Reporters Without Borders (AKA Reporters sans frontiere) at http://www.rsf.org have published their 2006 Annual Report on press freedom around the world.
As the TL report is short, I will reprint it here (and hope I don’t get my freedom to re-publish it infringed)
East-Timor – Annual report 2007
Riots and political tension did not make the job of the press any easier. Several publications were threatened by supporters or opponents of the former prime minister, Mari Alkatiri. Despite this violence, the young country continues to enjoy a favourable atmosphere for press freedom.
A military rebellion against the government triggered a serious deterioration in working conditions for journalists from May 2006. Several publications had to work in secret for fear of reprisals. The Timor Post and Suara Timor Lorosae had to halt publication for several days under pressure from supporters of Mari Alkatiri, who was forced to resign at the end of June. The former head of government had openly criticised and called for a boycott of independent media like Suara Timor Lorosae.
Journalists were physically attacked on several occasions. On 10 June, an Associated Press reporter was manhandled and briefly detained by Australian peace-keeping soldiers. On 12 June, a gang of youths stoned journalists from the Timor Post. Political militants ransacked the offices of the leading radio and television channel TVTL in Dili on 29 June demanding the suspension of news programmes. Finally, on 9 November an Agence France-Presse correspondent was hit in the face by a stone thrown by a demonstrator.
As for me, I am not press and apart from a couple of ranters last year accusing me of being a patsy for the Australian presence here, I have received no heavying. In the interests of open-ness, yes I did delete their rants. I am the author, this is my blog, no-one pays me to do this – so there !
Actually I do not have a lot of sympathy for some reporters who were here in May/June/July last year. They only came to see blood, fire and rampaging and then were gone. They were racing around trying to go anywhere to see some of this. When I saw one TV reporter doing a story while walking amongst a group of running youths, I can easily see how a security force would get cheesed off with this.
Oops, there goes the media career.
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“Actually I do not have a lot of sympathy for some reporters who were here in May/June/July last year. They only came to see blood, fire and rampaging and then were gone. They were racing around trying to go anywhere to see some of this. When I saw one TV reporter doing a story while walking amongst a group of running youths, I can easily see how a security force would get cheesed off with this.”
Of course this was what they came to see. They were doing their job, like it or not. ‘Happy’ pictures do not sell newspapers or TV news. It is unfortunate but a truism. You would no doubt have noticed that the majority of reporters/press here were Australian. This was because it was an ‘our boys’ story rather than an international event. Once the situation had calmed down somewhat and the heavyish weapons had been hidden/lost/confiscated or whatever the majority of the Aussie media went on to other stories leaving only skeleton staff here. At the moment the 2 major international news agencies, AP and Reuters still have staff here which most press organisations subscribe to. Of course, in April we will see some of the same faces returning for the election.
Most of us that live here, I’m sure, would love to see our wonderful East Timor covered more extensively in the international media, but, it’s not gonna happen!
Thank God for the WWW, then people like yourself can let the world know what is happening here.
Keep up the good work!
I try to represent common sense.
My point is not that they should not try and do their job but that they can’t really expect to insert themselves in a potentially dangerous situation while a military style operation is going on and not expect someone to say “get the hell out of here” for their own protection.
I think tossing oneself into the fray while such an operation is going on and saying “I am being repressed” and having it reported as an example of suppression of press freedom is a bit rich.
I don’t think the military under these circumstances go in to protect everyone but allow the press an exception.
I assume the facile “I am being repressed” remark refers to the incident when the AP reporter was manhandled and detained. I was there when that happened and so were many Malai ie: white, journalists. The AP reporter is East Timorese. None of us Malai were manhandled or detained.
The AP reporter is a respected journalist and has worked in East Timor for years for the Associated Press. He takes that sort of thing in his stride as do most journalists who cover conflict. No journalist with even minimum experience of that sort of situation would bother to report it as ‘news’. It comes with the territory.
RSF is an independant body. It is NOT a news organisation. RSF ask journalists about incidents that have happened to them. What they care to do with the answers is up to them.
If you trawl AP wires you will find that the journalist in question did not report it as news and neither did his news organisation.
Yes, it was straight from Monty Python. I am glad that now we all know. I apologise for my naivete. This is a classic case of what happens when the full story is not available in the first place. I mistakenly assumed the AP reporter was a foreigner (malae) as I do not know how AP operates. Next time, I will try not to unconsciously fill in gaps and let commenters do that.
No worries.
I’m still enjoying the blog. And I love the fact that Alkatiri may sue the ‘Four Corners’ programme.
I have no doubt we are moving into opera season here, hopefully more comic than tragic.