Journalists

Abstract

As commentators and critics on current events, journalists in repressive or unstable societies often place themselves knowingly at risk. Many have shown great courage in pursuing their stories in the midst of civil conflict or under threat or intimidation from political opponents who fear the full force of publicity about unsavoury truths for which they may be responsible. As with other public professions, journalists are exposed to attack both for what they say and for what they represent. Many journalists are persecuted as a result of working for politically-oriented newspapers, or providing what are construed as political comments by the authorities; but it is often the mere fact of exercising their professional duties, of bearing unwelcome witness to events, that lands the journalist in trouble. The IPI Annual Review of World Press Freedom (1977) reports that ‘1976 was a depressing year. Restraints on the media and the persecution of journalists throughout the world intensified to an unprecedented degree’.

IPI protested against the ten-year sentence imposed in Taiwan on Huang Hua, managing editor of the Taiwan Political Review. Huang, aged 37, who had been in detention since July, was sentenced to ten years imprisonment by a military tribunal on 8 October on charges of allegedly using the magazine to propagate rebellious throughts and attempting to instigate an armed revellion.

IPI Report, December 1976

Of over 1,000 journalists accredited in 1973 by the Colegio de Periodistas (Chilean Journalists Association), only 300 are practising their profession under the present regime. Some 400 are unemployed or have other jobs. About 300 have had to leave the country.

AI, Journalists and Writers in Prison, 1977.