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UN / PRESS FREEDOM WRAP
STORY: UN / PRESS FREEDOM WRAP
TRT: 02:02
SOURCE: UNSOM /UNMISS
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH /SOMALI /NATS
DATELINE: 3 MAY 2016, MOGADISHU, SOMALIA / JUBA, SOUTH SUDAN
3 MAY 2016, MOGADISHU, SOMALIA
1. Various shots, Somali journalists and UNSOM officials at the round table
2. SOUNDBITE (English) Ismail Sheikh Khalif, Director, Star FM:
“The access to information is very limited, very complicated. If you are going to have an interview with the public, if there is a riot for example and you go to the police to give information to cover that event, most people are not willing to talk to you and give you information about those they are protesting against.”
3. Wide shot, participants
4. SOUNDBITE (Somali) Mohamed Ahmed Abdullahi, TV Producer, Al Jazeera:
“There is bound to be a lot of competition and as such what you report may be misunderstood and perceived as biased. This may trigger accusations of bias against the journalist because the law is not clear”.
5. Wide shot, panel
3 MAY 2016, JUBA, SOUTH SUDAN
6. Wide shot, press freedom banner on a wall
7. Wide shot, audience
8. SOUNDBITE (English) Salah Khaled, Representative to South Sudan, UNESCO:
“I call on the new government to work on improving the media environment as a priority and the media should be taken as your key partner in stabilizing the country on all fronts.”
9. Cutaway, audience
10. SOUNDBITE: (English) Eugene Owusu, Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary General for South Sudan:
“And for South Sudan its government and its people the opportunity to optimize the fruits of this county’s hard won independence will not be fully achieved if liberty and freedom do not also extend to the media.”
11. Cutaway, audience
This year’s World Press Freedom Day, celebrated across the globe every 3 May, highlights the links between press freedom, a culture of openness and the right to freedom of information, and sustainable development in the digital age.
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is holding an event in Helsinki, Fnland to examine the questions from three different perspectives: freedom of information as a fundamental freedom and as a human right, protecting press freedom from censorship and surveillance overreach; and ensuring safety for journalism online and offline.
In Somalia, in a roundtable discussion moderated by a spokesperson Joseph Contreras United Nations Mission in Somalia (UNSOM), the journalists spoke of the many challenges they face in their day-to-day work.
The journalists who represented both independent and state-owned media said they continue to face obstacles in accessing information, low salaries and a lack of security that has led to the deaths of some of their colleagues.
Ismail Sheikh Khalif from Star FM concurred, adding that the government’s unwillingness to share information with journalists makes it more difficult for the news media to deliver fair and balanced coverage.
Al Jazeera TV producer Mohamed Ahmed Abdullahi described the recently passed media law as a step in the right direction, but he said there was a need for the enactment of additional legislation to make it fully operational.
Abdullahi warned that some of the ambiguities in the law made it difficult for journalists to know what are the legal restrictions on print and broadcast news coverage.
The World Press freedom Day, under the theme, “Access to Information and Fundamental Freedoms’ was also marked in South Sudan amid concerns that weak institutional controls and government interference is triggering a worrisome loss of the fundamental principles of press freedom.
UNESCO country representative Khaled Salah called on the new government “to work on improving the media environment as a priority” and to consider the media as a “key partner in stabilizing the country on all fronts.”
Addressing journalists Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary-General, Eugene Owusu said that Press freedom is one of the drivers that will help transform South Sudan from conflict to prosperity and Sustainable Human development depends on free flow of information.
More and more attention worldwide is being given to the safety of journalists and to ending impunity.
The UN Security Council’s adopted the Resolution 2222, in May 2015, calls for protection of journalists in armed conflict situations.
UNESCO considers the killing of journalists as the ultimate form of censorship and its Director-General systematically condemns such crimes, and reports on impunity.
World Press Freedom Day was proclaimed by the UN General Assembly in 1993 following a Recommendation adopted at the twenty-sixth session of UNESCO's General Conference in 1991. This in turn was a response to a call by African journalists who in 1991 produced the landmark Windhoek Declaration on media pluralism and independence.
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