Just a few links and ruminations to mark the occasion, but I do hope you’ll consider where the human race might be without the ever controversial and never perfect notion of “freedom of the press.”
At the Guardian, Dr. Agnès Callamard, the executive director of ARTICLE 19, observes the particular importance of access to information to advancing press freedom. I think you could rightly say that without the former, the latter is virtually worthless. Even in places like the U.S. and Great Britain that purport to have an unfettered press, limits and resistance to government transparency and freedom of information can act as a tourniquet.
The BBC highlights a study released today by Reporters Without Borders that names and shames the globe’s most dangerous press freedom “predators.” Among the study’s findings is a fact that is not well-known here in the U.S.: Mexico is one of the worlds most dangerous places to do journalism. Reporters there are routinely kidnapped and murdered by criminal syndicates for doing their jobs.
According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, whose research tends to skew a bit more conservative than that of Reporters Without Borders, 10 journalists have been killed for their work so far in 2010; another 14 are listed as “motive unconfirmed.”
