Reporters Without Borders (RSF) published its ninth annual World Press Freedom Index today, with a mixed bag of what secretary-general Jean François Julliard calls “welcome surprises” and “sombre realities”.
Six countries, all in Europe, share the top spot this year — Finland, Iceland, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland — described as the “engines of press freedom”. But over half of the European Union’s member states lie outside the top 20, with some significantly lower entries, such as Romania in 52nd place and Greece and Bulgaria tied at 70th. The report expresses grave concerns that the EU will lose its status as world leader on human rights issues if so many of its members continue to fall down the rankings.
The edges of Europe fared particularly badly this year; Ukraine (131st) and Turkey (138th) have fallen to “historically low” rankings, and despite a rise of 13 places, Russia remains in the worst 25 per cent of countries at 140th. It ranks lower than Zimbabwe, which continues to make steady — albeit fragile — progress, rising to 123rd.
At the very bottom of the table lie Eritrea, North Korea and Turkmenistan, as they have done since the index first began in 2002. Along with Yemen, China, Sudan, Syria, Burma and Iran, they makes up the group of worst offenders, characterised by “persecution of the media” and a “complete lack of news and information”. RSF says it is getting harder and harder to distinguish between these lowest ten countries, who continue to deteriorate. There are particular fears about the situation for journalists in Burma ahead of next month’s parliamentary election.
Another country creating cause for concern in the run-up to elections is Azerbaijan, falling six places to 152nd. Index on Censorship recently joined other organisations in a visit to Baku to assess the health of the country’s media. You can read about their findings in a joint mission report, ‘Free Expression under Attack: Azerbaijan’s Deteriorating Media Environment’, launching this Thursday, 28 October, 6.30 pm, at the Free Word Centre. Belarus, another country on which Index is campaigning, languishes at 154th.
It is worth noting, though, that relative press freedom rankings can only tell so much. Cuba, for example, has risen out of the bottom 20 countries for the first time, partly thanks to its release of 14 journalists and 22 activists this summer, but journalists still face censorship and repression “on a daily basis”. Similarly, countries such as South Korea and Gabon have climbed more than 20 places, only to return to the position they held before a particularly bad 2009. It seems, then, that the struggle for press freedom across the world must continue to be a “battle of vigilance”.
The video-sharing website has wrongly barred Iranians from its documentary experiment, Life in a Day, because of US sanctions. Negar Esfandiary reports (more…)
So, last week, for those of you who weren’t paying attention, I was cross with the BBC. Yes, cross, I tell you, as they filled the news with World Cup non-stories, and issued vacuous non-statements about North Korea. But this week, it’s time to level things up. Because they also did a good thing last week, which was to broadcast an episode of Family Guy, Partial Terms of Endearment, on BBC3. This episode wasn’t screened at all in the US, because it is about Lois having an abortion. She becomes a surrogate mother for a friend, but the friend then dies in a car crash. So Lois heads to the Family Planning Centre with her husband, Peter, where she makes a reasoned and thoughtful decision to have an abortion. Peter’s all in favour of an abortion, too, until he is shown a pro-life video by protestors outside the centre.
This is all — in case I have made it sound rather joyless — incredibly funny. The video that Peter watches is a heroic pastiche: “Science,” proclaims the spokesman, “has proven that within hours of conception, a human foetus has started a college fund and has already made your first mother’s day card out of macaroni and glitter”. At this point, it cuts to a picture of a foetus holding a handmade card which reads, “Mom, don’t kill me! I wuv you.” Sorry to declare myself sole arbiter of good and bad jokes, but that’s a corker. Peter is converted to the pro-life cause. “If God wanted us to kill babies,” he tells Lois, “he would have made them all Chinese girls”.
It’s no surprise this episode hasn’t aired in the States, although it is expected to be included in the DVD release of the series. But it hammers home the fact that abortions used to happen in popular culture, just as it happens in life. No longer: films like Knocked Up, Waitress, and Juno all deal with unwanted pregnancy, and all tie themselves into knots trying to explain why smart women wouldn’t even consider an abortion (either in Knocked Up, where Katherine Heigl is a career woman who despises the guy with whom she has an ill-advised one-night stand, or in Waitress, where Keri Russell is married to a wife-beating lout whom she loathes). It’s a huge narrative flaw that Ellen Page’s sassy, fearless, pro-choice teen, Juno, would be so overwhelmed by the mention of baby fingernails that she would cancel her abortion immediately, and have a child she didn’t want.
It seems that we can’t be expected to like fictional women if they do what factual women do all the time: terminate an unwanted pregnancy. But things weren’t always this way; Dirty Dancing has an abortion storyline, and it’s regarded as a classic chick-flick. Pop culture has simply become more judgemental — and less realistic — as pro-lifers have become more vociferous.
So three cheers to Family Guy, for having the courage of many of our convictions. And an extra cheer for the BBC, for letting us watch it.
So, not to pretend to be one of those girls who likes football, I hate it. Stupid, boring, annoying football where the scoreline can be exactly the same at the end as it was at the start and people can then describe that as “a good game”. And stupid world-cup football is my least favourite kind, walking its weird patriotism/xenophobia tightrope. I know it’s my hang-up, but when I was a child, England flags were scary. Even Union flags were scary — they mean fascism, skinheads, and aggression. And although I am glad that the flags have been rehabilitated and now sit perkily on windows and dog-collars (actual dog collars. Not the ones vicars wear), they still give me the slight heebs.
But mainly, I resent the disruption to my routine. I like a routine above all things. And in the list of things I dislike above all things, change (of almost any kind) is right up there. So when the BBC abandon the 1 o’clock news to show a football match, I feel a bit like Director General Mark Thompson has come round to my house, punched me in the face, moved my things around and then fucked off. And I don’t like it. Sure, I can watch it on News 24 (which I persist in calling News 24, even though the BBC treacherously changed its name some time ago), but it isn’t the same. Louisa Preston doesn’t come on and do the local news. Peter Cockroft doesn’t appear with my local weather. I hate that.
And I thought my irritation with the BBC’s crush on the World Cup had reached its pinnacle last week, with the vuvuzela story. They ran a piece for five minutes on the 6 o’clock news about the racket these horns make. A racket which apparently makes it impossible for our brave fans to sing their chants. This news story could be distilled into precisely one sentence: People making annoying noise prevent other people from making different annoying noise.
The catchphrase of this world cup, at least in my house is, “That’s not news!” It’s yelled with some fury at the television, so I guess I do have something in common with football fans after all.
But now the BBC has genuinely raised its annoying-ness game, running a piece on North Korea’s role in the world cup. They excitedly report today that this week’s match against Brazil was broadcast live in North Korea, unlike their first match which was shown after a 12-hour delay. To be honest, if I were Kim Jong-il (a fantasy I like to indulge in briefly each day), I would just tell them we’d won. What’s the point in controlling all the state’s media if you don’t pretend to have won everything from the World Cup to Eurovision? He’s missed a trick there.
But that isn’t why the BBC were being annoying. The BBC were being annoying because they reported that the fact that the match was being broadcast live was a big risk to the North Korean authorities, because people might wave placards and protest against them. The report goes on to remind us of how grouchy people were about the path the Olympic torch took in 2008, and how much protesting went on. It then mentions that no placards or protests happened at the North Korea match.
“It is interesting,” proclaims their website, “to ponder why this might be”. The author then spends precisely no time pondering why this might be. Were protests organised but stopped? Have the South African authorities prevented something? Has FIFA? I mean, look how cross they got with the orange Dutch beer ladies. Do people who care about human rights not care about football? Or did they try and fail? Could they just not get the tickets, or are placards removed at the entrance to the stadium?
I don’t know, and if you read the BBC’s website, nor will you. But don’t worry, they’ve wrapped up the story neatly: “Perhaps those who claim that sporting events of this kind can break down barriers and cultural divides have a point.”
And it’s at this point that I am now having to shout at the internet as well as at the telly. That’s right, BBC. A sure sign of the breaking down of barriers and cultural divides is a lack of protests about North Korea. There were no protests because no one wants to protest about them. Hey, I guess instead of worrying about those imprisoned or killed in this secret state, we’ve just learned to get along. Ebony, ivory, and so on. I think this may be the stupidest sentence I’ve read all year, and am officially cross. I’m off to watch the tennis instead.
The video-sharing website has wrongly barred Iranians from its documentary experiment, Life in a Day, because of US sanctions. Negar Esfandiary reports