Journalists, officials in emerging democracies often insist, must be constrained by the state until they are able to carry out their work responsibly. But, rather than accelerating the development of a credible free press, this approach impedes it.
NEW YORK – On a trip to Ethiopia in the 1990s, I met with Prime Minister Meles Zenawi to try to persuade him to stop jailing journalists. Since Meles's guerillas had ousted a repressive Soviet-backed dictatorship a few years before, there had been an explosion of exuberant and sometimes wildly inaccurate little newspapers, many of them attacking Meles. So he had cracked down, introducing laws criminalizing what he called “insults” to the government and fining and imprisoning journalists for inaccuracies. Ethiopia quickly became one of the world’s top jailors of journalists.
NEW YORK – On a trip to Ethiopia in the 1990s, I met with Prime Minister Meles Zenawi to try to persuade him to stop jailing journalists. Since Meles's guerillas had ousted a repressive Soviet-backed dictatorship a few years before, there had been an explosion of exuberant and sometimes wildly inaccurate little newspapers, many of them attacking Meles. So he had cracked down, introducing laws criminalizing what he called “insults” to the government and fining and imprisoning journalists for inaccuracies. Ethiopia quickly became one of the world’s top jailors of journalists.