A mind of their own: it's vital in democracies that the media be independent from government; it is the watchdog of the people. Isn't it also important that the media be independent of business in order to be a watchdog over its activities? Of course, both government and business do their best to control what and how the media report; that's why there's so much work for spin-doctors. (Media - Independence).

Totalitarian governments work hard to shut down the voice of an independent media; they don't want a version of the truth other than theirs in circulation. An example of this is going on right now in Russia, where there is a concerted attack by the government on the independence of the media. In April 2001, a state-controlled monopoly took over NTV, the country's main independent television channel. Then, the opposition Sevodynya (Today) newspaper was shut down, and the respected Itogi (Results) newsmagazine was taken over. It's estimated that 80% to 90% of Russia's television channels and major newspapers are controlled by federal or regional authorities. Meanwhile, the government continues to clamp down on investigative reporting, harassing and intimidating the press. But, President Vladimir Putin's dislike for freedom of the press won't stop the flow of information to anyone with a connection to the Internet or a good radio. As an article in The Economist points out, "Russians' thirst for information, and the modern means for slaking it, are too strong to let the country slide all the way back to the tyrannical past."

The situation is pretty grim in many parts of the world. Back in 1994 IPI Report said the former Soviet republic of Tajikistan "could be considered the worst place on Earth to be a journalist." The magazine explained that 26 reporters had been killed in the Central Asian country since 1992. Torn by violence between Islamic opposition groups and the Russian-backed government, television and radio were under strict state control.

Murder is a grisly way of silencing people, but it works. It's estimated that about 115 journalists were killed around the world in 1994, up from a total of 74 in 1993. Governments were behind some of the slayings, but the International Press Institute (IPI) reported that many were killed by other groups, sometimes the political opposition. Whoever is responsible, killing is a highly effective means of censorship: about 200 journalists have left Algeria, where 15 others were killed in 1994.

The same year 37 journalists were killed in Rwanda. Reports in 1997 informed us that journalists were frequently arrested and beaten in Nigeria and newspapers were banned and seized. Again, many journalists fled the country.

In 1997, hundreds of journalists in dozens of countries were threatened, beaten, kidnapped, attacked, and harassed, according to World Press Review. Newspapers, radio stations, TV broadcasters, and magazines were censored, shut down, or heavily fined. By the end of the year, the Committee to Protect Journalists calculated that at least 129 journalists were in prison in 24 countries, and at least 26 journalists were murdered in 14 countries in retribution for their work.

Things looked somewhat better in 1998 when only 19 journalists were killed, but the following year, the number nearly doubled to 36. They were killed in Europe, Asia, and the Americas, as well as Africa.

Many who are not killed are abducted and savagely beaten. Jineth Bedoya, a Colombian reporter, is one such person. Her attackers descended on her in May 2000 because they didn't like her coverage of paramilitary activities, according to a report in The Globe and Mail. It's a country where rebel groups are battling right-wing paramilitaries as well as the government. And it's a country that's in the midst of a civil war with the highest kidnapping rate in the world and bombs in the streets. It's next to impossible for journalists to navigate their way around the wreckage and many of them don't make it. During the 1990s, 44 Colombian journalists were killed and another 33 kidnapped. In 2000, Ms. Bedoya, who reports on public security issues for the daily El Espectador, received the International Press Freedom Award sponsored by Canadian Journalists for Free Expression. The group also honoured Iranian journalist Akbar Ganji in absentia (he was in prison in Tehran). Mr. Ganji, a prominent critic of the Iranian regime, implicated senior political figures in the 1998 murders of a group of reformist intellectuals and writers, and exposed the workings of government death squads. In April 2000, he was arrested and charged with threatening national security and disseminating propaganda.

As recently as June 2001, two top editors at a newspaper known for challenging Chinese media controls (Southern Weekend) were fired, according to a source who spoke only on condition of anonymity to an Associated Press reporter. Qian Gang, deputy editor-in-chief, and Chang Ping, the front-page news editor were forced out for their aggressive reporting on sensitive topics and other journalists were told to avoid controversial issues.

While the Communist Party is still in control in China, the Internet has given the country more freedom. When the Internet was first allowed into China in 1995, a powerful Ministry of Information Industry was created to regulate Chinese access to the Internet, and the Ministry of State Security was assigned to monitor local use of the Internet. The plan was to funnel all service through government servers, which blocked access to Western news sites, Chinese dissident sites, Taiwan newspapers, and other "objectionable" material. But not all international sites were blocked and "unofficial" news is circulating all over the country.

In the many countries that forbid freedom of expression, the courts have shut down free-speaking newspapers and imprisoned courageous journalists. As Ian Stewart wrote in The Globe and Mail in July 2000, truth and information often come at a high price. But the former foreign correspondent said some stories are worth taking risks for and Sierra Leone in West Africa, where he once worked, is among them. "Many Sierra Leonean reporters who have been killed over the years decided the brutality taking place in that West African country was too much to ignore," he writes. "They paid with their lives so that the world might know. For that, we and the people of Sierra Leone are in their debt."

SUGGESTED ACTIVITIES:

1. Journalist Sue Careless wrote an article in The Globe and Mail in August 2000 about her arrest while covering a demonstration in front of the Scott abortion clinic in Toronto. Section 2(b) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the freedom of journalists, writers, and photographers to peacefully and legally report on news events. Yet, Ms. Careless outlines a number of incidents involving the arrest of photographers on assignment at demonstrations. She writes that there can be no freedom of the press if police officers are allowed to ignore it, and Canadian journalists must be protected from police harassment. Discuss what you think the role of police should be at public demonstrations, and whether or not they should have the right to search news media offices. Note: The Globe and Mail, the CBC, CTV, Global, ONTV and CITY TV challenged that right after police seized film footage of a violent June 2000 demonstration protesting against the growing number of homeless and poverty-stricken people in Ontario. In court, lawyers argued that the press and broadcasters cannot be used as an instrument of law enforcement without losing a portion of their impartiality and credibility, but the media lost their case.

2. Do a book review of Trust Us, We're Experts! by John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton.

FACT FILE

A decade ago, dozens of countries - the Soviet Union, all of Eastern Europe, much of Africa, parts of Asia - had no journalists, only state-supplied propagandists.

According to Leonard R. Sussman, a senior scholar at the research group Freedom House in New York City in 1995, 67 nations (about 36%) have a free press, 31% have a press that is not free, and the remainder fall somewhere in between.

In 1998, there were about 130,000 reporters in the United States and about 150,000 PR consultants.

Helen Thomas, the flamboyant 79-year-old American journalist described as the dean of the White House press corps, quit her job at United Press International news agency when it was bought by a company controlled by the Unification Church in 2000: a former colleague said Ms. Thomas was concerned about the "integrity" of her stories under the new owner.

It's been estimated that, in 1998, at least $10 billion was spent on public relations in the U.S.

Websites

Canadian Journalists for Free Expression http://www.cjfe.org/

International Press Institute http://www.freemedia.at/

Pen Canada - http://www. pencanada.ca/

Project Censored - http:// www.projectcensored.org/ intro.htm

RELATED ARTICLE: Russian puff.

Under the heading "Bought in the Act" The Economist reported that much of the business coverage in the Russian press is simply company hand-outs. But it's tough to prove that people are paid to print the puff. Nevertheless, one PR firm tried by putting together a fictitious press release and seeing what it cost to have it written up as a story. The release, about a new electronics store supposedly opening in central Moscow, was sent to 21 publications. One published the release free, without checking it out. Four asked for more information and did not run the story. Three said they would run it as an ad. But nearly two-thirds of the publications (13) offered to run it as an article for fees ranging from around $135 at a government-backed magazine to more than $2,000 in the official government newspaper, which printed the story on its back page. Journalists were not amused. One editor claimed that it doesn't matter to readers whether articles are paid for or not. Others apologized but said that honesty was unprofitable and blamed it on public relations firms.

RELATED ARTICLE: Freedom, or not.

On a more mundane level, compared with the repressed media in many countries, a Winnipeg Free Press restaurant critic was banned from the city's eateries because of her negative comments about the food they were serving. But the issue still was freedom of the press and the paper stood behind its critic.

Such blatant censorship is rare in the Western world, but we're influenced in more subtle ways: public relations firms hire expert writers, many of whom are former journalists and political aides. It's their job to place a rosy hue on the exploits of their customers: they're able to manipulate the media through press releases and can influence public attitudes toward just about anything. And, they have the know-how to package commercial messages as news rather than advertisements. As one observer put it, the process forms "an intricate web of corporate and government connections." According to one report, some academics have estimated that 40% of all "news" comes from print and electronic press releases. Information can come from services that look like news services - such as the American PR Newswire and the Canada NewsWire - but they're paid by private interests and corporations.

Large PR firms lobby politicians for their clients winning them favour in high places. That can translate into goodies such as freedom from government regulations, which often are against good public policy. For PR experts, it's not difficult to undermine public interest groups, such as those concerned with environmental issues or animal rights for example. One tactic is to infiltrate such groups with employees posing as concerned citizens who report back to their corporate clients with valuable strategic information. They can create the impression of public support for, or opposition to, government policies that can influence political decisions in the interests of their clients; hiring people to write letters to newspapers, for example, supporting (or not) government projects, thereby diluting concern over important public issues.

PR firms and politicians can form interesting connections: according to one report it's not uncommon for the clients of PR firms to include government ministers as well as some of the companies these ministers regulate. The PR firms argue there's no conflict in such arrangements because of client confidentiality agreements.

Then there's John Stauber, the publisher of PR Watch!, described in Utne Reader in May-June 2001 as "a feisty newsletter keeping track of corporate disinformation strategies." Mr. Stauber is also executive director of the Center for Media and Democracy. He is an expert on the power of propaganda. In his book, Trust Us, We're Experts!, co-authored with Sheldon Rampton, he reveals the secrets behind the so-called "independent experts" that industries hire to manipulate information in the media.

There are other crusaders out there also exposing corporate secrets and criticizing government policy. Toronto-based This Magazine and Winnipeg's Canadian Dimension magazine, for example both recently received recognition from Project Censored, a 25-year-old media watchdog, which operates out of California's Sonoma State University. The magazines were cited for exposing corporate plans to privatize Bolivia's water supply, an issue that Project Censored judges saw as the most underreported story of 2000.