Guard press freedom, media execs warn
PRESS FREEDOM advocates have called for global leaders and citizens to stand up for the right of journalists to hold state actors accountable and push back at attempts by rogue groups in harming members of the media. Today is celebrated as World Press Freedom Day. President of the Inter-American Press Association, María Elvira Domínguez, urged lobbyists to remember that journalists in many parts of the world, including Venezuela, Mexico, Brazil, and Colombia, operate under the threat of death daily.
“What concerns us is that in almost all the countries in our hemisphere, there exist campaigns of stigmatisation, raised by democratic leaders who seek to reduce credibility of the press in order to govern with greater comfort, such as has been happening in Brazil, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, and the United States,” said Elvira.
“We cannot be calm when freedom of the press and of expression are besieged by violent discussions that are made on social media, as well as by polarisation, by the biased dissemination of information that seeks to twist elections through false news disseminated by armies of bots and cyber militants, actions that have already been incorporated as normal mechanisms in electoral processes,” she added.
Christopher Barnes, president of the Media Association Jamaica, yesterday praised the tradition of respect for media in Jamaica, which ranks eighth on
the world press freedom index published by Reporters Without Borders, but cautioned as well that the press was under fire in other nations.
“While we cautiously celebrate the continuation of our relatively high degree of press freedom in Jamaica and commend our media professionals for their yeoman efforts in this vein, their colleagues in countries around us ... continue to be persecuted through atrocities up to, and including, murder with impunity by those who wield great power,” said Barnes.
“We have a duty as citizens to ensure that we hold to account those who have the ability to create the environment where these perpetrators can thrive.”
And George Davis, president of the Press Association of Jamaica, called for journalists here to be alert to legislative and other incursions that might infringe on media rights.
“We would be callow as a unit if the criticism of the things we lack as journalists or even the things that demand improvement in the media landscape were to cause us to merely acknowledge that Jamaica is indeed one of the safest places to practise journalism,” said Davis.
“We vow to do what is necessary to protect the freedom enjoyed even as we keep a keen eye on what the Government will eventually do with the controversial Data Protection Act.”