“Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a
thousand bayonets,” fretted Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor of France, as he summed
up the informative powers of an independent press. All dictators and tyrants in
history have feared the enlightening powers of the independent press because,
as Napoleon explained, “A journalist is a grumbler, a censurer, a giver of
advice, a regent of sovereigns and a tutor of nations.” It was the fact of
“tutoring nations” — teaching, informing, enlightening and empowering the
people with knowledge– that was Napoleon’s greatest fears of a free press. He
understood the power of the press to effectively countercheck his tyrannical rule, and he used
censorship relentlessly to muzzle it.
He harassed, jailed and persecuted journalists
for criticizing his use of a vast network of spies that penetrated every nook
and cranny of French society, exposing his military failures, condemning his
indiscriminate massacres of unarmed citizen protesters in the streets and for
killing, jailing and persecuting large numbers of his political opponents. Total
control of the media remains the wicked obsession of modern
day dictators who believe that by controlling the flow of information, they can
control the hearts and minds of their citizens.
The importance of an independent free
press (media) in any society, including Ethiopia1, can hardly be
overstated. Thomas Jefferson, one of the chief architects of the American
Republic was unrestrained in extolling the virtues of a free press: “The basis
of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object
should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we
should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government,
I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. Jefferson
became singularly instrumental in the inclusion of a Bill of Rights in the U.S.
Constitution which provided for sweeping and uncompromising protections of
expressive freedoms: “Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom
of the press.” The free press is so vital to American democracy that the
government is absolutely prohibited (“no
law”) from passing laws that censor, regulate, restrict or suppress its
functions and operations.
Press freedom, along with
other expressive freedoms, is now a core value of all humanity. The U.N.
General Assembly in its very first session in 1946 adopted resolution 59 (I) which
declared: “Freedom of information is a fundamental human right and … the
touchstone of all the freedoms to which the United Nations is consecrated.” In
1948, freedom of the press became a core human right principle when the U.N. enshrined
it in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: “Everyone has
the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference, and
impart information and ideas through any media regardless of frontiers.”
This universal right is today acknowledged robustly and expansively in Article
29 of the Ethiopian Constitution:
Everyone shall
have the right to freedom of expression without
interference. This right shall
include freedom to seek, receive and
impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either
orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through other media of
his choice. Freedom of the press and mass media as well as freedom
of artistic creation is guaranteed… [and] censorship
in any form is prohibited.
In the past few years, Ethiopia has
been ranked at the bottom of the list of nations with the worst records on
press freedom. In the 2009 Freedom House’s “Press Freedom Rankings”, Ethiopia came
in at a dismal 165/195 countries. Reporters Without
Borders ranked Ethiopia
at 140/175 countries in 2009. The Committee to Protect Journalists on May 2, 2007 ranked Ethiopia as
number 1 among the “top 10 backslider” countries “worldwide where press freedom
has deteriorated the most over the last five years.” When Zenawi
ordered the jamming of Voice of America (VOA) broadcasts recently, the
International Federation of Journalists (world’s largest organization of
journalists) on April 1, 2010
vehemently denounced his actions: “We condemn jamming of broadcasts. It is
unprofessional, intolerant and flies in the face of promises that the Ethiopian
Government is committed to press freedom.”
The recent history of the
independent press in Ethiopia
is a chronicle of brutal crackdowns, arbitrary imprisonments and harassments of
local and international journalists, shuttering of newspapers and jamming of external
radio transmissions. MelesZenawi’s
regime declared an open war on the independent press in Ethiopia in
November 2005, following parliamentary elections in May of that year. He concocted
a bizarre set of excuses and justifications to decimate the country’s small but
growing independent press. He publicly alleged that the editors and reporters
of the independent newspapers were engaged in a conspiracy with the opposition parties
to overthrow the “constitutional order.” He claimed they had incited
violence and spread information that led to violence and genocidal acts. Zenawi told the Committee to Protect Journalists that “They
[independent press] went beyond their normal bias and went for the jugular.
They became part and parcel of the day-to-day preparation for the insurrection
after the elections.” But he has failed to produce a shred — a single speck —
of evidence to link the occurrence of a single piece of any published material
in the independent press to the occurrence of any violence or illegal acts in
2005 or at any other time.
Today Zenawi
uses the same unhinged logic and the same old stale, discredited and patently
absurd argument to justify jamming the VOA:
We have been convinced for many years that in many
respects, the VOA Amharic Service has copied the worst practices of radio
stations such as Radio Mille Collines of Rwanda in its
wanton disregard of minimum ethics of journalism and engaging in destabilizing
propaganda.
As usual, he has been
unable to give a single example of a VOA broadcast that even faintly resembles
the “worst practices” of the genocide-promoting radio station in Rwanda. The
best he has been able to do is point to a dubious catalogue of complaints his
regime has lodged with the VOA alleging overly critical reporting on his regime by the VOA’s
Amharic service. Criticism of policies and leaders is a standard practice of an
independent press in a democracy, but it must seem totally unnatural in
dictatorships. Regardless of the irrefutable fact that there is not a single
instance of independent press-caused violence or act of illegality, Zenawi’s regime for the past 5 years has used bogus and
absurd justifications to jail, harass and intimidate Ethiopian and foreign
journalists and close the vast majority of the independent newspapers in the country.
Why is freedom of the
press so important that it has become one of the universal benchmarks of a free
society?
Few have given a more
definitive answer to this question than James Madison, the father of the
American Constitution: “A popular government without popular information or the
means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or
a tragedy or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a
people who mean to be their own governors, must arm themselves with the power
knowledge gives.” A free and independent press serves as the eyes, ears and
mouths of citizens in any society. It plays many important roles. As a
watchdog, the independent press keeps those in power honest. Where there is a
fully functioning free press, leaders no longer become untouchable gods sitting
high on a pedestal to be worshipped, but ordinary men and women who are
accountable to their citizens for their actions and omissions; and government
institutions operate with transparency and openness. A well-functioning
independent press will toil vigorously to expose the corruption, abuse of
power, misuse and theft of taxpayer money and scandal among those exercising
power and their supporting cast of invisible power brokers, influence peddlers
and fixers.
When it informs, a free
press educates citizens on public policies, choices and decisions. Citizens are
informed on societal issues and problems, and are exposed to the range of
competing potential solutions. An informed citizenry is better positioned to
more effectively participate in public life and help shape its structure of governance and
economic development. By informing, the free media becomes the lynchpin that
connects citizens for collective action, and effective interaction with their
leaders and institutions. Without free access to information and ideas, citizens
are unable to participate meaningfully in the political life of their nation by
exercising their right to vote or by taking part in shaping the process of public
decision-making.
The free press is also plays
a vital role in equitable and
sustainable economic development as articulated by the former World Bank
president James D. Wolfensohn:
A free press is at the absolute
core of equitable development. If you cannot enfranchise poor people, if
they do not have a right to expression, if there is no searchlight on
corruption and inequitable practices, you cannot build the public consensus
needed to bring about change. A free press is not a luxury.
A society without a robust
free press is a society condemned to live in darkness. Hate, like mushrooms,
thrives in the hearts of those who live in the dark; fear grips the minds of
those trapped in the darkness of ignorance; anger becomes the light at the end
of the tunnel of darkness; corruption, like cancer, spreads in the dark corners
of state and abuse of power roils the people in the dark vortex of despair
and hopelessness. Without a vigorous free
press in Ethiopia
today, it is darkness at noon!
The functions of the independent
press must be viewed in a broader context, and not only as a source of negative
criticism. Leaders benefit from heeding the independent press and correcting their
mistakes when it is pointed out to them. They can use the press to communicate
with the people they govern and become more accountable, transparent and responsive
to their citizens. Governance is not a private affair. When kings ruled by
divine right, they claimed to be accountable only to divine authority.
Thankfully, those days are long gone. At the dawn of the 21st
Century, those who lead and govern must accountable to the people; but a
citizenry intentionally kept ignorant does not have the means to demand
accountability. That is why an independent media is a vital civic organ in society.
President John Kennedy captured the essential role of a vigorous press when he
said that the media’s role is not just to entertain but more importantly “to
inform, to arouse, to reflect, to state our dangers and our opportunities, to
indicate our crises and our choices, to lead, mold educate and sometimes even
anger public opinion.”
An independent free press
is not the enemy of good government. It is its strongest ally. It is through
the press that leaders keep their fingers on the pulse of the people – learn
about what ails them, angers them, pleases them, confuses and concerns them. When
rumors and falsehoods spread and unfair criticisms are leveled, leaders have
the opportunity to answer their critics and challenge them using the
independent media itself. A government that persecutes the independent press
and remains willfully ignorant of what its citizens think
and feel, and refuses to acknowledge and redress their grievances is like the
proverbial ostrich that buries its head in the sand while a rumbling volcano
cascades behind it. An independent press is ultimately a mirror for leaders and
governments; sometimes the face in the mirror is the face of a monster.
Breaking the mirror does not make the monster an angel.
The right of the Ethiopian people
to receive and give information regardless of frontiers is their inalienableright to
have the information they need to make informed decisions about their form of government,
leaders and lives. Journalists can not be made criminals because they
speak truth to power, reveal the truth about those who wield power or because
those in power abhor the truth. Civil and criminal defamation laws can not be
excuses to censor criticism and debate concerning public issues.
For any one who truly
believes in the rule of law, it is impossible to understand how any leader or
government could possibly fear public scrutiny and criticism in the press. A
real leader is willing, able and ready to stand up and defend his/her policies,
action and omissions in full public view. A real leader understands that
criticism is a natural part of political and public life. The chief of state
like the chef must get out of the “state kitchen” if he can not stand the heat.
Freedom of the press and
media in general in Ethiopia
is not about protecting the rights of newspapers, editors, journalists,
reporters or foreign correspondents and radio broadcasters. It is fundamentally
about the constitutional and internationally-guaranteed legal rights of every
Ethiopian citizen “to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of
all kinds, regardless of frontiers and without interference, either
orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through other media of
his choice and without censorship in any form.” It is emphatically the duty of every Ethiopian who believes in the rule
of law and freedom of expression to help deliver “information and ideas of all
kinds” to Ethiopians “regardless of frontiers.” Let us all as Ethiopians join
hands and resolve in our hearts and minds to become a thousand points of light
shining brightly like the stars on the curtain of darkness that has enveloped Ethiopia today.
