulation daily Milliyet in 2012.

Other media outlets have been bought up by pro-government oligarchs with disastrous consequences for media freedom. “Editorial content is strictly controlled by media bosses who have other business interests and are submissive to the government,” said Baydar. “With, or more often without, any direct government intervention, they impose self-censorship on a daily basis and silence colleagues who defend basic journalistic ethics.”

Furious with the way Milliyet “grovelled” before the government after it was taken over, the newspaper’s star columnist, Hasan Cemal, stormed out in 2013. The same year, thousands of Turks took to the street in protest against the government’s growing authoritarianism.

Dubbed “Occupy Gezi” after the Istanbul park that became its symbol, the protest movement held the international media spellbound for several weeks until forcibly crushed by the police. While all this was unfolding, Turkey’s leading TV channels contented themselves with broadcasting animal documentaries or debates on completely unrelated subjects. Their owners must have had other things on their minds.

Read RSF’s latest report “When Oligarchs Go Shopping” here.

Sheila Coronel: A Golden Age of Global Muckraking at Hand

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By Sheila Coronel*
From Global Investigative Journalism Network

Editor’s Note: We are pleased to present this transcript of the keynote speech by Columbia University’s Sheila Coronel at the 2016 conference of Investigative Reporters and Editors on June 19. Coronel, who has played a key role in spreading investigative journalism worldwide, spoke to 1,850 people — the largest ever gathering of investigative journalists — about networks, collaborations, nonprofits, and a new golden age of global muckraking.
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TEN YEARS AGO, when I first moved to New York and gave my first lecture at the Columbia Journalism School, I told students that I believe we are at the dawn of a Golden Age of global muckraking. They were a great class, but they didn’t believe me.

But look at where we are now: It may not feel like it to some of you, but we are seeing, like never before, an explosion of investigative reporting around the world. There are now over 100 investigative reporting centers and organizations outside the U.S. Today, there are muckrakers even in places like Armenia, Bulgaria, Nepal, Venezuela, the Arab world.

Ten years ago, I told my students that I believe we are at the dawn of a Golden Age of global muckraking. They didn’t believe me.

These watchdog groups have seeded the unprecedented collaboration of journalists working across borders and across newsrooms. This past year has shown us how far international investigative reporting has come. Three examples.

This was the year the Panama Papers shook the world. Some 400 reporters from nearly 80 countries produced stories that made headlines everywhere. Their reporting on a leak of 11 million documents from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca caused the downfall of Iceland’s prime minister, Spain’s industry minister and Armenia’s most senior justice official. It also sparked tax evasion and money laundering investigations in several continents.

Working together under the direction of the International Consortium for Investigative Journalists, these reporters proved ¬– once and for all – that there is no such thing as offshore secrecy. Thanks to them, tax-evading billionaires, kleptocrats, drug lords and assorted money launderers are quaking in their private jets. They can run but they can’t hide.

Also this year, Seafood from Slaves, an investigation by the Associated Press, won the Pulitzer Prize’s highest honor. A global team of AP reporters found thousands of poor workers from Laos, Burma, and Cambodia held in bondage by operators of Thai fishing vessels.

The AP’s reporting led to the release of 2,000 slaves like Myint Naing, who had been trafficked from Burma and found on one of the Spice Islands in Indonesia. He had been kept 22 years a slave.
Finally, this is also the year the Azerbaijani journalist Khadija Ismayilova was released from prison.

Khadija was arrested in Dec. 2014 and found guilty of tax evasion, embezzlement and abuse of power. Her reporting had exposed how Azerbaijan’s president, Ilham Aliyev and his family had snapped up state assets. Using shell companies and nominees, they squirreled their wealth in luxury goods and real estate around the world. And yet it was Khadija, not them, who was accused, tried and jailed.

Khadija would still be behind bars today. But journalists all around the world, including many of you in this room, wrote about her and advocated on her behalf with their own governments and with the EU and the UN.

Her colleagues in the Organized Crime and Corruption Project and elsewhere also collaborated on stories exposing the corruption of the Aliyevs. They called it the Khadija Project, after the IRE’s own Arizona Project.

A lot has been said about how technology has empowered the new global investigative reporting. But it’s not machines that made all this great work possible. It’s people. People like us.

Many of you know that in 1976, a team of investigative reporters from IRE got together after Dan Bolles, an investigative journalist at the Arizona Republic, was killed by a car bomb. They agreed to continue reporting the story that Bolles had not lived to tell.

Their principle was: You can kill the journalist, but not the story.

Similarly, the Khadija Project’s message to the Aliyevs was: You can jail Khadija, but you cannot put an end to exposés. In the end, the Aliyev government realized that the political cost of keeping Khadija in prison outweighed the benefits of setting her free.

Last month, Khadija was released.

A lot has been said about how technology has empowered the new global investigative reporting. The Panama Papers and similar stories benefited from software that allows reporters to communicate and share documents securely across oceans, and from algorithms that enable them to search millions of documents in real time wherever they are.

Dateline New Orleans: Coronel’s record crowd included journalists from 32 countries.

Technology has given us new tools for dealing with big digital leaks and new sources of information, including, as in the case of Seafood from Slaves, ship sensors and satellites.

But let me tell you this: It’s not machines that made all this great work possible. It’s people. People like us. The successes I’ve described demonstrate not so much technological power as collaborative power… the power of individual reporters working together to produce journalism that is greater than the sum of each of their individual efforts.

Since the late 1990s, journalists from around the world have been meeting regularly in conferences and training workshops – like this one — and working jointly on increasingly ambitious cross-border reporting projects. These activities – and also those spirited discussions after hours (and by spirited, I mean alcohol-fueled) – have fostered camaraderie and trust. They have laid the groundwork for a truly global and networked journalism.

The era of the lone wolf is over.

Local and national accountability reporting will continue to be important, but the muckrakers of the future will no longer be so tightly tethered to the nation-state. Crime, corruption, you name it, pollution, human trafficking, money laundering, tax evasion, viruses like Zika, purchases of luxury real estate, the food we eat, the clothes we wear: All these breach national boundaries.

Since the 1990s, journalists from around the world have been meeting regularly in conferences and workshops. These activities have laid the groundwork for a truly global and networked journalism. The era of the lone wolf is over.

And thanks to a global community of muckrakers, the barriers to doing cross-border reporting are no longer insurmountable.

A borderless world needs watchdogs who can transcend borders. The Panama Papers, the Khadija Project, Offshore Leaks are examples of how this can done. They showcase the new global, networked investigative journalism.

Today, the news industry is facing huge challenges in terms of falling revenues. Moreover, all around the world — even in countries that have a free press — governments, corporations and in too many cases, terrorists and demagogues, autocrats and mafia lords, are stifling independent reporting.

There is no silver bullet, no Holy Grail that will end this crisis of news. We are in uncharted terrain. The new, global, networked journalism provides us ONE path forward, ONE model for doing ambitious, high-impact accountability reporting efficiently, rigorously, more cheaply, also more securely.

The most daring and cutting-edge accountability reporting around the world is being done by nonprofits, financially fragile papers or online news sites, and freelancers. They are extremely vulnerable.

This network model is still fluid and evolving. Unlike traditional newsrooms, networked journalism is, for better or for worse, horizontal and non-hierarchical. Membership in the network is informal – there are no membership lists or dues. Members are linked by bonds of reciprocity and trust, and also by self-interest. Units within the network may be competitive, but they choose to share and to work together on specific projects and for particular goals.

Crime and corruption networks work this way and so do jihadist groups. Their activities and lines of communication reach across national borders. Like the mythical Hydra–many heads, hard to find, difficult to exterminate. There are hubs, but no single mission control. Cross-border journalist networks operate the same way, that’s why they are effective. As the Pentagon has now realized about fighting jidhadists, “It takes a network to defeat a network.”

But how can networked journalism be sustained? Until about a decade ago, investigative reporting in the US was robust because it was propped up by a support structure of profitable news organizations that invested in reporting, independent courts that protected press freedom and the right to information, journalism schools that trained the next generation of muckrakers, and prizes that celebrated outstanding work. And of course, there’s IRE. You don’t know how lucky you were, and still are.

Crime and corruption networks reach across national borders. There are hubs, but no single control. Cross-border journalist networks are similar. As the Pentagon now realizes, “It takes a network to defeat a network.”

Elsewhere, there are huge gaps in the support structure. The most daring and cutting-edge accountability reporting around the world is being done by nonprofits, financially fragile newspapers or online news sites, and freelancers. They can barely scrape the money for ambitious reporting. They are also extremely vulnerable to legal harassment and physical threats. In these places, the courts are compromised and governments are unable to protect journalists from those who would them harm.
In too many places, investigative reporting is a high wire act – without a safety net.

Behind its many successes, cross-border investigative reporting is a flickering flame. It needs to be funded and protected. But how and by whom? Who pays for a global public good?

For sure, we have vibrant organizations that keep the fire burning. The Global Investigative Journalism Network is the communications & resource hub for watchdogs around the world. GIJN organizes meetings that bring international journalists to talk about tradecraft. Many of the early collaborative reporting projects were conceived in the corridors of these global conferences.
We have watchdog groups in Latin America, Europe, Africa, and the Arab world that train journalists, bring them together to discuss common issues and problems, and also fund their work. The OCCRP reports on the Balkans, the former Soviet Union, and other regions on the issues of crime and corruption. And of course, you are all familiar with ICIJ’s stellar work as a hub for distributed, cross-border reporting. It’s headquartered in Washington, D.C. but its staff is a microcosm of the world: The ICIJ director is Irish & worked in Australia, his deputy is from Argentina; the data team is headed by a Spaniard, my former student Mar Cabra, and the chief data analyst is Costa Rican. And there are some very talented Americans there, too, of course.

But funding is tight. David Kaplan, the guru of GIJN, estimates that donors invest at most $20 million a year in international investigative reporting.

That’s about 0.2% of the 7 billion pounds worth of London real estate secretly purchased by prime ministers, business magnates and others using offshore companies established by Mossack Fonseca. Thanks to the Panama Papers, The Guardian found all these properties. Seven billion pounds.

In other words, the investment in global investigative reporting pays off. Massively. The reforms that the Panama Papers have set in motion worldwide will hopefully result in billions of dollars in recovered wealth or unpaid taxes. The OCCRP estimates that the total of money frozen or paid in fines since it started work has reached $3 billion.

The Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism has nearly single-handedly introduced investigative reporting techniques and the notion of accountability in the Arab world. In the past 10 years it has trained 1,600 journalists, including the Arab reporters who worked on the Panama Papers. If we know now that Syrian president Bashar al-Assad and his allies skirted international sanctions by registering shell companies in places like the Seychelles, it’s because of ARIJ.

What a spectacular return on investment.

Where there is despair that nothing can be done, we offer some hope that if we shine the light on the wrongdoing, the world can be a better place. I am proud to be part of this global community of muckrakers.

In the end, however, the most valuable investments in global watchdog reporting have been made by individual journalists willing to put their lives and their freedoms on the line in order to expose wrongdoing. Khadija Ismayilova remained in Azerbaijan to report, knowing that she would sooner or later end up in jail. Not many of us – I hope – will ever be in her situation but we’re inspired by her courage and strength of purpose.

Hamoud Almahmoud continued teaching an investigative reporting course at the University of Damascus, despite the artillery fire around him. “The university was very close to the frontlines of the fighting,” he recalled “I was teaching despite all the shelling.”

Hamoud is in Amman now, where he is research director of ARIJ. But many of his colleagues in Syria have been killed or fled the country. “We see the window of hope is narrowing,” he told me, “but we are surviving and we are still doing stories.”

Lina Attalah edits the independent website Mada Masr in Egypt that could be closed any time under onerous press laws. But she and her young staff continue to do investigative reporting in order, she says, to “activate the conversation, to reopen the political space, and engage the public in conversation.”

Oscar Martinez heads the investigative unit of El Faro, an online news site in El Salvador. He’s received numerous threats for his stories on gang violence and extrajudicial killings. Last year, he had to flee the country. He’s back but he has panic buttons and other security systems in his house. He can’t even take his three-year-old daughter to the park for fear of attack.

Oscar writes beautifully about the most horrific things that people do to each other. Recalling his reporting on migrants crossing from Central America to the US, this is what he told the Texas Observer:

If there are women who had the courage to tell you how they’d been raped along the path… you as a journalist don’t have the right to just pit that back out onto a page. You have to take the time, dedicate energy and put in a lot of work to write this the best way you can so that that person’s story can generate the feeling of impotence, the rage, the compassion and the hate that it should generate.

Writing, he said, is an ethical responsibility.

For Oscar, for Lina, Hamoud and Khadija, as it is for me, and I’m sure many of you, investigative reporting is more than just exposing the bastards, although that is immensely satisfactory. I started reporting during the twilight of Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos, when the press was so heavily censored, we couldn’t even publish photographs showing Imelda’s double chin. For me, investigative reporting is about opening up spaces, providing facts to inform intelligent public debate, making readers empathize with the suffering of others.

Where there is despair that everything is broken and nothing can be done, we offer some hope that if we shine the light on the wrongdoing, the world can be a better place. I am proud to be part of this global community of muckrakers. We can; we should; we must keep going and I hope – I KNOW – we will all stand together.

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*Sheila S. Coronel is Dean of Academic Affairs at the Columbia Journalism School and director of the school’s Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism. She is co-founder and former executive director of the pioneering Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, based in Manila.

Break the corruption chain!

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“The new 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, our plan to end poverty and ensure lives of dignity for all, recognizes the need to fight corruption in all its aspects and calls for significant reductions in illicit financial flows as well as for the recovery of stolen assets.”

This message, from United Nations Secretary Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon?, offers a strong narrative for the global observance tomorrow, December 9, of International Anti-Corruption Day

Break the Corruption Chain— that is the theme that run though the global campaign led by the United Nations and its partner civil society organizations around the world.

This year’s event focuses on how corruption “undermines democracy and the rule of law, leads to human rights violations, distorts markets, erodes quality of life and allows organized crime, terrorism and other threats to human security to flourish.”

The campaign #breakthechain also highlights that corruption is a cross-cutting crime, impacting many areas. It shows that acting against corruption is imperative to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, which aim to end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure prosperity for all.

Corruption, the UN notes, “is a complex social, political and economic phenomenon that affects all countries. Corruption undermines democratic institutions, slows economic development and contributes to governmental instability.”

Corruption “attacks the foundation of democratic institutions by distorting electoral processes, perverting the rule of law and creating bureaucratic quagmires whose only reason for existing is the soliciting of bribes.”

Even more tragic, “economic development is stunted because foreign direct investment is discouraged and small businesses within the country often find it impossible to overcome the “start-up costs” required because of corruption”

On 31 October 2003, the UN General Assembly adopted the United Nations Convention against Corruption and requested that the Secretary-General designate the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) as secretariat for the Convention’s Conference of States Parties (Resolution 58/4).

The Assembly also designated 9 December as International Anti-Corruption Day, to raise awareness of corruption and of the role of the Convention in combating and preventing it. The Convention entered into force in December 2005.

Governments, the private sector, non-governmental organizations, the media and citizens around the world are joining forces to fight this crime. The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) are at the forefront of these efforts.

The government of the Philippines is a state party signatory to UNCAC.

Message of Ban Ki-moon, United Nations Secretary-General, on International Anti-Corruption Day

Global attitudes towards corruption have changed dramatically. Where once bribery, corruption and illicit financial flows were often considered part of the cost of doing business, today corruption is widely — and rightly — understood as criminal and corrosive.

The new 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, our plan to end poverty and ensure lives of dignity for all, recognizes the need to fight corruption in all its aspects and calls for significant reductions in illicit financial flows as well as for the recovery of stolen assets.

Corruption has disastrous impacts on development when funds that should be devoted to schools, health clinics and other vital public services are instead diverted into the hands of criminals or dishonest officials.

Corruption exacerbates violence and insecurity. It can lead to dissatisfaction with public institutions, disillusion with government in general, and spirals of anger and unrest.

The United Nations Convention against Corruption provides a comprehensive platform for governments, non-governmental organizations, civil society, and individual citizens. Through prevention, criminalization, international cooperation and assets recovery, the Convention advances global progress toward ending corruption.

On International Anti-Corruption Day, I call for united efforts to deliver a clear message around the world that firmly rejects corruption and embraces instead the principles of transparency, accountability and good governance. This will benefit communities and countries, helping to usher in a better future for all.

UN: World population to hit 8.5B in 2030; India may surpass China

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THE WORLD’S POPULATION is projected to reach 8.5 billion by 2030, 9.7 billion by 2050, and exceed 11 billion in 2100, according to a new United Nations report.

The report, 2015 Revision of World Population Prospects, the 24th round of official UN population estimates and projections, says India is expected to surpass China as the most populous country in seven years.

Nigeria is also seen to overtake the United States to become the world’s third largest country around 35 years from now.

A UN press advisory noted that the 2015-2050 period, half of the world’s population growth is expected to be concentrated in nine countries: India, Nigeria, Pakistan, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Tanzania, the United States, Indonesia, and Uganda.

Wu Hongbo, the UN Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs, whose department produced the report said that understanding the demographic changes that are likely to unfold over the coming years “is key to the design and implementation of the new development agenda.”

The UN member-states, the advisory said, are currently in the process of crafting a successor agenda to the landmark Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which wrap up at the end of this year.

A new framework, focused on poverty eradication, social inclusion, and preserving the health of the planet, is set to be adopted at a special UN summit, in New York this September.

According to the report’s projections, “most of the projected increase in the world’s population can be attributed to a short list of high-fertility countries, mainly in Africa, or countries with already large populations.”

“At present, China and India remain the two largest countries in the world, each with more than 1 billion people, representing 19 and 18 per cent of the world’s population, respectively, but by 2022, the population of India is expected to surpass that of China, according to the report’s projection,” it added.

“Among the 10 largest countries in the world currently, one is in Africa (Nigeria), five are in Asia (Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, and Pakistan), two are in Latin America (Brazil and Mexico), one is in Northern America (US), and one is in
Europe (Russian Federation),” the UN said.

“Of these,Nigeria’s population, currently the seventh largest in the world, is growing the most rapidly,” said the report.

The report also projected that “by 2050, the populations of six countries are expected to exceed 300 million: China, India, Indonesia, Nigeria, Pakistan, and the United States.”

“And with the highest rate of population growth, Africa is expected to account for more than half of the world’s population growth over the next 35 years,” it added.

During this period, the report said, “the populations of 28 African countries are projected to more than double, and by 2100, 10 African countries are projected to have increased by at least a factor of five: Angola, Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Malawi, Mali, Niger, Somalia, Uganda, United Republic of Tanzania, and Zambia.”

“The concentration of population growth in the poorest countries presents its own set of challenges, making it more difficult to eradicate poverty and inequality, to combat hunger and malnutrition, and to expand educational enrolment and health systems, all of which are crucial to the success of the new sustainable development agenda,” said John Wilmoth, Director of the UN’s Population Division.

In contrast to the growth projections, the report noted “a significant ageing of the population in the next several decades” for most regions. These include Europe, where 34 per cent of the population is projected to be over 60 years old by 2050. In Latin America and the Caribbean, and Asia, “the population will be transformed from having 11 per cent to 12 per cent of people over 60 years old today to more than 25 per cent by 2050.”

Too, the UN report said, “life expectancy at birth has increased significantly in the least developed countries in recent years.”

The six-year average gain in life expectancy among the poorest countries, from 56 years in 2000-2005 to 62 years in 2010-2015, is roughly double the increase recorded for the rest of the world, the report added.

“While significant differences in life expectancy across major areas and income groups are projected to continue, they are expected to diminish significantly by 2045-2050,” the UN said.

Presidents, PMs, and the press:Verbal abuse most foul, deadly

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COURTING THE IRE of presidents and prime ministers might be par for the course for journalists when they ask sharp, testy questions. Sometimes, too, instead of responding to the questions, the former sometimes fire back at the latter with verbal assault.

But according to Reporters Without Borders (RWB), heads of state and governments who “publicly refer to journalists in a contemptuous, insulting, defamatory or racist manner” may be considered to be “violating the principle of freedom of information and drawing attention to the terrible pressure to which media personnel are often subjected just for doing their job.”

RWB noted that in The Marriage of Figaro, Pierre Beaumarchais had succinctly pointed to the tragic result of such behavior by these “little presidents” when he wrote: “If censorship reigns, there cannot be sincere flattery, and none but little men are afraid of little writings.”

“Reporting is a dangerous job in some countries and journalists who ask irritating questions or shine a light on government corruption often find themselves the targets of presidential anger,” RWB said in its latest report.

“Some presidents tolerate no disagreement, not even the least debate. Others routinely identify any expression of doubt as an act of opposition, sedition or conspiracy, or as foreign interference. Others, the repeat offenders, wage campaigns of harassment against the media outlets or journalists they dislike,” RWB said.

The levels of intolerance to free public discourse and debate may vary but these all trigger the same result – snipping the ambit of freedom, freedom of speech, and freedom of expression that are fundamental rights of all citizens.

According to RWB, there are “little presidents” is “who say nothing because they already have such an effective system of censorship that there is never any need to issue reminders to already compliant media. From veiled allusions to open death threats, the style varies from country to country but the goal remains the same – to gag information.”

“A threshold is crossed when a head of state lets loose a stream of verbal abuse against media personnel who are just doing their work,” RWB secretary-general Christophe Deloire said. “How can journalists function normally if the state that is supposed to guarantee their safety is headed by a person who holds them up to contempt, bullies them and threatens them, opening the way to abuses against the media that go unpunished.”??

RWB cited examples across the world of these “little presidents” who by the comments they have uttered publicly “collectively highlight the shocking climate of tension to which journalists are exposed in certain countries.”?

The RWB report cites examples to illustrate the characteristics of the relationship between the state and journalists in each region of world. “Individually, some of these comments may seem relatively harmless, but collectively they highlight the shocking climate of tension to which journalists are exposed in certain countries,” it added.

The report, “Leaders who publicly threaten journalists”, follows:

LATIN AMERICA

Many Latin American presidents do not hesitate to berate the news media and vilify journalism in their public addresses.

Some presidents choose to attack journalists to avoid debating ideas. In very polarized countries where the media are often used for political ends, accusing journalists of being biased or plotting against the government is easier than responding to criticism. Instead of eliciting a response, instead of prompting a debate, independent journalism just meets with slander and insults. Any criticism of government policy is liable to be branded as an attack on the country.

According to the Declaration on Principles of Freedom of Expression by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), presidents are supposed to guarantee the safety of their fellow citizens. Instead, verbal abuse of the media by presidents such as Maduro, Correa and Hernández foster a dangerous climate of censorship, self-censorship and impunity for violence against journalists.

When Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro gives news conferences (at which questions from journalists are never welcome), he rarely misses an opportunity to accuse foreign news media such as CNN en Español and the Miami Herald of waging an “international campaign” against Venezuela. When inaugurating homes paid for by the government in September 2014, he referred to a plan to “poison and dump their poison on Venezuela and elsewhere in the world,” using virulent language to accuse the media of being biased and pursuing a hidden agenda.

Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa uses the same methods in his weekly TV broadcasts known as “Enlaces Ciudadanos” (Citizen Liaisons). In Enlace Ciudadano No. 424 on 16 May 2015, he attacked the editor of the Crudo Ecuador website, threatening to “respond with the same weapons.” And, in reaction to TV presenter Alfonso Espinosa’s comments on plans to eliminate term limits for elected politicians, he accused journalists of using “the opposition’s dishonest discourse to demonize what is perfectly legitimate, democratic and transparent.”

Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández paid tribute to journalists in his own special way on 25 May 2015, celebrated as Day of the Journalist in Honduras. Reacting to allegations of ruling National Party involvement in embezzling social security funds, he lashed out as “pseudo-journalists [who] dissemble, distort and invent.”

EASTERN EUROPE AND CENTRAL ASIA

Insulting journalists is an integral part of President Erdogan’s methods, which are characterized by populism, conspiracy theories and intolerance. In response to criticism, he usually tries to smear his critics. If they are lucky, he just calls them “ignorant.” But he is more likely to brand them as “agents of subversion,” “foreign spies” or even some kind of “terrorist.” These verbal attacks are symptomatic of the authoritarian tendencies of a leader whose vision of the world is becoming more and more polarized and paranoid. The loss of his parliamentary majority should force him to seek consensus. Will it also put a stop to his insults?

The all-powerful Chechen president’s crude language and inappropriate comments help to sustain the climate of arbitrary rule and fear that dominates his long-suffering republic. Mixing his private and public lives, Ramzan Kadyrov posts praise and blistering attacks on Instagram along with photos of his family, friends and associates. His nefarious reputation, the summary methods employed by his militiamen, and the tragic fate suffered by many of his opponents lend a great deal of weight to his words.

But verbal excesses are just one element in an extensive arsenal of intimidatory methods. While allowing government propaganda to create an increasingly hostile environment, Russian President Vladimir Putin usually refrains from direct attacks on critical journalists, pretending to be unaware of them. Central Asia’s eternal despots, ever mindful to maintain a presidential stature often bordering on deification, are usually restrained in their public statements. And anyway, the Turkmen, Uzbek and Kazakh leaders have suppressed pluralism so effectively that virtually no critical journalists are left.

EUROPEAN UNION AND BALKANS

“When I look at you, I understand why you are always negative. Nothing positive can come from you, anyway (…) The fact that you raise these subjects is not surprising. You come from a newspaper of a certain kind and, obviously, from an ethnic background of that certain too. You do it on purpose.”

This was the response that President Milorad Dodik of the Republika Srpska, the Serbian part of Bosnia and Herzegovina, gave to a question from Gordana Katana of the independent daily Oslobodenje during a news conference on 14 March 2015. She had asked him about a relative of his who had been given a prison sentence and was on the run. Not content with these comments, Dodik subsequently ordered all government departments to cancel their Oslobodenje subscriptions.

Elected in 2010, the ultranationalist Dodik lords it over a country with widespread corruption and clientelism, and reacts with hostility to difficult questions from journalists, especially female ones. When a woman journalist with the TV programme 60 Minutes asked him a question, he replied: “You work for 60 Minutes? It’s a really lousy programme, it’s complete crap (…) I see that you at least are presentable. But you’re not pretty.” Such aggressiveness towards journalists is not unique in the Balkans, where it is used to deter media interest in matters involving the government and to divert attention by creating controversy.

The method is also used elsewhere in Europe including the European Union, where more and more leading politicians are being aggressive towards journalists. Last year, Hungary’s deputy prime minister described investigative journalists as “traitors” and said they were working for a “foreign power.” In France, the leaders of the far-right National Front often insult and intimidate journalists, treating them with a hostility that is increasingly seen across the entire French political spectrum.

AFRICA

Journalists in Africa are often treated as spies, terrorists or traitors, and are subjected to threats and physical attacks (that are rarely punished) and to judicial harassment designed to discourage them from investigating potentially embarrassing stories. Protected by a compliant judicial system and by security services that keep the pressure on journalists who don’t toe the line, Africa’s presidents constantly proclaim their undying attachment to media freedom and democracy. But from time to time, the varnish cracks.

This is how Gambia’s President Yayah Jammeh spoke of journalists in 2011: “The journalists are less than 1 percent of the population, and if anybody expects me to allow less than 1 percent of the population to destroy 99 percent of the population, you are in the wrong place.” And he added: “I don’t have an opposition. What we have are people that hate the country, and I will not work with them.”

Investigative journalism is too often accused of being a form of opposition politics. Obviously there are politicized news media in Africa, but journalists who do nothing more than call on the authorities to account for their actions or draw attention to the population’s problems find themselves accused of “hating their country and government.”

Guinea may be less dangerous than Gambia, but journalists (and those who defend them) are treated no less dismissively there by President Alpha Condé. Journalists, he said in November 2014, “can do anything they like (…) They can write what they want. It is of no importance. I don’t read newspapers, I don’t go online and I don’t listen to radio stations.” And he added: “I don’t give a damn what Reporters Without Borders writes (…) they don’t rule Guinea. I’m not scared of international law or human rights (…) Everyone will respect the law in Guinea.”

But if Guinea’s authorities are indifferent to what journalists say, why did the High Authority for Communication ban live discussion programmes and restrict press reviews in the national media in the run-up to this year’s presidential election?

Displaying complete contempt for journalists and their “idiotic” questions is also Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe’s way of dealing with the media. During an African Union summit in Cairo in 2010, Mugabe’s bodyguards manhandled a British journalist who dared to ask on what basis he considered himself president. “Are your security guards going to hit me in front of the cameras?” the journalist asked. The enraged Mugabe replied: “Stop asking stupid questions. You are an idiot.”

Mugabe brushed aside a journalist’s questions in a similar fashion in April 2014, saying: “I don’t want to see a white face.” And he dislikes not only seeing troublesome journalists but also being seen by them. His security detail forced several journalists to delete the photos they had taken of him falling as he left Harare airport in February 2015. When you’re trying to portray a 91-year-old president as still indestructible, the public eye can be a big nuisance.

ASIA

Thailand’s prime minister, Gen. Prayut Chan-o-cha was asked at a news conference on 25 March 2015 what the government would do to journalists who do not stick to the official line. “We’ll probably just execute them,” he replied tersely.

Since imposing martial law in May 2014, Gen. Prayut has cracked down hard on those who defy his policies and defend the fundamental right to criticize. He has gagged reporters, bloggers and news outlets regarded as overly critical of himself or his military government. The growing hostility towards the media being voiced publicly by Prayut has drawn the entire world’s attention to his contempt for freedom of information and its defenders, regarded as a threat to the nation.

Prayut clearly does not think it is the job of journalists to question the government. On the contrary, speaking on 5 March, celebrated as “Reporters Day” in Thailand, he said journalists should “play a major role in supporting the government’s affairs, practically creating the understanding of government’s policies to the public, and reduce the conflicts in the society.”

Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung’s policy with journalists is to brand them as malevolent enemies and to dismiss revelations about communist party corruption as “despicable stratagems by hostile forces.” When Dung threatens outspoken bloggers with “severe punishments,” the deterrent effect is guaranteed because no fewer than 27 citizen-journalists and bloggers are currently detained in Vietnam. In 2012 alone, the Vietnamese authorities prosecuted no fewer than 48 bloggers and human rights defenders, sentencing them to a total of 166 years in prison and 63 years of probation.

Chinese presidents rarely refer to media freedom. It took a joint news conference with US President Barack Obama in November 2014 for Xi Jinping to take a public position on the issue. The difficult question obviously did not come from a Chinese reporter. Alluding to censorship of the New York Times after it revealed the wealth of then Prime Minister Wen Jiabao’s family in 2012, a New York Times reporter asked if Beijing was going to lift its restrictions on foreign journalists working in China. Xi replied: “In Chinese, we have a saying: ‘The party which has created the problem should be the one to help resolve it.’ So perhaps we should look into the problem to see where the cause lies.”

The Chinese president’s attempt to shift the blame on to the foreign media did not unfortunately receive the international condemnation it deserved. According to a survey by the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China, nearly one China-based foreign correspondent in 10 has been threatened with the non-renewal of their visa because of what they have written. The New York Times has not been able to appoint new China correspondents because the government systematically refuses to give them visas.

When Burma’s President Thein Sein issued a warning to the media during a radio address in July 2014, his words were not taken lightly. “If media freedom threatens national security instead of helping the nation, I want to warn all that we will take effective action under existing laws,” the president said. Seven journalists have been jailed in Burma since the start of 2014. Usurping the press council’s role, the authorities have taken it upon themselves to act as the guarantors of journalistic ethics and to severely punish media outlets deemed guility of professional misconduct.

Like the accusation of endangering national security or state interests, the charge of “sedition” is one of the ways government leaders use to gag the media. Malaysia’s Prime Minister Najib Razak often uses the newly-reinforced Sedition Act to order prosecutions of journalists, bloggers and other critics including the cartoonist Zunar. And Najib does not hesitate to directly and publicly threaten media outlets with legal action. He says he is ready to listen to “constructive criticism” from journalists, but when they cover abusive government practices, he orders police raids designed to censor and deter media from continuing to cover Malaysian politics freely.

MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA

Instead of direct verbal attacks on journalists, Middle Eastern leaders usually resort to illegal arrests, arbitrary prison sentences, torture and enforced disappearances when expressing their contempt for the media.

Middle Eastern journalists are often convicted on such charges as “disseminating false information endangering state security,” “supporting or condoning terrorism” or “disturbing public order.” Many have been treated as spies, liars or idiots, but few presidents have publicly voiced such accusations.

Most of the region’s leaders give few interviews and carefully vet the media that are granted access. This is the case with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who has been very inaccessible since the start of the crisis in Syria although it is the world’s deadliest country for journalists. It is also the case with Algeria’s President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who has rarely been exposed to the media since his health deteriorated.

Ali Khamenei has never given an interview or news conference since taking over as the Islamic Republic of Iran’s Supreme Leader in 1989. In 2000, he described the pro-reform press that had emerged since President Mohammad Khatami’s election in 1997 as “a base of operations by foreign enemies inside our country.” The comment was accompanied by an order to carry out raids on journalists and media outlets.

Since then, at least 300 media outlets have been closed as “foreign enemies within the country,” thousands of news websites have been censored and more than 500 journalists, bloggers and other online information activists have been arbitrarily arrested, tortured and given long jail terms, while many others have had to flee abroad. New media and satellite TV stations broadcasting to Iran from outside the country are the latest targets. Iran is now one of the world’s biggest prisons for journalists, like Egypt, where journalists who do not toe the government line are accused by President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of being “terrorists.” Not that a great deal is said on the subject. Sisi’s regime prefers imprisonment to insults.

As for the Gulf monarchies, they rarely address the national media and do not insult journalists publicly because they are concerned about their international image. Independent and critical media are nonetheless rarely tolerated in these countries, where censorship and self-censorship prevail. The only space that may still be found for freedom of expression and information is online.