The Fall Of Certain Strongmen Is Benefitting Press Freedom In Africa
By Andrew Christian April 22, 2020
Press freedom in Africa isn’t what it is in other parts of the world. However, in the last few years, the situation appears to be getting better. In a continent where the larger percent of leaders have been in power for unusually long periods, the change in political hands is benefitting journalism...
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Re: The Fall Of Certain Strongmen Is Benefitting Press Freedom In Africa
Fall Of Strongmen
In the region, Eritrea is the worst country in terms of press freedom, a position the East African country has held for a couple of years. Out of the 180 countries considered in the 2020 Press Freedom Index, the country comes in 178th place, only before Turkmenistan and North Korea.
Eritrea is the worst jailer of journalists in sub-Saharan Africa, with at least 16 journalists behind bars as of December 2018. 74-year-old President Isaias Afwerki has had much to do with this suppression, having ruled the country since 1993.
The new ranking finds that while press freedom remains highly fragile in sub-Saharan Africa, the fall of several dictators and authoritarian governments in recent years....
Re: The Fall Of Certain Strongmen Is Benefitting Press Freedom In Africa
John Swinton (1829–1901) was a Scottish-American journalist, newspaper publisher, and orator. Although he arguably gained his greatest influence as the chief editorial writer of The New York Times during the decade of the 1860s, Swinton is best remembered as the namesake of John Swinton's Paper, one of the most prominent American labor newspapers of the 1880s. Swinton would also serve as chief editorialist of the New York Sun during two stints totaling more than a dozen years.
Swinton was the guest of honour at a banquet given him by the leaders of his craft. Someone who knew neither the press nor Swinton offered a toast to the independent press. Swinton outraged his colleagues by replying:
(Source: Labor's Untold Story, by Richard O. Boyer and Herbert M. Morais, published by United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America, NY, 1955/1979.)There is no such thing, at this date of the world's history, in America, as an independent press. You know it and I know it.
There is not one of you who dares to write your honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinion out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things, and any of you who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job. If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my paper, before twenty-four hours my occupation would be gone.
The business of the journalists is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread. You know it and I know it, and what folly is this toasting an independent press?
We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes.
Re: The Fall Of Certain Strongmen Is Benefitting Press Freedom In Africa
Operation Mockingbird:
In the early years of the Cold War, efforts were made by the governments of both the United States and the Soviet Union to use media companies to influence public opinion internationally. In a 1977 Rolling Stone magazine article, "The CIA and the Media," reporter Carl Bernstein wrote that by 1953, CIA Director Allen Dulles oversaw the media network, which had major influence over 25 newspapers and wire agencies. Its usual modus operandi was to place reports, developed from CIA-provided intelligence, with cooperating or unwitting reporters. Those reports would be repeated or cited by the recipient reporters and would then, in turn, be cited throughout the media wire services. These networks were run by people with well-known liberal but pro-American-big-business and anti-Soviet views, such as William S. Paley (CBS), Henry Luce (Time and Life), Arthur Hays Sulzberger (The New York Times), Alfred Friendly (managing editor of The Washington Post), Jerry O'Leary (The Washington Star), Hal Hendrix (Miami News), Barry Bingham, Sr. (Louisville Courier-Journal), James S. Copley (Copley News Services) and Joseph Harrison (The Christian Science Monitor).
Reporter Deborah Davis claimed in her 1979 biography of Katharine Graham, owner of The Washington Post, (Katharine the Great), that the CIA ran an "Operation Mockingbird" during this time. Davis claimed that the International Organization of Journalists that was created as a communist front organization
In the early years of the Cold War, efforts were made by the governments of both the United States and the Soviet Union to use media companies to influence public opinion internationally. In a 1977 Rolling Stone magazine article, "The CIA and the Media," reporter Carl Bernstein wrote that by 1953, CIA Director Allen Dulles oversaw the media network, which had major influence over 25 newspapers and wire agencies. Its usual modus operandi was to place reports, developed from CIA-provided intelligence, with cooperating or unwitting reporters. Those reports would be repeated or cited by the recipient reporters and would then, in turn, be cited throughout the media wire services. These networks were run by people with well-known liberal but pro-American-big-business and anti-Soviet views, such as William S. Paley (CBS), Henry Luce (Time and Life), Arthur Hays Sulzberger (The New York Times), Alfred Friendly (managing editor of The Washington Post), Jerry O'Leary (The Washington Star), Hal Hendrix (Miami News), Barry Bingham, Sr. (Louisville Courier-Journal), James S. Copley (Copley News Services) and Joseph Harrison (The Christian Science Monitor).
Reporter Deborah Davis claimed in her 1979 biography of Katharine Graham, owner of The Washington Post, (Katharine the Great), that the CIA ran an "Operation Mockingbird" during this time. Davis claimed that the International Organization of Journalists that was created as a communist front organization
Davis claimed that Frank Wisner, director of the Office of Policy Coordination (a covert operations unit created in 1948 by the United States National Security Council) had created Operation Mockingbird in response to the International Organization of Journalists, recruiting Phil Graham from The Washington Post to run the project within the industry. According to Davis,received money from Moscow and controlled reporters on every major newspaper in Europe, disseminating stories that promoted the Communist cause.
Davis claimed that after Cord Meyer joined the CIA in 1951, he became Operation Mockingbird's "principal operative."By the early 1950s, Wisner 'owned' respected members of The New York Times, Newsweek, CBS and other communications vehicles.