2nd May 2013 Harare, Zimbabwe
On April 1, 2007, I was captured by the police and dragged to the Harare Central Police Station’s notorious Law and Order section. I was pushed into a stuffy room and ordered to sit on a dirty, green carpet. Behind the desk was a lick-spittle man – tall, dark, thin and stern-faced. On the neat Mahogany desk […]
2nd May 2013 London, UK
Ambassador Tom Fletcher and visiting Minister for the Middle East Alistair Burt delivered a video message from Beirut marking World Press Freedom Day.
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2nd May 2013 Kingstown, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
My team of prosecutors in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines will meet in Kingstown later today to announce new guidelines to ensure transparency and equal access to information for the media about criminal procedures. Prosecutors and journalists will launch the new ‘Prosecution Media Protocol’, a first for the Caribbean, which sets the ground rules for […]
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2nd May 2013 Dodoma, Tanzania
I grew up surrounded by people who had everything they required to lift themselves and their communities out of poverty. Despite this, they and their communities remained deep seated in abstract poverty. I felt that becoming a journalist would help in some way: it would make me an agent of change by bringing their stories […]
2nd May 2013 Hanoi, Vietnam
In 1988, when Dr Ha Si Phu wrote a think-piece entitled “a shared journey of the intellect” it was subsequently photocopied and passed from hand to hand by his closest associates. This piece, which exposed flaws in Marxist-Leninist theory, was well received by intellectuals and the wider public at that time. Right after that, for […]
2nd May 2013 Brasilia, Brazil
Journalists are the eyes, voice and ears of a society. When you kill a journalist you contribute to creating a blind, mute and deaf community, unable to understand the environment around it. The killing of journalists is the most severe aggression towards freedom of expression worldwide. Every person has the right to knowledge. Those who […]
2nd May 2013 London, UK
The Foreign Office’s Storify on World Press Freedom Day 2013. [View the story “World Press Freedom Day” on Storify]
15th March 2013
What links Turkey, Iceland, press freedom and Google? My recent blog “World Press Freedom Index: Turkey” was the most-read blog I have written since coming to Turkey. So I was interested to see reports recently about the balance which all countries must strike between media freedoms; genuine security concerns; and ensuring that the extent to […]
7th February 2013
This seems to be the time of year for international comparative indeces. I blogged recently about the latest statistics on press freedom. Now someone has pointed out that I didn’t cover the latest Transparency International Corruption Index, published in December. The Transparency International figures are controversial. The full name of the index is “The Corruption Perceptions […]
5th February 2013
This time last year I wrote a blog about freedom of the media in Ukraine reporting on the latest press freedom index released by the international media watchdog Reporters Without Borders. So I was intrigued to see Reporters without Borders publish their 2013 World Press Freedom Index recently. Since I arrived in Turkey a few months ago, Turkish journalists […]