This Reuters article reports on the deaths of four journalists in Eritrea. Reporters without Borders, a global non-profit that monitors press freedom around the world, confirmed that at least three, possibly four, reporters died in the country after being imprisoned for years. It is difficult to verify these claims because Eritrea is classified as "not free" according to the Press Freedom Index. Eritrea has no independent media and has a history of harassing non-compliant and foreign journalists. Eritrea has a poor track record as far as human rights are concerned, as well, but consistently denies these accusations and says that these rights groups are "working for foreign intelligence services" in order to undermine the Eritrean government.
A nationalized or tightly restricted press is often key to authoritarian regimes. Neopatrimonial leaders do not want information to be widely available to their citizens, and they do not want them to be able to communicate easily--Zaire's Mobutu displayed this tendency when he destroyed miles and miles of roads. As we discussed in class on Friday, one of the factors that has contributed to the violent reaction in Muslim countries to the controversial Mohammed video was that they assumed that it was from a state-backed source because that is how they receive information in their own countries. Freedom of the press is critical to democracy because it allows for debate and criticism of the ruling party or of the leader. Neopatrimonialist regimes do not tolerate dissent, so they forbid this freedom. Clearly, Eritrea's poor ratings from a variety of international organizations and a "morgue" verdict for their leader imply that they have a long way to go before democracy (and journalists) have a shot at survival.
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| Eritrean Leader according to the African Leadership Index (2012) |
CIA World Factbook: Eritrea
--https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/er.html
African Leadership Index 2012
I agree with Haley, a free press is crucial to a successful democracy. However, as the post cites, with the potential outcome of death, it’s no surprise that a free press struggles in Sub-Saharan Africa. I referred to the African Leadership Index 2012 again to see whether or not the countries that received a grade of A mentioned freedom of the press improvements. I was surprised that improvements in freedom of the press were not once mentioned in a country synopsis of the A graded countries. In comparison, the Index does mention press backsliding. In the country of Angola, which received a grade of Morgue, one of the failures of the year was the “reports of media intimidation.” The intimidation was so bad that the Committee to Protect journalists called on Angolan authorities to protect journalists critical of the government, according to the index synopsis. The African Leadership Index gave Ghana an A grade in 2012. Even though the synopsis did not mention this, I learned from ghanaweb.com that Ghana in 2010 was ranked first on the continent of Africa in terms of freedom of the press. It’s no surprise that an A ranked country would have a thriving free press. The comparison of Angola and Ghana demonstrate that the importance of a free press is essential to a lucrative democracy.
ReplyDeleteHaley-
ReplyDeleteNice use of incorporating graphics and discussion from class in analyzing a country that we do not get to spend a lot of time on. I especially like your focus on the freedom of press, which is not a topic that many scholars readily consider when focusing on democracy.