Judging how people rate freedom of the press in their countries

Although freedom of the press seems to be suffering in various parts of the world, according to the Reporters Without Borders 2011-2012 Press Freedom Index results published earlier this year, a new Gallup poll showed that two-thirds of people worldwide say that the media are free in their countries.

Out of 1,000 people in 133 countries and areas surveyed, people’s views vary widely, ranging from a high of 97 percent in Finland to a low of 23 percent in Belarus, with a median of 65 percent of adults saying that “the media in their countries have a lot of freedom,” according to the report.

The countries with the least perceived press freedom were found in the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa, and the former Soviet Union. “Perceived press freedom was highest in developed countries in Asia, Europe, and North America. Finland ranked the highest, with 97 percent of respondents describing the media as being free,” the Huffington Post explained.

In the Americas, Haiti had the lowest percentage (51 percent), and the United Sates had the highest percentage (87 percent). Interestingly, the U.S. fell 27 spots to number 47 on the Reporters Without Borders’ 2011-2012 Press Freedom Index mentioned above. This was due to the many arrests and problems that journalists in the U.S. have dealt with during the Occupy Wall Street protests in 2011, according to the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas. According to the independent news media organization Free Press, "70 journalists have been arrested while covering Occupy protests in 12 cities around the country."

Consequently, there are “small discrepancies between what experts who make external evaluations assume, and what the people being polled think,” WebProNews pointed out, indicating that this observation has been noted by independent research organizations such as Freedom House.

A lesson learned in journalism

The University of Texas at Austin’s newspaper, The Daily Texan, has made headlines around the whole United States for publishing a controversial cartoon blaming the media for sensationalizing the Trayvon Martin case.

Martin, 17, was shot and killed on Feb. 26 by a volunteer neighborhood watch coordinator named George Zimmerman while Martin was walking to his father’s fiancée’s home in Sanford, Florida, according to CBS Miami. The incident sparked outrage throughout the nation because many people believe Zimmerman’s actions were provoked by racism, as Martin was black and was wearing a hooded sweatshirt, and because Zimmerman was not arrested after the incident, according to Reuters.

“The honorable journalism tradition of presenting thoughtful opinion and commentary, the ‘editorial,’ is under fire and with it the First Amendment promise of free speech,” CultureMap Austin Editor in Chief Kevin Benz said in a column about the newspaper’s cartoon.

At first, Stephanie Eisner, the Daily Texan cartoonist, defended herself by saying she was just trying to make a point by saying the media was being biased, according to The Daily Texan. However, she later publically apologized for being ambiguous, NPR reported. “I intended to contribute thoughtful commentary on the media coverage of the incident, however this goal fell flat,” Eisner said.

This was definitely a learning experience for the students who work at The Daily Texan. As the newspaper’s editorial adviser Doug Warren said in an editorial, “The Texan staff is learning — to do their jobs and about the impact that their work has on the members of the community they serve,” urging everyone to take a deep breath before judging the newspaper staff, the New York Daily News reported.

Study shows that news consumption has gone up thanks to mobile devices

According to a new study by the Pew Research Center, more people are now consuming news thanks to the increasing popularity and use of mobile devices, and more people are sharing news thanks to social media, although they still go to the original news source to get their news.

One of the new changes in news consumption has to do with more people using tablets to get their news (27 percent), as they have become more popular in the last year, the Canadian QMI Agency pointed out in an article, adding that “80 percent of tablet users still check the news on their laptops and desktops.”

The 2012 State of the News Media report by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism states that this does not necessarily mean that the news industry is profiting, as the technology companies are the ones taking in most of the profits. Microsoft, Google, Facebook, AOL and Yahoo! generated 68 percent of digital ad revenue in 2011, an Associated Press article explained.

The study also showed that although people do share news on social media outlets, the change in news consumption is not as dramatic as some may think. Social media outlets, such as Facebook and Twitter, “are used as supplements to news sources, not as replacements,” the technology news site ZDNet explained. “Even so, social media are an increasingly important driver of news, according to traffic data,” ZDNet added.

The fact that more people seem to be consuming news, regardless of which method they use to get them, is good news for journalists. Yes, there is a shortage of jobs in the newspaper industry, as a recent report showed. But, people’s want and interest for news consumption still exists, and it is the journalists who can provide quality journalism to the public; it just might have to be through different mediums.

"If you want to be a journalist, think online"

Once again, the future of journalism might seem grim to some after the Newspaper Association of America (NAA) published its annual newspaper advertising statistics for 2011. The report shows that the print advertising revenue went down 9.2 percent, but that digital advertising revenue grew 6.8 percent. The total advertising revenue went down by 7.3 percent. In fact, in a recent report from The Huffington Post, the newspaper industry was number one on a list called “America’s Ten Disappearing Industries.”

What this means for journalists is that, “If you want to be a journalist, think online,” as Matt Rosoff from Business Insider said. Rosoff pointed out a LinkedIn article that explains that newspapers have shed the most jobs since 2007 than any other industry in the United States.

Robert Niles from the Online Journalism Review also explained that the future of journalism education then should be to fulfill “the growing need for instruction and guidance in profitable and community-building communication in the growing online publishing media”. However, he said that unfortunately, most universities are not doing this.

As the numbers and the data show, what this means is that the focus for journalists should be in the digital world. As Indiana University’s journalism professor Hans Peter Ibold explained, “The recent social media revolution is already fueling advances in journalism and better ideas about how reporters can engage and accurately inform citizens.”

As I have stated before, there is no need to be alarmed about the future of journalism. Journalists just need to adapt to the changes in the field and take advantage of the new opportunities to communicate with the public. If interested in how to learn more about journalists taking advantage of using social media, here are a few helpful links:

Twitter for Journalists

The Journalist’s Guide to Facebook

Twitter and Social Media Resources for Journalists

Confessions of a Social Media Editor

10 Social Media Tips for Bloggers

Six Tips for Journalists on Using Facebook for Reporting

The Deterioration of Freedom of the Press in Ecuador

During the month of February 2012, Ecuador’s stance on freedom of expression and freedom of the press has catastrophically gone from bad to worse. The country’s president, Rafael Correa, has become journalists’ worst enemy and his actions against freedom of expression have provoked indignation across the globe.

On Feb. 4, 2012, Correa’s government passed a law prohibiting journalists from reporting on any activity regarding the upcoming elections. The law, which was introduced by Correa himself, states that the media should abstain from promoting positive or negative messages about candidates or political topics, directly or indirectly. “Media cannot be political actors," Correa said, according to BBC News. 

Just a few days later, two Ecuadorian journalists were ordered to pay $2 million for moral damages to the president, reported Reporters Without Borders. The journalists, Juan Carlos Calderón and Christian Zurita, had written a book called “El Gran Hermano” (The Big Brother), about the supposed contracts that Fabricio Correa, brother to the president, had with the state, which the president knew about, according to the Associated Press. The journalists will also have to pay $100,000 for the president’s legal fees, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. 

Even more inconceivable is Correa’s latest victory in his path to the deterioration of freedom of expression in Ecuador. On Feb. 15, 2012, president Correa once again won a legal case against the newspaper El Universo for alleged libel, according to the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas. Three newspaper owners and an ex-columnist were sentenced to three years in prison and a payment of $40 million for damages, according to Reuters.

These incidents have caused outrage at a global scale, especially among defenders of freedom of expression and of the press, such as newspapers and journalistic organizations. The Brazilian newspaper O Globo published an editorial called “Correa massacres freedom of expression;” the Colombian newspaper El Tiempo called Correa the “Attila of the press.” Reporters Without Borders said that the “El Gran Hermano” sentence was "politically arbitrary and inopportune." The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) called it "disproportionate" and a "hard blow to investigative reporting." And the list goes on.

Nevertheless, although Correa pardoned those involved in the El Universo case and the “El Gran Hermano” case on Feb. 27, as the New York Times reported, the Ecuadorian president continues to attack the press. On Feb. 29, Correa gave a speech during his visit to Peru calling all Latin Americans to “rebel against the abuse of the dictatorship” of the press, the news agency Efe reported. Correa's battle against the media does not seem to be coming to an end any time soon, which is unfortunately damaging Ecuadorians’ right to freedom of expression, and which deteriorates the level of democracy that exists in Ecuador.