On 3 May the United Nations, and journalists around the world, celebrate World Press Freedom Day. The day is celebrated every year to commemorate the fundamental principles of media freedom, to highlight long-standing and emerging threats to that freedom and to pay tribute to journalists and activists around the world who have risked their safety to advance the public’s access to news and information.
The last point is perhaps the most poignant. As we have seen recently here in Bolivia, and in the dangerous front line reporting by journalists in Libya, journalists suffer extraordinary pressure and, sometimes, pay the price of their lives for doing what they believe – bringing up to date and transparent information to the public, information that others would often prefer to be hidden.
Freedom of expression is fundamental to building and sustaining democracy. Citizens must be allowed to discuss and debate issues freely, to challenge their governments and hold them to account, and to make informed decisions. As we have seen in the Middle East, governments need to respond to legitimate aspirations with reform and not repression. Encouraging an open and effective press and media serves to improve the environment for long term social, political and economic stability. A free and independent media may sometimes be awkward for governments. But that does not make journalists, bloggers and media organisations and individuals any less necessary to the strength of a free society.
Foreign Office Minister for human rights policy Jeremy Browne recorded a message for World Press Freedom Day 2011