Today is World Press Freedom Day.
As Indifferent Ignorance is a member of, if not the press then at least the media, I feel a distinct obligation to point you all towards The Independent‘s Voices In Danger campaign, which aims to publicise stories of journalists who have been persecuted for doing their job. So far this year, 356 journalists, bloggers and citizen journalists have been killed or imprisoned for their work. (Citizen journalism is what I do, but analysing the actual news, not MCR stuff).
Along with most of this site’s regular readers, I live in a society where there has recently been a lot of press coverage about, er, press coverage. Interestingly, there are calls to reduce the UK’s freedom of the press, essentially because some members of said press engaged in decidedly criminal behaviour in order to write and publish their stories… which seems to be the excuse some governments give when they arrest their journalists…
I see a circle forming, but I’m too tired to analyse what it all means, so while I have a sleep/get on with life (I’ll probably pick this up next year, or when more Leveson fallout happens), you can all enjoy this nice map detailing press freedom.
One wonders about the goings-on in Eritrea…
Oh, and you can play guess the country’s press freedom index, with bonus points for spelling and/or correctly identifying the country’s position on the map. It’s all good Pointless practice…
Francesca's Thoughts 