[R-G] Reporters Without Democracy (Part 4 of 4)

[Anthony Fenton]

Reporters Without Democracy
Media Watchdog as Democracy Manipulator (Part 4 of 4)
by Michael Barker; December 15, 2007
ZNet

     The first two parts of this article firstly investigated  
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) ‘democratic’ funding ties, and then  
went on to look at the ‘democratic’ credentials of some of their  
current and former staff.  The third installment of this article  
extended this investigation and examined the ‘democratic’ ties of  
some of the earlier recipients of RSF’s annual Fondation de France  
Prize, and this concluding part of the article will now continue in  
this vein and examine the ‘democratic’ ties of some of RSF’s more  
recent prize winners. Finally, the article will conclude by offering  
some suggestions for how the issues raised within this article may be  
acted upon by progressive activists.

     Reporting on ETA

     In 2000, Carmen Gurruchaga Basurto, a political reporter for El  
Mundo, a Madrid-based daily newspaper won the RSF award. Her  
biography notes that she “writes frequently about the Basque  
separatist group, ETA.” However, it goes on to note that because  
“Gurruchaga’s stories have so threatened the terrorist group… since  
1984 it has waged a campaign against her, hoping to intimidate her  
into stopping reporting on their activities.” In 2001, Gurruchaga  
received awards from two ‘democratically’ connected organizations,  
Human Rights Watch (from whom she obtained a Hellman/Hammett Grant),  
and the International Women’s Media Foundation (from whom she was  
awarded their annual Courage Award).

     Regime Change in Iran?

     In 2001, Reza Alijani, the editor of Iran-e-Farda – an Iranian  
newspaper that was banned in 2000 – received RSF’s press freedom  
award. Although I cannot demonstrate that Alijani has any  
‘democratic’ ties, one of his former Iran-e-Farda colleagues,  
Hojjatoleslam Hasan Yousefi Eshkevari, “was arrested on August 5,  
2000 in connection with his participation at an academic and cultural  
conference held at the Heinrich Boll Institute in Berlin on April 7-9  
[2000] entitled ‘Iran after the elections,’ at which political and  
social reform in Iran were publicly debated”. This is significant  
because the German political foundations (Stiftungen) are according  
to Stefan Mair (2000) “without a doubt among the oldest, most  
experienced and biggest actors in international democracy  
assistance”. Indeed NED historian David Lowe writes that these  
Stiftungen provided an “important model for democracy assistance”  
which helped catalyse the creation of the US’s own democracy  
promoting organ, the NED.[1]

     Armed with this knowledge it is perhaps not so astonishing that  
the Iranian government would choose to imprison many of the activists  
who participated in the aforementioned Heinrich Boll conference.  
Furthermore, it is also predicable that some of the other conference  
attendees would have ties to the NED and the democracy manipulators:  
these activists included Akbar Ganji (who in 2000 received an  
International Press Freedom Award from the Canadian Journalists for  
Free Expression, that is, the group that manages the ‘democratically’  
linked IFEX network, and after spending six years in prison – after  
attending the conference – Ganji was awarded Rights and Democracy’s  
2007 John Humphrey Freedom Award), Ali Afshari (who was a visiting  
fellow at the NED’s International Forum for Democratic Studies from  
October 2006 to February 2007), and Mehrangiz Kar (who from 2000 to  
2001 held a senior fellowship with the Toda Institute for Global  
Policy and Peace Research, from October 2001 to August 2002 was a NED  
Reagan-Fascell Democracy Fellow, in late 2002 served as a scholar at  
the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and between  
September 2005 and June 2006 was a fellow at the Carr Center for  
Human Rights Policy).

     A number of other Iranian journalists – who did not attend the  
Berlin conference – were also arrested in April 2000, and the two who  
can be linked to the ‘democracy’ community are Mashallah  
Shamsolvaezin (who in 2000 then received the Committee to Protect  
Journalists’ International Press Freedom Award), [2] and Emadeddin  
Baqi (who in 2004 was awarded the Civil Courage Prize, and in 1999 co- 
wrote a series of articles with Akbar Ganji criticizing the  
government which “galvanized the public and, within one year of their  
publication, forced the closing by the government of nearly every  
reform newspaper in the country”).

     Environmental ‘Democracy’ for Russia

     The 2002 RSF Fondation de France Prize was awarded to Russian  
journalist Grigory Pasko, who at the time of receiving the award was  
serving a prison sentence for exposing the dumping of radioactive  
waste by the Russian fleet in the Sea of Japan, “expos[ing]  
corruption inside the fleet” and pass[ing] on public information  
about both issues to Japanese journalists”. Pasko was eventually set  
free in 2003, and in 2004 he became the editor-in-chief of the  
Environmental Rights Center’s (otherwise known as Bellona)  
Environment and Rights Journal – which has been published since  
February 2002 and is supported by the NED.

     Bringing Human Rights to Haiti, Zimbabwe, and Morocco

     In 2003 RSF Fondation de France Prize was given to the following  
individuals and groups, exiled Haitian journalist, Michèle Montas, to  
the Zimbabwean newspaper, The Daily News, and to the Moroccan  
journalist, Ali Lmrabet.

     In addition, to being a former director of Radio Haiti Inter,  
the first RSF winner, Michèle Montas, is also a director of the  
National Coalition for Haitian Rights – a group that was initially  
known as the National Emergency Coalition for Haitian Refugees when  
it was created in 1982. Two of the better known (now deceased)  
‘democracy promoting’ founders of the NCHR are Lane Kirkland (who is  
a former Rockefeller Foundation trustee, and from 1979 to 1995 served  
as the president of the AFL-CIO – which is a core NED grantee) and  
Bayard Rustin (who was a former chairman of the executive committee  
of Freedom House, and former president of the NED-funded A. Philip  
Randolph Institute). [3] Other notable former directors of NCHR  
include Michael H. Posner (who is the president of Human Rights  
First), Michele D. Pierre-Louis (who is the Executive Director of  
FOKAL which “is the Open Society Institute foundation in Haiti”), and  
Vernon E. Jordan, Jr. (who is a former director of the Rockefeller  
Foundation).

     The current executive director of NCHR is Jocelyn McCalla, who  
has held this position since 1988 (except for a one year break in  
2002) and presently serves on Human Right Watch’s ‘democratically’  
connected Americas Advisory Board. Other current NCHR directors with  
‘democratic’ ties include Mark Handelman (who is a director of the  
NED-funded International Campaign for Tibet), Max J. Blanchet (who is  
a director of the Lambi Fund of Haiti which although progressive is a  
chapter of USAID-funded Partners of the Americas), Muzaffar A.  
Chishti, (who is the director of the Migration Policy Institute’s  
office at New York University School of Law), and Herold Dasque (who  
is the executive director of the progressive Haitian American United  
for Progress, but is also connected to Dwa Fanm – a group which has  
two directors who have previously worked with George Soros’ Open  
Society Institute).

     The second recipient of the 2003 RSF Fondation de France Prize  
was the Zimbabwean newspaper, The Daily News. This paper was launched  
by Geoffrey Nyarota in 1999, and it “quickly became the largest  
selling and most influential newspaper” in Zimbabwe. Therefore, it is  
significant to note that Nyarota – who “now lives in exile in the  
United States from where he publishes thezimbabwetimes.com” –was  
awarded the Committee to Protect Journalists International Press  
Freedom Award in 2001. In addition, the following year he received  
the World Association of Newspapers Golden Pen of Freedom award, from  
2004 to 2005 he served as a fellow at the US-based Carr Center for  
Human Rights Policy, and he is presently a director of the World  
Press Freedom Committee. [4] (The Daily News closed operations in  
2004 after “constant harassment by state monitors” and is now being  
published by the Amnesty International’s Irish Section.)

     The third RSF prize for 2003 was awarded to the Moroccan  
journalist and editor of Demain magazine, Ali Lmrabet, while he was  
“serving a three-year jail sentence, in part for publishing cartoons  
critical of King Mohammed VI”. However, while Lmrabet was sentenced  
in May that year he was released from prison one month after he  
received the RSF award (which he obtained in December 2003). Here it  
is perhaps relevant to note that he is presently a member of the  
Moroccan Association for Human Rights, although he does not appear to  
hold any leadership role. This is significant because this  
association is a member of a broader network known as the  
International Federation for Human Rights – a group whose work is  
supported by Rights and Democracy, the Westminster Foundation for  
Democracy, the Ford Foundation, and the Heinrich Boll Foundation.

     Promoting ‘Democracy’ in Algeria, China, and Mexico

     Three RSF awards were distributed in 2004. The first recipient  
of the RSF prize was Algerian journalist Hafnaoui Ghoul, who at the  
time was a correspondent for the daily paper El Youm and was head of  
the regional office of the Algerian Human Rights League (LADDH).  
Ghoul’s affiliation to the latter group is noteworthy because LADDH  
received their first grant from the NED in 2002, and then received  
further NED grants in both 2004 and 2005.

     The second person to receive a RSF award in 2004 was the “former  
Beijing University philosophy teacher Liu Xiaobo, who heads the  
Independent Writers’ Association”. At the time of receiving the award  
Xiaobo was also the chair of the Independent Chinese PEN Center  
(ICPC), whose members include two members of the editorial board of  
the NED-funded magazine, Beijing Spring, Kuide Chen and Zheng Yi. It  
is also significant that Louisa Coan Greve (who is the senior program  
officer for Asia for the NED) congratulated Xiaobo on receiving his  
RSF prize, and noted that the award “also honors the ICPC itself, and  
NED is gratified and humbled to be a supporter of those efforts.” [5]

     Finally, the third winner of the RSF’s 2004 award was the weekly  
newspaper Zeta – a Mexican paper which was cofounded by the 1998 RSF  
award nominiee J. Jesus Blancornelas. Blancornelas is currently  
Zeta’s editor in chief, and his previous nomination for the RSF prize  
is no accident, as throughout his career he has been showered with  
numerous journalism awards, the earliest of which appears to be the  
Committee to Protect Journalists International Press Freedom Award  
which he received in 1995. Zeta appears to have quite an affinity  
with the Committee to Protect Journalists, because in 2007, Zeta’s  
director, Navarro Bello, was also awarded the Committee to Protect  
Journalists International Press Freedom Award.

     A Helping Hand for Somali, Afghanistan, and China

     In 2005, Omar Faruk Osman received the RSF award on behalf of  
National Union of Somali Journalists (NUSOJ). This is significant  
because in 2002 Osman was elected as the secretary-general of the  
Somali Journalists Network (SOJON), which under his guidance was  
transformed into NUSOJ. This group is linked to the NED in a number  
of ways. In 2005 they obtained a grant from the NED to train  
journalists and “nominate journalists as National Press Freedom  
Protectors to monitor free press abuses”, while in the same year the  
International Federation of Journalists received a separate grant  
from the NED to work with them to organize a journalism conference.  
More recently, in 2006, Osman “was chosen to be a member of the  
international jury of the RSF Press Freedom Award”.

     Other winners of the RSF’s 2005 Fondation de France Press  
Freedom Award include the Afghanistan-based Tolo TV (which was  
launched in 2004 with starter funds provided by USAID, and is  
reported to be the “most popular station in Kabul” boasting of a “81  
percent share of the market”), and New York Times contributor, Zhao Yan.

     Zhao Yan is a journalist who worked for China Reform Magazine  
(from 2002 to March 2004), and has also written for the NED-funded  
Human Rights in China. Yan stopped working for the China Reform  
Magazine in March 2004 and “the magazine was subsequently shut down  
by the government in December 2004”. However, just before the  
magazine closed down Yan was arrested by the Chinese government for  
allegedly disclosing state secrets, and then kept in prison until  
September 2007.

     Note that the China Reform Magazine is linked, albeit tenuously,  
to a NED-supported organization through Professor Tiejun Wen, who is  
based at the Renmin University of China and was formerly the editor- 
in-chief for China Reform Magazine. The NED link arises through  
Professor Wen’s employment as the chief-economist of the China  
Macroeconomics Network, where he is also a member of their expert  
group of “more than 130 renowned Chinese macroeconomists” known as  
The Macrochina Economists 100. It is significant that three other  
members of this elite group of macroeconomists currently work for the  
Beijing-based Unirule Institute of Economics – an organization that  
has received four grants from the NED (which were channelled via the  
Center for International Private Enterprise in 1996, 1997, 1998,  
1999): these three macroeconomists are the Unirule’s president and co- 
founder Mao Yushi, their director Sheng Hong, and the Institute’s  
director-general Zhang Shuguang. [6]

     Democracy for Four: Burma, Cuba, Russian, the and Democratic  
Republic of Congo

     In 2006 there were four RSF laureates, the Burmese journalist U  
Win Tin, the Cuban writer Guillermo Farinas Hernandez, the newspaper  
Novaya Gazeta (Russia), and the group Journaliste En Danger  
(Democratic Republic of Congo).

     U Win Tin, a former member of the central executive committee of  
the National League for Democracy (where he acted as their  
secretary), and a close friend of former RSF awardee San San Nweh,  
received the 2006 RSF press freedom prize. He has been in prison  
since 1989 because of his affiliation to Burma’s main opposition  
party, and while San San Nweh was released from prison in 2001, he  
still languishes behind bars today. As mentioned previously, in 2001  
the World Association of Newspapers awarded U Win Tin its annual  
press freedom prize.

     Another recipient of RSF’s 2006 award was the Cuban cyber- 
dissident Guillermo Farinas Hernandez, who heads the small Cubanacán  
Press news agency. As before, RSF support of Cuban dissidents is  
hardly surprising given the financial support they receive from the  
NED-funded Center for a Free Cuba, thus it is also not so astonishing  
that the NED-funded CubaNet media project would publish Guillermo’s  
work.

     The Russian biweekly newspaper Novaya Gazeta is now most famous  
for formerly being home to Anna Politkovskaya (the journalist who was  
murdered in October 2006), a journalist whose work was recently  
recognized by the NED who awarded her one of their 2007 Democracy  
Awards. [7] In addition, in September 2007 Dmitry Muratov, the editor- 
in-chief of Novaya Gazeta, was given the Committee to Protect  
Journalists International Press Freedom Award.

     RSF’s “partner organization” Journaliste En Danger (JED), is a  
member of the IFEX network, was founded in 1997, and is headed by  
journalists Donat M’Baya Tshimanga and Tshivis Tshivuadi. In what  
might be considered a conflict of interest, Tshimanga – who is  
presently JED’s president – also serves on the RSF’s international  
jury for their Press Freedom Award (and has done so since at least  
2002). Also in 2004, Tshivuadi, who is the secretary general of JED,  
attended an inter-regional workshop that was convened by the NED- 
linked Panos Institute. [8]

     Ending Media Interference Now

     “It is very dangerous when press freedom organizations get  
themselves politically compromised by accepting payment from any  
government. It is really vital that all such organizations are truly  
independent.” UK National Union of Journalists

     While this article had not demonstrated that RSF receives  
funding from any government, it has shown how RSF has received  
funding from the Congressionally funded NED, and it has illustrated  
how RSF’s work is highly integrated with that of the ‘democracy  
promoting’ community, much of which is linked to the activities of  
the NED. Whether RSF is being manipulated to serve as a useful tool  
of the ‘democracy promoters’, or whether it is itself guiding the  
media-related priorities of the global ‘democratic’ community is  
beside the point. What is certain is that RSF’s activities are  
intimately entwined with those of the NED. The revelations in this  
article alone therefore provide more than enough reasons for  
disbanding RSF immediately. However, this is unlikely to happen in  
the near future given the useful role that RSF currently provides for  
elite interests determined on promoting low-intensity neoliberal  
forms of democracy globally.

     Undoubtedly future studies will furnish further details  
concerning RSF’s less than noble ‘democratic’ liaisons, but the  
question to ask is, will this be enough to close it down permanently,  
or to even delegitimize their work in the corporate media?  
Unfortunately, it is all too obvious that such information, without  
determined action (in the form of grassroots activism) to back it up,  
will probably not affect the conduct of RSF’s work one iota. This can  
explained to a large extent by the bipartisan nature (but nonetheless  
highly political and regressive work) of most ‘democracy promoting’  
efforts, which acts to shield their work from critical enquiry. We  
only have to look to the work of the core NED grantee, the AFL-CIO,  
to see that ongoing critical reports filed over the past few decades  
[27] – that have comprehensively documented the AFL-CIO’s involvement  
in implementing the US’s antidemocratic foreign policies – have had  
little visible effect on their practices. Indeed, a number of  
unionists and other activists joined together in the Worker to Worker  
Solidarity Committee (www.workertoworker.net) have been continuing to  
campaign to get the AFL-CIO to break any ties it has with the NED. To  
date, they have been unsuccessful, even though getting the California  
AFL-CIO State Convention – one-sixth of the entire membership at the  
time – to unanimously repudiate the AFL-CIO foreign policy program in  
2004. At the 2005 National AFL-CIO Convention in Chicago, the AFL-CIO  
leadership first changed the California resolution to praising their  
Solidarity Center’s work, and then actively refused to allow anyone  
to speak on the convention floor in favour of the actual California  
resolution condemning AFL-CIO foreign policy.

     On a more positive note, ideally, the results of this paper will  
help initiate further critical inquiries into the democracy  
manipulators colonization of journalism organizations. Yet it is  
surely an indictment of media scholars and journalists that similar  
studies have not been conducted years ago. That said, perhaps this  
judgement is overly harsh, as ignorance concerning antidemocratic  
funding seems to be a problem of progressive groups’ more generally.  
Indeed, progressive activists’ seem to have become so fixated on  
critiquing their ideological opponents that they have neglected to  
watch the right-ward slide of their would-be-allies. This tactical  
lapse appears to have left democratic media organizations open to the  
insidious cooptive assaults waged by those intent on promoting a  
polyarchal public sphere.

     One way to counter the democracy manipulators cynical use of  
journalism against democracy is for progressive groups to thoroughly  
investigate the activities of each and every media group working to  
strengthen the public sphere. This would be a simple project if  
journalists and media scholars across the world critically examined  
the work of their local journalism organizations. In this way, a  
global database might be built up which would enable progressive  
scholars, activists, and journalists, to lift the rhetorical veil  
that has so far shielded many media groups’ from criticism.  
Completion of such studies will then enable keen media reformers to  
support (and where necessary create new) truly participatory  
journalism organizations that can effectively challenge the corporate  
medias’ global hegemony.



     Michael Barker is a doctoral candidate at Griffith University,  
Australia. He can be reached at Michael.J.Barker [at]  
griffith.edu.au. All four parts of this article and some of his other  
recent articles can be found right here. http:// 
michaeljamesbarker.wordpress.com/



     Endnotes

     [1] By the 1990s Germany’s Stiftungen or party foundations, “had  
resident representatives in more than 100 countries and field offices  
in some of them for well over 30 years. Between 1962 and 1997 they  
handled in total over DM4.5 billion reaching around DM290 million  
annually by the 1990s. Although in the period before 1990 it is  
debatable how much can be called democracy support rather than  
activities primarily intended to meet other purposes  In Pinto- 
Duschinsky’s words they were ‘powerful instruments not only for  
promoting democracy, but also for furthering German interests and  
contacts’.” Stefan Mair, Germany’s Stiftungen and Democracy  
Assistance: Comparative Advantages, New Challenges, In: Peter J.  
Burnell (ed.) Democracy assistance: International Co-operation for  
Democratization (London, Frank Cass: 2000), pp.128-149.

     Heinrich Boll representative, Sascha Müller-Kraenner, was also a  
signatory to a recent letter (dated November 11, 2004) which was sent  
by the NED to Venezuela’s president Hugo Chavez to urge him “to  
reconsider the prosecution of the leadership of Sumate, as well as  
the proposal to criminalize democracy assistance from abroad”. Sumate  
is the Venezuelan group that received assistance from the NED to  
facilitate the unsuccessful ouster of Chavez in 2002.

     [2] Another recipient of the Committee to Protect Journalists’  
International Press Freedom Award in 2000 was Steven Gan who at the  
time was the co-founder and editor of the online publication  
Malaysiakini, a publication which was launched in 1999 by the  
Southeast Asian Press Alliance (a group that since their founding in  
1999 has received annual grants from the NED to support their work in  
Malaysia).

     [3] Also see Tom Barry, ‘The New Crusade of the Democratic  
Globalists’, International Relations Center, August 3, 2005; Other  
NCHR leaders in the early 1980s included Father Antoine Adrien,  
Anthony Cardinal Bevilacqua, Ira Gollobin, Vernon Jordan, Rev.  
Benjamin Hooks, Rep. Shirley Chisholm, and Bishop Paul Moore.

     [4] In 2006 Geoffrey Nyaro published the book Against the Grain:  
Memoirs of a Zimbabwean Newsman, and in 2006 he also attended the 7th  
International Conference on North Korean Human Rights and Refugees –  
a conference that was also attended by the NED’s president Carl  
Gershman.

     [5] http://www.cicus.org/news/newsdetail.php?id=3514 Accessed  
December 2006.

     [6] The Unirule Institute president, Mao Yushi, while based at  
the Unirule Institute between 1996 and 1997 was also an executive  
officer for the NED-linked Chinese Economists Society, and “[i]n  
November 2004, Mao was elected by the International Business Review  
as one of the ten most influential economists in China”. Other well- 
known ‘democratic’ funders of Unirule’s work include the major  
liberal philanthropist the Ford Foundation, the Institute for  
International Economics (whose most ‘democratic’ directors are David  
Rockefeller and George Soros), “many foreign embassies in Beijing”,  
and “international public institutions, such as World Bank,  
International Monetary Fund, Asian Development Bank and African  
Development Bank”. For further analysis of the Unirule Institute’s  
‘democratic’ ties see, Michael Barker, Promoting a Low Intensity  
Public Sphere: American Led Efforts to Promote a ‘Democratic Media’  
Environment in China. A paper to presented at the China Media Centre  
Conference (Brisbane, Australia: Creative Industries Precinct, 5-6  
July 2007).

     [7] Novaya Gazeta: “The privately-owned newspaper in which the  
staff holds 51% of the shares, saw two political figures take over  
49% of its capital in June 2006. They were the former Soviet  
president and originator of glasnost (openness), Mikhail Gorbachev,  
and Alexander Lebedev, wealthy businessman and member of the Duma.”

     [8] The Panos Institute received one grant from the NED in 1997,  
while more recently in September 2007, the NED’s “Center for  
International Media Assistance (CIMA) and Panos London launched the  
Panos Institute’s report entitled At the Heart of Change: The Role of  
Communication in Sustainable Development.”