GLOBAL FREEDOM
UNDER PRESSURE
O
nly 40% of the world’s
population lives in
a country with freedom of
expression. For the rest, the right
to be informed is often denied.
Index on Censorship has
supported free expression
for over 43 years and given
space to stories which were
banned in other countries.
Editor Rachael Jolley said:
“Where there is resistance,
journalists play a key role in
covering facts. Governments
attack journalists for what
they are trying to report,
and they would rather the
public not hear.”
She also explained that
government propaganda is on
the rise. “It is easy to put out
words, ideas and myths that
they would like us to use and
believe. There are people who
write for us who face incredible
pressure to not do the
journalism that they are doing.
Those people are incredibly
brave.”
This year, the Index on
Censorship
Freedom
of
Expression award went to
journalist and Iranian refugee
Behrouz
Boochani,
34.
Behrouz had co-founded a
cultural and heritage magazine
which was raided by the Iranian
police in 2013, leading to the
arrest of 11 of his colleagues.
He travelled on a boat to
Australia where he wanted to
claim asylum, but was relocated
to a refugee processing centre
in Papua New Guinea less
than one month after arriving.
Writing under a pseudonym,
he has been documenting the
horror of life in detention since
then, and has been recognised
as a human rights defender by
the UN for his contribution
towards reporting human rights
abuses happening in the centre.
19
10
9
7
5
JOURNALISTS
TARGETED OR
KILLED IN 2016
Syria 19
Afghanistan 10
Mexico 9
Iraq 7
Yemen 5
(MIS)REPRESENTING THE
MAJORITY?
GENDER INEQUALITY AND THE LACK OF DIVERSITY IN UK PRESS
G
THE UK
PRESS IS:
65% MALE
94% WHITE
ender inequality came under
srutiny last month when
94 men and 20 women were
shortlisted for the British Press
Awards. Despite journalism being
known as a male-dominated
profession, today there are more
female journalists working than
ever before. However, there is still
a major discrepency between the
salaries of men and women. With
65% more women joining the
profession in the last three years,
nearly half of female journalists
earn £2,400 or less per month -
compared to just a third of male
journalists.
For journalists from minority
backgrounds, the profession can
be extremely difficult. Many are
discriminated against for their
religion, with research having
shown that just 0.4% of British
journalists are Muslim, compared
to nearly 5% of the UK population
being Muslim.
“People from minority ethnic
and religious backgrounds
have trouble breaking into the
journalism industry. We are
trying to push diversity and
encourage organisations to pick
from this pool of young talent
from all diverse backgrounds
and try to change the way the
industry hires. It seems very sad
to encourage organisations to
think diversely, because the world
is diverse and we should not need
to push organisations to do that.”
The Guardian commissioned
research into 70 million readers’
comments left on its site since 2006.
It revealed that amongst the 10
most verbally abused journalists,
eight were women (four white,
four non-white, one Muslim and
one Jewish) and two were black.
However, the majority of Guardian
writers are white men. Feminism
and rape were amongst the topics
that attracted the most abusive
comments.
We hope that protection for
journalists and diversity and gender
India Doris, Project Coordinator inequality will be taken seriously.
at the Media Trust charity, which If we seek social change we cannot
along with Weber Shandiwick forget those whose everyday fight
have launched an internship is to discover the truth and inform
programme to foster diversity in the public about what in the world
the creative industry, said:
needs to be changed.
June 2017 | Actus | 19