Hate speech can have dangerous consequences in any society dominated by the politics of identity. During the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, for example, the state-controlled Radio Television des Milles Collines (RTLM) urged its Hutu listeners to exterminate all perceived ethnic Tutsis. RTLMÕs broadcasts were considered instrumental in instigating the slaughter of between 500,000 and one…
Kosovar journalists interviewed in Pristina this month, however, were almost unanimously in favor of press regulation. “We need rules for what is news and what is a lie,” says Baton Haxhiu, the editor of Pristina’s most respected daily, Koha Ditore. Haxhiu is voting with his feet, having recently agreed to serve on the Media Policy…
“When the bombs began falling in Yugoslavia on March 24, the seven Serb journalists who happened to be visiting our offices in New York during a tour of the United States all ran for the phones. They were worried about the families they had left behind, but they also feared for the survival of Serbia’s…
Washington, D.C., March 25 — The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) reported today in its annual worldwide study of press freedom that at least 118 journalists were in prison in 25 countries at the end of 1998, and 24 journalists in 17 countries were murdered during the year in reprisal for their reporting.
The Ethiopian government currently publishes four major newspapers and owns and controls all broadcast media. The primary challenge facing the state-run news outlets is a public perception of irrelevance and lack of objectivity. As one journalist who has worked for both the private press and the state media told CPJ, “The government press is not…
CPJ’s 1995 report surveys 101 countries The bullet-ridden wall pictured on the cover is a detail from a photograph taken in Somalia by American photojournalist Dan Eldon of Reuters. Eldon, Associated Press photojournalist Hansi Krauss, and Reuter colleagues Hosea Maina and Anthony Macharia were murdered in July 1993 by a Somali crowd angered by the…