freedom of press

MediaNewsPolitics

The change of government didn’t stop the steep decline of press freedom in Canada according to Reporters Without Borders. Canada now ranks 22nd in the RWB index, four spots below last year. The international press freedom watchdog urges Trudeau to act on his vocal defense of free media.

Every year, Reporters Without Borders publishes a report on the state of press freedom in 180 countries. They base their rankings on questionnaires submitted to media professionals, lawyers and sociologists in each country, and on the number of acts of violence and abuse towards medias and journalists.

In 2015, Canada was eighth on the list. One year later, thanks to the ever-increasing hostility of the Conservative government toward the media, it had plunged to the 18th spot.

Many expected Trudeau to change this bleak course when he took office, considering how he advocated for a strong and free press during the campaign. While the government’s relations with media may appear more cordial, the Prime Minister has so far failed to live up to that expectation. Canada has slipped down four more spots, now ranking right between Samoa and the Czech Republic.

The top of the index is once again filled by Scandinavian countries, with Norway in the lead. Costa Rica follows in 6th place. At the other end of the scale, North Korea surpassed Eritrea as the very worst place in terms of press freedom. Turkmenistan and Syria are close behind.

RWB says Canada’s poor score this year is partly due to the fact that a number of journalists have been put under police surveillance in Quebec, including La Presse’s Patrick Lagacé. The organization also cited a court ordering Vice journalist Ben Makuch to hand over all communications between himself and an RCMP source as it highlights Canada’s lack of specific legal framework for journalism.

RWB also highlighted the charges brought against The Independant’s journalist Justin Brake for trespassing while he was covering the protests against the Muskrat Falls hydroelectric project in Labrador. Plus the NGO expressed disappointment at the PM’s failure to repeal C-51, which is widely considered as a huge setback for press freedom and individual rights. RWB already tried to bring all these concerns to Trudeau’s attention in an open letter written in November.

Canada is not the only country with a less than stellar performance. The US went dropped from 41st to 43rd, a relatively small slip, considering Donald Trump severely restricted media access to all kinds of information and his outright calling the press “an enemy of the american people.” It might suggest that the Obama administration’s difficult relationship with the press and war on whistleblowers might have had more far-reaching effects than it seems.

In fact, RWB maintains that press freedom is in more danger than ever, all across the world.

“We have reached the age of post-truth, propaganda, and suppression of freedoms – especially in democracies,” The report declared in its cheerful introduction. It attributes the worsening state of affair to a conjuncture characterized by the rise of strongmen and the erosion of democracies in Europe and America alike. As for Canada, RWB recommends that the government repeals C-51 and put forward concrete measures to ensure confidentiality of journalistic sources.

* Featured image from Reporters Without Borders official site

MediaNews

On Tuesday, gunmen burst into the FM 103.5 studio in San Pedro de Marcos during a live news broadcast. They shot and killed the station’s director Leonidas Martinez in his office before doing the same to journalist Luis Manuel Medina, just as he was reading the news on air. The station’s secretary, Dayana Garcia, was also injured. Mr Medina was hosting Milenio Caliente (Hot Millenium), an investigative news show.

Part of the event was livestreamed through Facebook. The video shows Luis Medina attempting to continue his program as shots can be heard in the background. Then a female voice warns “shots, shots!” before the transmission cuts off.

Three men have been arrested in relation to the attack, but no charges have been filed yet, according to Al-Jazeera and the Independant. The motive behind the attack is still unknown.

Reporters Without Borders ranks Dominican Republican as 62nd out of 179 in their 2016 World Press Freedom Index. According to RWB “Journalists who dare to tackle corruption or drug trafficking are often the victims of physical violence or even murder.”

Two years ago, Blas Olivo, the press director of the Junta Agroempresarial Dominicana, a politically active association of agribusinesses, was murdered. The crime was linked to the Latin Kings gang, though some suspected foul-play from the authorities.

NewsPolitics

Reading about President Obama’s war-mongering campaign with regards to his proposed military strikes against the Syrian government, I was shocked to see his administration make the disturbing claim that POTUS (President of the United States) reserves the right to push the button with or without a formal declaration of War by Congress.

I’m shocked, because we are not dealing with some fake cowboy dumbass that somehow fell off the turnip truck and landed in the Oval Office. Rather, Obama is, according to the biography of his own life, as well as independent accounts, a former constitutional law prof at the University of Chicago or lecturer, to be more precise (having worked as a lecturer myself, I can tell you there is a world of difference between the two in the academic world). At any rate, one would hope that as a graduate of Harvard law, he would be familiar with the US Constitution’s article 1, section 8 which clearly states that “Congress shall have the power…to declare war.”

So either Obama was the world’s worst constitutional lawyer, or he has conveniently ignored the fundamentals of US law since becoming the most powerful man in the world. I for one, am betting on the second being the case.

It’s not the first time the constitutional lawyer in him has been suppressed for the sake of politics. In fact, Obama has made a maddening habit of doing just that, when it suits his administration’s agenda, whether on the issue of fighting terrorism, violating the privacy of US citizens and foreigners, or harassing journalists.

When it comes to fighting terror, through the use of state sanctioned killing of innocents through the CIA’s devastating drone program, Obama really takes the cake. He’s actually upped the ante from the Bush years by approving a massive surge in drone attacks, mostly in Pakistan and Afghanistan. But also in Yemen, where the president made a dubious defense of the summary execution by means of hell fire missile, without trial, or any form of due process, of an American teenager who had the misfortune of being the son of known Al-Qaeda terrorist, Anwar al-Awlaki.

Consider that the Department of Justice, on the orders of the president, secretly subpoenaed the e-mails and personal phone records of Fox journalist James Rosen for his alleged involvement in leaking classified information to the public. The White House completely disregarded article 1 of the Constitution guaranteeing freedom of the press in its blatant attempts to intimidate the press with absurd charges of criminal conspiracy against members of the fourth estate.

All part and parcel of the new imperial presidency that long ago begun undermining the separation of powers intended to prevent the concentration of too much powers in the hands of one person or institution, but continues its alarming growth under President Obama who used to try and reassure the public by pointing to his background as an expert on the US Constitution.