Press freedom declining around the world: study

WASHINGTON — Press freedom declined around the world last year, deteriorating for the first time in every region, according to a study released by Freedom House. China's media environment remained "bleak", says a study released by media rights group Freedom House The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), meanwhile, unveiled its list of "10 worst countries to be a blogger," naming Myanmar, Iran, Syria, Cuba, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam, Tunisia, China, Turkmenistan and Egypt to its "dishonor roll." Out of the 195 countries and territories covered in the Freedom House study, 70, or 36 percent, were rated "free," 61 (31 percent), were rated "partly free" and 64 (33 percent) were rated "not free." Freedom House, which is funded by the US government and private groups and has been conducting an annual study of press freedom since 1980, said that 72 countries were rated free the previous year. It said that while press freedom had declined in 2008 for the seventh year in a row, last year marked the first time it had deteriorated in every region. "The journalism profession today is up against the ropes and fighting to stay alive, as pressures from governments, other powerful actors and the global economic crisis take an enormous toll," executive director Jennifer Windsor said. Freedom House said gains in South Asia and Africa were "overshadowed by a campaign of intimidation targeting independent media, particularly in the former Soviet Union and the Middle East and North Africa." It said Israel, Italy and Hong Kong slipped from free to partly free status in 2008. Among the worst-rated states were Belarus, China, Cuba, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Iran, Laos, Libya, Myanmar, North Korea, the Palestinian territories, Rwanda and Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Zimbabwe. In Asia, Cambodia fell to not free status because of increased violence against journalists, while Hong Kong slipped to partly free as Beijing exerted growing influence over the media. China's media environment remained "bleak" while media in Taiwan faced assault and growing government pressure. "China should have had a better record in 2008 and upheld its promise to ensure press freedom during the Olympics, but instead it chose to remain the world's largest repressor of media freedom," said Karin Deutsch Karlekar, managing editor of the study. South Asia saw improvement in Bangladesh, the Maldives and Pakistan while Sri Lanka and Afghanistan suffered setbacks. Myanmar also got poor marks from the CPJ. "With a military government that severely restricts Internet access and imprisons people for years for posting critical material, Burma is the worst place in the world to be a blogger," it said. Freedom House said the biggest drop in press freedom occurred in Central and Eastern Europe with journalists murdered in Bulgaria and Croatia, assaulted in Bosnia and denied judicial protection in Russia. The Middle East and North Africa continued to have the lowest level of press freedom. Restrictions on journalists and official attempts to influence coverage during the Gaza conflict led to Israel's downgrading to partly free status. Freedom House said press freedom fell in Senegal, Madagascar, Chad, South Africa, Tanzania and others in sub-Saharan Africa while Comoros, Sierra Leone, Angola and Liberia showed improvement. It said Bolivia, Ecuador, Guatemala and Nicaragua registered major declines while Guyana regained its free rating and Haiti and Uruguay saw significant improvement. Mexico?s score dropped because of increased violence. Western Europe boasted the highest level of press freedom although Italy slipped into the partly free category with free speech limited by courts and libel laws and concerns over the concentration of media ownership. The reports from Freedom House, which was created in 1941 by Eleanor Roosevelt, wife of then US president Franklin Roosevelt, among others, and CPJ were released to coincide with World Press Freedom Day on Sunday.

Journalists and bubbles

It is the tendency of human beings to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms their previous beliefs or prejudices

Do financial journalists help inflate bubbles and then exacerbate downturns?

The traditional view is that journalists are messengers. They merely try to inform readers about how companies, economies and markets are doing.

However, a growing band of critics now say that journalists can actively aggravate business cycles, through their commentary, their choice of what news to play up and the experts they cite. This is part of a broader attempt to understand the role psychology plays in dramatic shifts in economic fortunes. Harvard University historian Niall Ferguson writes in The Ascent of Money, his history of finance, “Booms and busts are products, at root, of our emotional volatility.”

Do financial newspapers and TV channels calm or fan emotional volatility that creates booms and busts?

Do financial newspapers and television channels calm or fan such emotional volatility?

Here are two examples.

Last month in Mumbai, I attended a talk by Suresh Tendulkar, who heads the Prime Minister’s economic advisory council (EAC). The main thrust of his speech was an attempt to defend the council’s optimistic forecast for economic growth during the current fiscal year. EAC expects the Indian economy to grow at 7.1% in 2008-09, far more than private sector and multilateral forecasters anticipate.

Tendulkar repeatedly said that the Indian economy is not in as bad a state as the media made it out to be. He used the example of the recent front-page stories of job losses, reminding his audience that India’s total labour force is around 400 million and the estimates of current job losses have to be seen against this reality.

He then, in his own mild way, suggested that the media was spreading irrational pessimism. This is a complaint I have had to hear from various companies as well. One friend who works in the retail industry messaged me recently. He asked whether the way the financial media is playing up stories of job losses and wage cuts will wreck consumer confidence—and thus make the downturn worse.

The second example is from the US. Jon Stewart of The Daily Show, a satirical television programme, skewered loudmouthed CNBC anchor Jim Cramer for talking up stocks and ruining investors. Cramer’s most notorious call was to ask investors to buy Bear Stearns share just days before the investment bank tumbled into bankruptcy. “If only I had followed CNBC’s advice, I’d have a million dollars today. Provided I had started with $100 million,” quipped Stewart.

There is little doubt in my mind that financial journalists have to introspect about the role they played in inflating the bubble that has now popped. This process should include attempts to ask why they rarely questioned companies about their growing debt, quoted stock market experts who often do not give truly dispassionate advice, and sharply criticized every move by regulators at the Reserve Bank of India and the Securities and Exchange Board of India to cool down an overheated economy.

But all this still begs the question: Why do investors and consumers take blind decisions based on what they read or hear?

The link between the irrational behaviour of crowds and the irrational behaviour of financial markets is an old one. Charles Kindleberger cites one example in Manias, Panics and Crashes, his classic study of bubbles and their aftermath. This example deals with the South Sea Bubble of the early 18th century, when there was huge speculation in the shares of the South Sea Company that traded with South America. A banker bought £500 of South Sea stock in the third subscription list of August 1720. “When the rest of the world are mad, we must imitate them in some measure,” he said.

This is an old example of what economist Robert Shiller has described as attention cascades: People will believe something—that Share A will keep rising or the Currency B will keep falling —only because other people believe it. The belief keeps multiplying like a cascade.

Linked to this is what behavioural economists term confirmation bias. It is the tendency of human beings to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms their previous beliefs or prejudices. The media does have a role to play in encouraging attention cascades and confirmation biases of their audiences. But the final fault lies with the audience itself.

This is not a problem that can necessarily be solved with regulation or tougher measures such as forcing newspapers to blank out bad news during an economic crisis (as Russia has indirectly tried). The fault lies partly in journalistic practices and partly in the way human beings are hard-wired.

The way out is two stages of scepticism. First, journalists have to be sceptical about what they are told by companies and analysts. Two, readers and viewers have to treat what they read and hear from journalists with their own filter of scepticism.

Israel indicts two journalists for violating censorship

Tel Aviv, Jan 13 (DPA) Two east Jerusalem employees of a production company servicing various media outlets worldwide, including one based in Iran, were indicted in Israel Tuesday for breaking Israeli military censorship, the Ynet news site reported.Kadir Shahin, a reporter with Iranian Arabic-speaking Alalam television station, and producer Muhammad Sarhan are accused of reporting that Israeli ground troops had entered the Gaza Strip Jan 3, before the information was cleared for publication.


According to the indictment, filed in the Jerusalem District court, the two were reporting from the Israeli side of the Gaza border when they spotted Israeli forces gearing up for the ground incursion into the Strip.

Although allegedly aware the information had not been cleared by the military censor, they two began a live broadcast detailing the troops’ moves, the indictment charges.

According to the prosecution, their broadcast included information which they knew could easily find its way to viewers in Gaza, including Hamas members, with whom Israel is located in combat in the salient.

The prosecution also asked the court to remand the two in custody until the end of the legal proceedings against them, arguing that their office is based in the West Bank city of Ramallah, thus posing a risk they could try to flee if released.

Foreign correspondents working in Israel are required to sign a form agreeing to abide by military censorship regulations.

Fewer journalist killed in 208

Paris, Dec 31 : Fewer journalists were killed this year doing their jobs than in 2007 due to a big fall in the number of deaths in Iraq, a media watchdog said on Tuesday.

Sixty journalists around the world died in 2008 down from 86 in 2007, the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said in an annual report, adding that the decline in fatalities did not signal an improvement in global press freedom.

“The figures may be lower than last year’s, but this should not mask the fact that intimidation and censorship have become more widespread, including in the West,” the RSF report said.

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