“Safe to Speak?” No.
There is no free press. It is difficult to get objective opinion and analysis. Maybe this is where blogs take over from traditional media in that you can read native writers on the ground, who understand a region, a culture, the language and can report on it.
World Press Freedom Day on May 3 celebrates the fundamental principles of press freedom; to evaluate press freedom around the world, to defend the media from attacks on their independence and to pay tribute to journalists who lost their lives in the exercise of their profession.
May 3 was proclaimed World Press Freedom Day at the UN General Assembly in 1993 following a Recommendation by African journalists in Namibia and adopted, as the Windhoek Declaration, at the 26th session of UNESCO’s General Conference in 1991.
WPFD informs of violations of press freedom — a reminder that in dozens of countries around the world, publications are censored, fined, suspended and closed down, while journalists, editors and publishers are harassed, attacked, detained and even murdered, UNESCO writes.
WPFD is also a day of remembrance for those journalists who lost their lives in the exercise of their profession.
via ‘Safe to Speak’ For Journalists in the Middle East? Not Yet.
MEP, Middle East Perspectives from Dubai to Rabat.
(Pic: www.toonpool.com)
When I read abt the kiling of Najib Azzam I immediately remembered that I know the one who thought that was going to share her life with some other journalist killed… and was asking myself if he was also accountable for the author:
I’m not going to take a side on whose deads are more valuable. Lifes are equally valuable, and so, this said … I understand her point.
But equally I understand my friend’s point. It’s exactly equal and deserves equal treatment and recognition.
Al-Must'arib (the vocational Mossarab) 