| Guyana has been noted for the first time in the World Press Freedom Index prepared by ‘Reporters Without Borders, ranking 88th because of tensions between President Bharrat Jagdeo and the media.The report, which measures press freedom around the world, noted that democracies embroiled in wars outside their own territory, such as the United States or Israel, fall further in the ranking every year while several emerging countries, especially in Africa and the Caribbean, give better and better guarantees for media freedom.The 2008 edition of the World Press Freedom Index was released worldwide yesterday.Jamaica (21st) and Trinidad and Tobago (27th) are joined in the top 30 this year by Suriname (26th), which has also been included in the index for the first time.Guyana was also included in the report for the first time, and this country’s low position “is due to tension between President Bharrat Jagdeo’s government and the press, and to the state’s monopoly of radio broadcasting,” the report stated.President Bharrat Jagdeo has been heavily criticised by the local and regional media for mainly two incidents this year.First, the Guyana Press Association condemned the four-month suspension of CNS Channel Six from the airwaves. The bi-partisan Advisory Committee on Broadcasting (ACB), which was set up by the government and the opposition to monitor how the broadcast media complies with their licenses,Jerseys From China, had accepted the apology of CNS owner C.N. Sharma for the initial broadcast of a programme in which a woman made a threat on the life of the President.The President, as Minister of Information, acted in the wake of repeated broadcasts of the programme with no move to edit the offending remarks and moved to ban the station from broadcasting for four months.The President was also condemned by local, regional and international media groups when he banned Capitol News reporter Gordon Moseley from the Presidential Complex and State House after Moseley wrote a letter defending himself and his newscast from comments the President had made about a report the newscast carried of a meeting between the President and Guyanese in Antigua.The government owns and controls the radio stations in the country, namely 98.1 FM,China NFL Jerseys, the Voice of Guyana,Wholesale NBA Jerseys, and Radio Roraima,Cheap Jerseys For Sale, which operate out of the National Communications Network.In the Americas, the report has recognised that there are signs of opening by Raúl Castro’s government in Cuba (last in the Americas at 169th), but they have not changed the human rights situation.Twenty-three dissident journalists are still in prison and press freedom is still non-existent.The index’s most spectacular fall is Bolivia (115th), which plummeted 47 places.Its institutional and political crisis has exacerbated the polarisation between state and privately owned media and exposed journalists to violence because of their presumed links with the government or opposition. One state media employee was killed.Unlike Hugo Chávez’s government in Venezuela (113th), Evo Morales’s Government has tried to defuse the media war by repeatedly offering to talk with the opposition, Reporters Without Borders stated.The report’s general finding is that it is not economic prosperity but peace that guarantees press freedom.Another conclusion from the index – in which the bottom three rungs are again occupied by the “infernal trio” of Turkmenistan (171st), North Korea (172nd) and Eritrea (173rd) – is that the international community’s conduct towards authoritarian regimes such as Cuba (169th) and China (167th) is not effective enough to yield results.“The post-9/11 world is now clearly drawn,” Reporters Without Borders said. “Destabilised and on the defensive, the leading democracies are gradually eroding the space for freedoms.“The economically most powerful dictatorships arrogantly proclaim their authoritarianism, exploiting the international community’s divisions and the ravages of the wars carried out in the name of the fight against terrorism.“Religious and political taboos are taking greater hold by the year in countries that used to be advancing down the road of freedom.”“The world’s closed countries,Wholesale China Jerseys, governed by the worst press freedom predators, continue to muzzle their media at will,Wholesale Jerseys Free Shipping, with complete impunity, while organisations such as the UN lose all authority over their members,” Reporters Without Borders added.“In contrast with this generalised decline, there are economically weak countries that nonetheless guarantee their population the right to disagree with the government and to say so publicly.”Iceland was ranked the No.1 country which guarantees press freedom. |
