Freedom to speak and be heard

The development of this issue began with a simple idea that has profound consequences: it would include a special global report on the voices of those who are rarely heard. There are countless reasons why those people, and they number in their millions, are ignored, suppressed or actively censored. It may be that their mother tongue is not a mainstream language, or that they belong to a group their government fears, distrusts or simply disregards.

But this theme of ours became, too, a tale of those who do have highly audible voices – journalists, both those whose news reporting works in uncovering hidden voices and untold stories, sometimes against great odds, and those whose don’t. These two strands – hidden voices and the power of journalism to make those voices audible – weave through many of the reports in this autumn issue of Index on Censorship. These two themes lie also, of course, at the core of Index’s work down decades to expose the untold story and to encourage the highest standards of investigative journalism.

Journalism fails when it reports only the stories people want to be told; it also fails when it doesn’t tell the difficult, uncomfortable stories that influential powers – governments, corporations, litigious celebrities – would rather were silenced. Some of the world’s media edge away from the news that takes weeks to find and research. Globally, news organisations are struggling to solve the equation of what good journalism costs and how much income can be expected back from it, as well as asking whether they should produce what many would call investigative journalism, or what others would call the news. Real news costs money; it’s difficult; facts have to be checked, sources talked to. Often the costs of lawyers form part of the equation, adding to the journalism balance sheet.

What we know is that the stories that are told about a country by its own citizens and by others are important – important for the country’s development and important for the citizens and their sense of participation in that society. We also know there will always be authoritarian figures who want everything their own way; they want the narrative about their country to be the one that they decree; and they want anyone who criticises that story to be silenced. Technology can help get some of those stories out, and the new floating modems that are soon to be in the skies above Africa should help offer access to the web for thousands of people who currently have no way to use it. But technology alone doesn’t do the job; people are the other part of the discussion.

In this issue, we tell stories of those who are fighting to continue the positive traditions of reporting. Two traditional journalists, Nic Dawes and Shu Choudhary – one a newspaper editor, the other an ex-BBC producer – are doing inspiring things to improve news reporting. Dawes, who has just left South Africa’s Mail & Guardian for the Hindustan Times, helped create an investigative journalism training centre for reporters from across Africa. Meanwhile, Choudhary is one of the founders of a citizen journalism-based news operation for a central Indian community who are often ignored by the mainstream press. This is a community whose mother tongue is not widely spoken and does not have a high level of literacy. Using a mix of mobile phones and the web, Choudhary has created a news community that is ringing in its own stories that otherwise would have never been heard, and listening to those of its neighbours; his news operation is making a difference, too, not just because it is healthier if this community believes other people care about its problems. Corruption and health scandals have been uncovered and addressed. This is news that changes society.

LEFT: Not heard?

Credit: ClassicStock/akg-images

Elsewhere in this issue are other voices that too often go unheard. Our reports from Brazil, Egypt, Mali, Azerbaijan, China, Russia and South Africa, among others, speak with people who have experienced violence, poverty and limited opportunities because of who they are, where they come from or where they live. Meanwhile, in Colombia and Honduras, journalists are fighting to get the news out, and putting their own lives in danger.

Nobel Prize winning economist Amartya Sen writes in this issue about the responsibilities for journalists in developing societies to use their work to create a better, healthier nation. It might sound like an idealistic vision (and there’s nothing wrong with that) but at the heart of journalism there is a core principle about righting some wrong; making a story public because someone doesn’t want it to be so; changing something for the better. Sen’s influential ideas about development and freedom, and his article for this issue, have been at the heart of our special report. This influential academic has argued that we must value freedom to participate in the public and political debate as an essential part of development. Those with a lack of freedom to participate may live in an authoritarian state where only a few authorised voices are heard; or they may live in a democratic state where a particular minority group is ignored or excluded.

Citizen journalism has more of a chance to bring stories on to the public airwaves than it did in decades past. Mobile phones and the web are enormous assets. But there are still obstacles to using technology: having the money, having the signal, having the equipment, as well as having a government that might deny you the right to use those things. Access matters – so does news and the right to tell it.