America.gov - Telling America's Story

Journalists Share Their Thoughts

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  Walter Cronkite, United States

  "With the preponderance of news outlets today -- network and cable T.V., radio, print and the Internet -- the competition for journalists to get their story out quickly, perhaps before they are able to properly check their information and sources, is enormous and frequently causes difficultly in reporting a breaking story accurately."
  -- Walter Cronkite, broadcast journalist
  
  Cronkite, who anchored the CBS Evening News from 1962 to 1981, calls a free press "essential to democracy." Cronkite says journalists today face ever-increasing challenges to report the news fast without errors.

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  Lydia Cacho Ribeiro, Mexico

  "At times it feels really lonely as a journalist [so Press Freedom Day] becomes a good day to remember that our work has a lot of meaning ... allows us to still believe that [journalism is] a profession that's really needed to change the world."
  -- Lydia Cacho Ribeiro, freelance journalist
  
  Cacho won UNESCO's 2008 World Press Freedom Prize for her work exposing political corruption, organized crime and domestic violence despite an attempt on her life and legal battles. She says that her 18 years as a freelance journalist in Mexico have not been easy.

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  Agnes Callanard, United Kingdom

  “Censorship, including self-censorship, has resurfaced even in places where we thought it had been extinguished, and has gained new impetus in places where we believed it to be dying.”
  -- Agnes Callanard, executive director of the free-speech advocacy group Article 19.
  
  She says governments worldwide have enacted new laws or revived “old laws to combat terrorism worldwide, resulting in an increase in the use and scope of secrecy laws, and re-interpretation of freedom of information legislation with the aim of restricting access to information.”

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  Walid Al-Saqaf, Yemen

  “Never before has the issue of freedom of expression been of greater importance.”
  -- Walid Al-Saqaf, former editor in chief of the Yemen Times, the country’s largest English-language newspaper
  
  Al-Saqaf fights government restrictions on online journalism – Yemen’s Internet-targeted censorship initiative was the first of its kind in the Arab world. He says minds imprisoned by oppression are “time bombs awaiting to explode and hence freedom is not any more a luxury … but a necessity to ensure stability and peace in the long haul.”

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  Strobe Talbott, United States

  “Too often, journalists -- sometimes under pressure from editors and proprietors, who in turn feel under pressure from market forces -- forget that journalism is, or should be, regarded as a public trust and not just as a business.”
  -- Strobe Talbott, Brookings Institution president and former U.S. deputy secretary of state
  
  Talbott, also a former Time magazine correspondent, says World Press Freedom Day is “one way to call attention in all parts of the world to the importance of free media as a crucial component of a modern, successful society.”

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  Aidan White, Belgium

  “The yearning of people for the truth and context will never be satisfied so long as journalists are targeted and subject to violence and governments refuse to break the chains of media control.”
  -- Aidan White, general secretary of the Brussels-based International Federation of Journalists
  
  White says the professional journalism is being challenged by a “crisis of falling standards, undue corporate and commercial influence, and precarious social conditions.” If “press freedom is to prosper and grow,” he says, “we need to be vigilant in defense of our rights.”

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  Earl Maucker, United States

  “Those of us who believe we have credibility as journalists [are] very concerned about the proliferation” of Internet web sites “that have no credibility.”
  -- Early Maucker, editor of the Sun-Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and president of the Inter-American Press Association.
  
  Much of the news on the Internet is “not accurate or credible, which is really alarming,” Maucker says. Journalists also face the challenge of reaching people “with very different cultures and languages that is changing the readership of newspapers so dramatically.”

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  Kwame Karikari, Ghana

  “Where press freedom is suffocated, the country is either in turmoil, or popular anger and desperation are boiling up beneath the appearance of ‘stability,’ ready to explode in some upheaval or another, today or tomorrow.”
  -- Kwame Karikari, executive director of the Media Foundation for West Africa
  
  Even though crises can occur anywhere, “experience since the 1990s seems to show that in Africa the countries that guarantee relatively open and free press are those where multiparty democratic rule thrives in relative peace and stability,” he says.

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  Karin Deutsch Karlekar, United States

  A free press “plays a key role in sustaining and monitoring a healthy democracy, as well as in contributing to greater accountability, good governance, and economic development.”
  -- Karin Deutsch Karlekar, senior researcher and managing editor for Freedom House
  
  Freedom House monitors threats to media independence, primarily through its annual index, Freedom of the Press, which draws attention to countries and regions where such freedom is in jeopardy. Karlekar says the group’s 2008 findings show a sixth straight year of decline in global press freedom.

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  Robert Menard, France

  "There are two main challenges for journalists these days. One is to keep speaking truth to power. To approach it close enough to cover it, but ... to be able to resist the charm offensive of the political and economic powers. The other one is not to give up to a sensationalism that seduces the public and tempts the profitable businesses that media companies try to be."
  -- Robert Menard, secretary-general of Reporters Without Borders
  
  Menard says the world community must single out those countries that do not respect Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

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  Koïchiro Matsuura, United Nations

  On World Press Freedom Day 2008, UNESCO “pays tribute to the courage and professionalism of the many journalists and media professionals killed and wounded while carrying out their professional activities.”
  -- Koïchiro Matsuura, UNESCO director general
  
  Matsuura says press freedom and freedom of information “are the founding principles for good governance, development and peace” and adds that they “feed into the wider development objective of empowering people by giving people the information that can help them gain control over their own lives.”

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