March 14, 2002

Click here for more Global Q&A

You need Windows Media Player to listen to Global Q & A.

Transcript Follows:
Hello, and welcome to Global Q&A. Today we are speaking with Ms. Ann Cooper, executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, a non-profit organization based in New York City. Ms. Cooper has reported extensively from Russia and Africa, and was a bureau chief and correspondent for National Public Radio for 9 years. She also served as a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, where she worked on refugee policy. Thanks for being with us today Ms. Cooper.

AC: You are very welcome.

Maybe we can begin by talking a little bit about your organization, which was created in 1981, and its basic mission? How does a group like CPJ work protect journalists?

AC: CPJ documents attacks on journalists and abuses of press freedom all over the world. We document close to 600 cases each year. This is everything from journalists who were killed because of their work, or put in prison, or violently attacked or harassed in some other way, state censorship. Whatever it may b e that curbs journalists in the effort to try to do their job, which is report the news independently.

This has been a very difficult period for reporters around the world. In the past year alone, more than 37 journalists have been killed in the line of duty, and the recent kidnapping and murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl has brought the issue of journalists' safety to the forefront. Are reporters lives at risk more now than they were, say, one year ago?

AC: Certainly the conflict in Afghanistan and throughout that region has put many journalists at risk. There are hundreds, if not thousands of journalists who have gone to the region over the past six months to cover that story, and it has been a very dangerous one. Any time there is a conflict like that, we tend to see an increase in the number of journalists killed in that year.

How have working conditions changed then, since this period has begun?

AC: For those who are covering Afghanistan and some other parts of that region, it has been a very, very dangerous time. Access to the conflict has been extremely limited. It has been difficult for journalists to get out and see what is going, to see the battles. There have been very tight restrictions on their ability to travel with the U.S. military, and so they have been setting off on their own, or perhaps traveling in a convoy with other journalists. But going into areas where it has not always been certain where the front line is, who controls the area, and if there is fighting going on. It has been very hard for journalists to assess the risks as they have attempted to cover what is going on in this conflict.

I wanted to ask you a little bit about the Daniel Pearl situation. We have seen reporters used in hostage situations before. How do you think this event is going to affect the methods used by those reporting around the world?

AC: It certainly has given everybody a terrible case of the jitters. It has prompted long, soul-searching discussion in newsrooms that have deployed journalists to the region. I think everybody has agreed to redouble their efforts to assess the risks. Editors want to make sure that journalists know that they should not be going into life threatening situations, that they are not expected to do that. No editor expects them to risk their life for a story. I think we'll see some more caution on the part of news organizations and journalists out in the field who are covering these stories, but the bottom line is that the story needs to be covered. This is a vital story, and the world needs to know what is going on there, so people are not completely going to pull away. Throughout recent history there certainly have been other violent conflicts where journalists have assessed risk and said, 'It is simply to dangerous to remain here.' Beirut was a situation like that. Somalia there were certainly periods where the press corps left because it was simply too dangerous. But things would calm down and they would go back, because the story needs to be covered.

Even as recently as yesterday we have heard threats from some of these organizations against journalists, particularly in Pakistan. Do you think journalists feel threatened by these remarks?

AC: I think they certainly feel threatened and I think they will leave any area where they think the risk is simply too great, but I think there is a constant assessment process going on, and the fact that they leave one place today or this week doesn't mean they won't go back there if the security situation seems to have improved.

Before September 11, many news outlets were hesitant to send reporters overseas because of the high costs it requires. Do you think that networks and news organizations, especially in the U.S., now realize the importance of providing international coverage?

AC: They certainly have realized the importance of covering this story -- the September 11 attacks and the aftermath, the war in Afghanistan and more generally the issue of terrorism and the U.S. led effort to fight it. Whether that is going to translate into a long-term change in policy and an increase in spending on foreign coverage all over the world, I think that is much more iffy. Many news organizations already were not paying a great deal of attention to Africa. Now that they have had to spend so much money to cover this conflict, they have even less money, possibly, to set up bureau's in Africa, or to try to cover that entire continent in a meaningful way.

How does one make your "Top Ten Enemies of the Press list?" Who currently resides at or near or at the top?

AC: Among the people near the top of the list are Robert Mugabe. This is a list that we announce on May 3 every year, which is world press freedom day, so the list that you would have been looking at is from May 3 2001. Robert Mugabe was high on the list, and I have a feeling he will be high on the list again this year, it looks like. Cuba and China are also perennials on the list, and certainly nothing has improved there this year to help them get themselves removed. President Kuchma of Ukraine. Ukraine has had a terrible press freedom situation for several years, as has Belarus, which wasn't on the list last year. There is never enough room on the list for everybody. A country like Belarus may get cut off not because things have improved there, but because of their new press freedom emergencies that we want to highlight. One of the things we are trying to do with that list is showing that press freedom abuses to happen all over the world. For example, you might be able to come up with five very strong contenders for worst enemies of the press just in Asia, but you want to make sure that people understand that abuses also go on in Africa, in Europe, the Middle East and in the Americas as well.

The State Department released its annual human rights report last week. Does the report take into account the treatment of journalists and the press?

AC: Yes. Press freedom is certainly one of the top issues that the State Department looks at in evaluating all of these countries.

Do you think they have given ample coverage to that issue?

AC: Well, I have not frankly looked at the report in great detail. I heard that there were some changes from last year. There are some people who think that there was a bit of soft-peddling in the case of some individual countries, but as I said, I have not looked at it in detail. I do know that press freedom continues to be one of the important criteria that they are looking at.

The U.S. media has come under a lot of scrutiny for its coverage of the war on terror. While the U.S. administration has not been as forthcoming with information as some would like, others accuse the media of taking the party line all too easily. What are your thoughts on that?

AC: Well, that is out there. I am not a media critic. I am looking at press freedom issues and we have looked at some actions or comments by the U.S. government that we thought went against the grain of press freedom. For example, the State Department last f all telling the Voice of America that it should not be broadcasting an interview with Mullah Omar, the head of the Taliban. VOA went ahead and broadcast that, but the State Department has no business telling VOA what it should or should not be broadcasting. To that extent we do get involved in monitoring and commenting. In terms of how the media itself is covering, that is certainly a widespread criticism and is something that is heard particularly in other countries. But it is not an issue that we deal with directly.

This week, a documentary called 9-11 was aired that showed the courageous efforts of two journalists who filmed the events of that day in Manhattan. Who are some of the other heroic journalists reporting around the world whose efforts we should be aware of?

AC: Well, I think there are heroic journalists working everywhere, in every part of the world. At the moment, some of the most heroic journalists that we are trying to defend are in Zimbabwe, where the government of Robert Mugabe has imprisoned them, tortured them, there have been two bomb attacks on the biggest independent newspaper in the country the Daily News. A very repressive press law was passed not very long before Zimbabwe's elections this month's. Mugabe apparently has been elected and we are very, very concerned about what will happen to people like Jeff Nyrota, the editor of the Daily News, and all of his staff and the other independent journalists there. We are concerned about journalists in China, a number of who took the government at their word that the press should be looking at issues of government corruption and trying to expose them. Some journalists wrote about and did investigative reporting about corruption among local officials and ended up in jail for their trouble, despite the government saying that now it was an ok subject to be writing about. Just this month seven Colombian journalists received in the mail funeral notices from somebody who doesn't like the investigative work they have been doing on drug trafficking. Colombia is a country where 30 something journalists have been killed over the past decade, so anybody who gets such a death threat there has to be terribly concerned. Some of those journalists have had to go underground, and some may go into exile for a period of time. It is really quite an act of courage just to be a journalist on a day to day basis in a place like Colombia.

Ms. Cooper, thank you so much for your time today. We really appreciate it here at the Foreign Policy Association.

AC: You are very welcome.