Fictionalizing The News
09.12.08Participants in the workshop discussed various tactics governments are using and have used to control the flow of information, particularly in China, Burma, Sudan and Iran.
Current technologies such as the Internet have increased the possibilities of gaining access to information and getting information out of a country. But as techniques become more sophisticated, so do government restrictions.
One participant said that Internet cafes are growing in China, but the government requires everyone who uses the Internet to register.
“They are very, very sophisticated in the kind of monitoring they do,” said Ying Chan, professor at the University of Hong Kong and Shantou University.
Another panelist, Roby Alampay, South East Asian Press Alliance (SEPA), said journalists generally have free flow into and out of Burma, but once inside, the government has control over who gets access to the information they need.
He said mobile telephones are too expensive and only 1 percent of the people have access to the Internet.
To illustrate the situation, Alampay said that a man who had posted a poem for his own purposes and in his own home was arrested.
Ying Chan said that one way to get around censors is to use coded words. But she added that computers have the ability to selectively delete texts.
Alampay said that in Burma, “we literally have real news stories passed off as fiction.” He added that newspapers have not been able to print graphs on the business page, so they just print the list of the commodities.
Ying Chan said fictionalized journalism in China is very popular.
Two members of the audience gave chilling accounts of government interference – one in Iran and one in Sudan.
In Sudan, a newspaper had published a story about a rebel attack that had been repulsed, not by the army, but by a special forces legion. The story also noted that the Sudanese defense minister had been seen at the airport attempting to leave the country. Within 24 hours, the newspaper’s building was bulldozed to the ground.
In Iran, the government prevented a newspaper from printing a story despite finding nothing wrong with the story. The problem apparently was the picture that accompanied the story. The picture showed the British ambassador in a very comfortable setting with a young child. Apparently the scene made the ambassador look too normal.
An earlier panel discussed freedom of expression and media development moderated by Eduardo Bertoni, executive director of the Due Process of Law Foundation.
Panel members included Catalina Botero Marino, special rapporteur for freedom of expression, Inter-American Commission on Human Rights; Miklos Haraszti, Organization For Security And Co-Operation in Europe representative on freedom of the media; Sylvie Coudray, senior program specialist, Division for Freedom of Expression, Democracy and Peace, UNESCO; and Frank La Rue, U.N. special rapporteur on freedom of expression.
Coudray said free and independent media guarantees god government and that freedom of the media “plays an important role in the fight against poverty.”
Botero Marino emphasized that her organization actively promotes freedom of expression throughout the Americas. She added that the IACHR and the media “can and must work together, hand in hand, for the promotion of freedom of expression across the Americas; the media play a fundamental role in each and every one of these strategies and mechanisms, and it is the stated duty of the special rapporteur to foster fluid, dynamic and productive communications with them.”
Haraszti said the OSCE ambassadors meet weekly in Vienna and produce a public presence and has field missions, mostly in new democracies.
La Rue said “maintaining peace in the world depends on human rights and the defense of human rights needs freedom of expression.”
La Rue also said that “freedom of expression cannot be limited to the very few; it has to be open to everybody.”
Dave Rosso
USA journalist