Committee to Protect Journalists


September 13, 2002


BROOKE GLADSTONE: We're back with On the Media. I'm Brooke Gladstone.

BOB GARFIELD: And I'm Bob Garfield. In the nervous days after last year's 9/11 attacks, a chill went down the spine of the journalistic community when presidential spokesman Ari Fleischer cautioned critics to "watch what they say." That remark, along with the administration's hard line approach to freedom of information requests, raised the specter of the War on Terror being involved to curb press freedoms. Elsewhere around the world, the threat is not merely in the air; it is in the jails. The Commission to Protect Journalists reports that a number of authoritarian regimes are harassing and violently intimidating the press under the pretext of national security. Joel Simon is the deputy director of the CPJ. He joins us now. Joel, welcome to On the Media.

JOEL SIMON: Thank you.

BOB GARFIELD: Now none of the countries that you mention in your report -- Eritrea, Kazakstan, Indonesia -- are exactly models of press freedom to begin with, so how exactly have things changed in the past year?

JOEL SIMON: What's changed is that the governments have adopted the rhetoric of the War on Terrorism. Often critical journalists are now described as "terrorists," and some of the suppression of civil liberties including press freedom gets less attention internationally which allows repressive governments sort of greater latitude and cover to carry out these, these policies.

BOB GARFIELD:Well one example of-- what you mentioned would be Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe who has used all sorts of anti-terrorism rhetoric in suppressing his press, but on, on the other hand it's equally true that Zimbabwe has been more in the public eye in the past year as Mugabe's suppression gets ever more draconian. Is it true that people are actually getting away with this in the dark as far as the public is concerned?

JOEL SIMON: Well each case is different. In Zimbabwe you're, you're absolutely right. But in other parts of the world, there is less attention. One example is Central Asia. With the U.S. presence you would think that that would be an opportunity to raise these issues. That hasn't happened. Another country is Colombia. That's a country where the press is increasingly being caught on one side of this polarizing rhetoric. The government there is now calling the guerrillas "terrorists" and also pressuring journalists to take more of a government line. It's being more aggressive.

BOB GARFIELD:And what about the United States State Department? Is it active in trying to expose these abuses where they occur or is it looking the other way or what?

JOEL SIMON: I would say in our experience, we've brought abuses to the attention of the State Department and hoped that they would speak out, and that's been increasingly difficult. Our sense certainly is that in making strategic alliances, often the, the primary consideration is the military importance of that alliance, and human rights and civil liberties and press freedom are not particularly high on the bilateral agenda.

BOB GARFIELD:Well you could make the argument, and, and I think people have in fact, that one of the reasons we're in this War on Terrorism mess to begin with is because the United States has supported, indeed propped up, a whole lot of very repressive regimes that hold press freedom among other things in low esteem. If it's true that the United States is looking the other way because of strategic political considerations, aren't we just going to create exactly the kind of conditions that bred terrorism to begin with?

JOEL SIMON: Not supporting press freedom in these countries is shortsighted, because you undermine the ability of these countries to create the mechanisms that support democracy, and you implicitly legitimate these repressive governments that can polarize these societies further, and that could become a foreign policy headache for the U.S. in the long run.

BOB GARFIELD:There have been new restrictions put in place that make it harder for American journalists to get information about what the government is up to, and there's been a lot of crying about it including on this show. I gather the problems domestic journalists face pale entirely next to the problems of journalists in, in countries where for example there's no judicial system to protect them.

JOEL SIMON: Yeah, that's, that's absolutely right, and, and what's dangerous is the precedent that the U.S. government has established in its actions is being emulated around the world, and that precedent is certain civil liberties including press freedom may have to be compromised during times of conflict; that the government must extent secrecy and that it's acceptable or understandable during conflict to keep the press away from the battlefield. For example, in Chechnya where journalists who have, at grave personal risk to themselves -- Russian journalists -- covered the Chechan conflict and have pressured the Russian government to allow greater access -- well, that argument is much more difficult to make when the Russian government can point to the limited access that U.S. journalists had covering the conflict in Afghanistan.

BOB GARFIELD: Very well. Joel Simon, thank you very much.

JOEL SIMON: Thank you.

BOB GARFIELD: Joel Simon is deputy director of the Committee to Protect Journalists. [MUSIC]