The Global Sociology Blog

Via the UN News Center,

“Marking the annual World Press Freedom Day, top United Nations officials have stressed the role of a secure and independent media, and access to information, in empowering individuals and advancing development. (…) Mr. Ban stressed that a free, secure and independent media is one of the foundations of peace and democracy. Attacks on freedom of the press are attacks against international law, humanity, and freedom itself – everything the UN stands for, he said.”

The UN Secretary General also noticed the fact that journalists have been more and more targeted by combatants in current conflicts (and Iraq, with the case of Bilal Hussein, to name only one, certainly is a perfect illustration of that trend) along with the failures to investigate crimes against journalists.

The theme for this year’s WPF Day is “Access to Information and the Empowerment of People”, so, it is no surprise that UNESCO would be involved as well.

““This empowerment supports participatory democracy by giving citizens the capacity to engage in public debate and to hold governments and others accountable,” said UNESCO Director-General Koïchiro Matsuura. Access to information is primordial to the exercise of the basic human right of freedom of expression, Mr. Matsuura added. To be free, the media need to have access to information. Such access is also indispensable in fighting corruption, which has been defined as the primary obstacle to development.”

And I guess this is as close as you can get to a dressing-down of several governments, from Louise Arbour, High Commissioner on Human Rights,

“The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights marked the Day by noting that harassment and secrecy laws are weakening press freedom. “It is a sad fact that many governments across the world persist in undermining the freedom of the press to report facts and opinions and, by extension, the right of people in general to be informed about events and policies that are shaping our world,” Louise Arbour said. Ms. Arbour noted that governments are becoming more secretive and offering propaganda disguised as objective information – especially when alleged security-related issues are on the table.”

However, freedom of the press on paper looks really nice. However, in practice, things can get a lot messier. As the years of Bush administration and the current electoral campaign have shown is that the so-called free US media has become part of a corporate and political elite (or a power elite, as classical sociologist C.W. Mills would say) with a political agenda of its own (NOT reporting and informing). See the complicity of the Telecoms companies in domestic surveillance.

Also, what has been made blatantly clear is that the US media stands alongside the political structures of power not as a watchdog but as a member of the Village. Do not expect accountability from there. If I had thought that the progressive blogosphere would step up and play the role of watchdog where the traditional media failed to do so, I have been severely disillusioned.

So, when we think of a free press as a press free from censorship and governmental pressure, we should also remember that pressure can come from other powerful sources: the corporate world, powerful interest groups, or the military establishment. It should also be mentioned that media actors represent a specific slide of the social class structure that places their interest firmly up on the social ladder, as such, they carry specific social class biases that should not be ignored.

Another great cartoon by Michel Cambon, with permission.