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John Rash: The real news war

By John Rash

Last update: November 29, 2009 - 10:11 AM

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THE REAL NEWS WAR

Journalists in the crossfire

Fox News vs. MSNBC. The Drudge Report vs. the Huffington Post. Rush Limbaugh vs. Air America. These and other verbal skirmishes between news organizations often become big news in America.

In the process, however, they often drown out the real war against the press taking place in all corners of the globe. The latest occurred in the Philippines, where 18 Filipino journalists were among the 57 people massacred Monday in election violence.

Just hours after confirming that grisly news, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) held its annual International Press Freedom Awards ceremony. The host, CNN's Christiane Amanpour, appealed to the audience to dig deep for the CPJ's global assistance fund, with some money slated for the families of the slain Filipino reporters.

Then the CPJ honored four journalists who, like their Filipino counterparts, often put their lives on the line in order to report the news.

One of the recipients, Mustafa Haji Abdinur, the Somali correspondent for Agence France-Presse and editor-in-chief of Radio Simba, an independent station, lamented that six journalists have already been killed in his country this year. Worldwide, CPJ had documented that even before the news from the Phillippines, 35 journalists have been killed this year, and 762 since the organization began tracking in 1992. And most murders of reporters are done with impunity; CPJ estimates that 88 percent are unsolved.

Other worthy honorees included Tunisia's Naziha Rejiba, editor of the independent online news journal Kalima, whose harassment by the government included repeated police interrogations, phone monitoring and constant surveillance.

The other two award winners, Eynulla Fatullayev of Azerbaijan and J.S. Tissainayagam of Sri Lanka, could not accept. They're in prison, just like 279 reporters worldwide, according to Reporters Without Borders, another international press advocacy organization.

Somalia's Abdinur, in putting the war against the press in perspective, unwittingly confirmed how trivial America's "press wars" are when he said, "Friends, if a journalist is killed, the news is also killed. We need your support now more than ever. Please don't forget us."

JOHN RASH

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