Reporters without borders

Continuing on from the last post, readers of this site might be interested in Reporters sans Frontieres (Reporters without Borders).

It's a French organisation but the site can also be read in English, Spanish and I think Arabic, and has an international outlook. They descibe the organisation thus:

"In some countries a journalist can be thrown in prison for years for a single offending word or photo. Jailing or killing a journalist removes a vital witness to events and threatens the right of us all to be informed. Reporters Without Borders has fought for press freedom on a daily basis since it was founded in 1985."

And their main aims are that it:

defends journalists and media assistants imprisoned or persecuted for doing their job and exposes the mistreatment and torture of them in many countries.
fights against censorship and laws that undermine press freedom.
gives financial aid each year to 100 or so journalists or media outlets in difficulty (to pay for lawyers, medical care and equipment) as well to the families of imprisoned journalists.
works to improve the safety of journalists, especially those reporting in war zones.

They are doing some particularly interesting work tracking international journalism and blogging on the internet - and have got some very interesting analysis of where the internet black holes (as they describe them) across the globe exist. See here, for example, about Belarus.

Most interesting, considering the Bloggers Code of Conduct debacle/debate, is a joint declaration that Reporters sans Frontiere put together with the OSCE back in 2005 on guaranteeing media freedom on the internet. There are just six points and takes up less than a side of A4, but I think they make for interesting reading, including:

"2. In a democratic and open society it is up to the citizens to decide what they wish to access and view on the Internet. Filtering or rating of online content by governments is unacceptable. Filters should only be installed by Internet users themselves. Any policy of filtering, be it at a national or local level, conflicts with the principle of free flow of information."