Freedom of press is guaranteed only to those who own one

Press freedom in our times

The times we are all living are though and difficult to even express with words. But words are something that stay on paper most of the times and that testify what has been, what is and what is going to be. Writing helps freeing one’s mind of thoughts, when it gets hard to express them, a good exercise is to write. Today I want to talk about this: freedom and words. If I think about these two concepts put together what comes to my mind is freedom of speech and press freedom.

Since the topic is quite wide and there is not enough space or time to talk about it thoroughly, I am going to limit my analysis to the press freedom in my home country, which is Italy and I am going to compare it with press freedom in other countries worldwide too. For my analysis I am going to use certified data from the website “Reporters without borders” (link here: https://rsf.org/en/index) and the data is recent, dating from the beginning of the current year. I am considering the Global Score, which determines the index of the countries for press freedom in a global context.

Italy, Germany and North Korea

My home country is on the 58^th place worldwide, which is not a great place, seeing what the Italian Constitution says in the 21^st art. “Everyone has the right to freely express their thoughts in speech, writing and any other means of dissemination. The press cannot be subject to authorization or censorship”. Fortunately, the situation is still manageable, there have not been any events that regard censorship.  

If we take Germany into consideration, at the beginning of this year it is placed 16^th in the global ranking, which is definitely a good position. Freedom of press and freedom of expression are guaranteed and protected by the constitution in Germany as well. It is anchored in art. 5 of the Basic Law, which states: “Every person shall have the right freely to express and disseminate his opinions in speech, writing, and pictures, and to inform himself without hindrance from generally accessible sources. (…) There shall be no censorship.”

Moreover, there is a diversity of opinions and a pluralism of information and the press is not controlled by governments or parties.

On the other side, North Korea due to its regime sits on the last place, 180^th. However, the art. 67 of the North Korean Constitution protects freedom of speech and freedom of press, but when it come to practice, the press is highly controlled by the state and the government only allows speech that supports the ruling party.

Conflict between Israel and Palestine

I also believe that a recent case deserves mention in this article: The killing of the beloved and veteran Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh is the expression of cruelty and of censure that no one would expect in the 21^st century. She was shot while reporting an Israeli raid in the occupied West Bank. According to resources, the journalist was standing behind a tree and was trying to show the brutality of the Israeli occupational forces and convey Palestinian stories to the outer world. While doing that she was wearing the “press” helmet and vest. In spite of the protection, the shooter targeted her neck, which makes it even more clear that they wanted to kill her and eventually stop her from telling the truth to the world. Another Al Jazeera journalist, Ali al-Samoudi, was also wounded by a bullet in the back at the scene and afterwards he testified that there was no Palestinian military resistance and that they the Israeli army did not even ask them to leave or stop filming, they directly shot them. On Friday the 13^th thousands of mourners gathered for Abu Akleh’s funeral procession and as the casket was carried out of a Jerusalem hospital’s gates, Israeli police attacked people with batons and set off stun grenades, affirming once again violence against peace.

According to a recent Palestinian Journalism Syndicate investigation, it does find Israeli soldiers responsible for more than 50 Palestinian journalists who were killed since 2001, and the previously mentioned website “Reporters without borders” has recorded more than 144 journalists injured in the last four years.

This situation clearly shows us that we are still very far from a complete press freedom, even in democracies, where this should be a basic right.

Freedom of the press is not just important to democracy, it is democracy

Walter Cronkite