MAJOR RADIO STATIONS CONCERNED
ABOUT THE CHALLENGES
By Stephen Kaufman
USINFO Staff Writer
18-January 2008
A joint statement expressing
concern over global media freedom was issued November 30, 2007, by the United
Kingdom’s BBC World Service, Germany’s
Deutsche Welle (DW), Radio France Internationale (RFI), Radio Netherlands
Worldwide (RNW) and the Voice of America (VOA).
“We do think, indeed, that it has
been declining over the last years,” said Radio Netherlands Worldwide
Director-General Jan Hoek, the current chair of the group of five broadcasters,
noting gloomy reports on press freedom from independent organizations such as
Reporters Without Borders and Freedom House.
“It’s one of the basic human
rights, but it’s really being under threat more and more.”
The statement calls attention both
to abuses against journalists and interference with broadcasts, including
restrictions against allowing programs to be distributed by local affiliates.
“If you look at what has been
happening over the past couple of years, you can see that reporters, be it on
staff or stringers or correspondents or whatever, have been abducted, expelled,
or even worse, killed,” Hoek said. Employees of all five broadcasters have been
affected, he added.
Among the events of 2007, he mentioned the kidnapping
of the BBC’s Alan Johnston, who was held captive in Gaza
by a radical Palestinian group for 114 days, as well as RFI journalists killed
in Cote D’Ivoire
and Congo, and
translators from RNW and DW killed in Iraq
and Afghanistan,
respectively.
Speaking for VOA, Gary Thatcher, an
associate director at the International Broadcasting Bureau, said one of its
stringer reporters was killed in Kyrgyzstan
in October 2007 after refusing to bow to threats against his reporting.
Also, Parnaz Azima, a reporter for VOA-affiliate Radio Farda, was detained in Iran
between January and September in 2007.
Thatcher said virtually every
international broadcaster has encountered the same challenges to staff
members.
“Some of them have not been publicized because they just don’t
want to put other staff members or family members at risk.”
“Everyone has seen an increase in
two things: one is the degree of difficulty in getting access to specific areas
to get the stories out, and then the problem is unique to international broadcasters,
and that is to get the story back in [to the country],” he said.
In recent years, international
broadcasters have adapted their transmissions away from traditional shortwave
frequencies in favor of using local affiliates and television stations because
fewer people are listening to shortwave transmissions worldwide.
The
practice has saved money and improved the quality and availability of
reception, but also has placed the broadcasters more at the mercy of the
institutions and governments in the host countries.
Deliberate interference or jamming
of signals by some governments still is an issue and has expanded to blocking
Internet access.
Most recently, local rebroadcasts in some countries are
being restricted or discontinued, often because of government licensing and
regulatory processes.
VOA has seen a precipitous drop in
the number of its local affiliates in Russia,
from 78 at the beginning of 2005 to 11 in January 2008.
Thatcher said the
affiliates were being told by government authorities that their station’s
license to carry foreign programs did not apply to VOA or its sister station,
Radio Free Europe (RFE).
In November 2007, the Pakistani
government shut down the country’s domestic broadcasters and allowed them back
on the air only under emergency regulations that prohibit foreign
broadcasts. Likewise, Venezuela’s
president, Hugo Chavez, has suppressed independent media in his country,
including shutting down RCTV, a Venezuelan cable television network, in May
2007.
“I think it’s fair to say
[broadcasters] have never encountered anything as sustained or as threatening
to their very ability to cover and distribute the news as this kind of effort
that they’re facing now,” Thatcher said.
“There are places in the world that
are deliberately interfering with our broadcasts. There are places in the
world where we believe we can pull resources and get better results, and
absolutely we’re continuing to look at ways that we can draw closer together in
common cause to overcome these problems,” he said.
In an average week, the five
broadcasters reach an audience of hundreds of millions in 60 languages through
radio, television and the Internet. Although they often compete for the
same audience, the erosion of press freedom has drawn them together to combat
the shared challenge.
Director-General Hoek said that
despite any competition, the broadcasters fundamentally share the same mission
to promote press freedom and the availability of independent information.
“The overriding goal is bigger than all of us,” he said.
