Spies, Spooks and World Press Freedom
How the US harmed press freedom around the world
On April 25, the U.S. dropped to 45th out of 116 on the World Press Freedom Index ranking. The WPFI ranks countries’ journalistic freedom, from “good situation” to “very serious situation.”
The cause, according to journalists: President Donald Trump’s relentless accusations that the American press produces mostly “fake news.” Indeed, the day after World Press Freedom Day 2017, Trump tweeted:
While pundits have long understood the U.S. to be a beacon of press freedom, the fall from 43rd place reflects journalists’ sense that the light is dimming in the U.S.(http://time.com/5133507/press-freedom-united-states/)
But what if the U.S. ranking is artificially inflated by a lack of attention to history?
The World Press Freedom Index accounts for the conditions for free expression by journalists within a specific set of borders. But it does not account for who is suppressing journalistic pursuits. And the U.S. has a long history of interfering — and killing — journalists beyond our own borders.
Measuring press freedom
World Press Freedom Day, observed on May 3 each year, celebrates the democratic function of a free press as an “informal educator” of global society.
United Nations countries began observing World Press Freedom Day in 1993, following a recommendation of the U.N. General Assembly in 1991. UNESCO’s mission in organizing thematic celebrations has been to remind the world of Article 19 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which advocates for global freedom of expression.
Since 2002, the global nonprofit Reporters without Borders has published the World Press Freedom Index just prior to this celebration. The index is built using an evolving questionnaire. It generally asks an unnamed and undefined group of “experts” whether they have witnessed journalists or consumers being censored in their country; if they perceive censorship or journalists engaging in self-censorship; and if they notice financial or material pressure on the press.
Prior to 2013, the index asked about human rights violations against journalists and media organizations. This question was dropped, replaced by objective counts of journalists being tortured, kidnapped or jailed.
Killing Journalism in Others’ Borders
In my view, the index mostly caricatures post-World War II geopolitical history. The “First World” (industrialized nations of North America and Europe) are ranked highly, while the “Second World” (Communist-aligned) and “Third World” (non-aligned countries) are ranked as “hostile” to journalists. As I stated above, while the index evaluates if a country experiences press suppression, it does not identify who the suppressor is.
The U.S., along with other former empire builders, has long engaged in clandestine operations against journalism and journalistic scholars. These go unmeasured in the rankings of press freedom.
For example, Guatemala ranks 116th this year on the World Press Freedom Index. Journalists there who expose political corruption have experienced threats and physical violence.
But these tactics have a long history connected to the U.S. Between 1952 and 1954, the CIA cultivated “Assassination Proposals,” and aided far-right activists’ targeting of “communists.” Redacted documents suggest that these targets included journalists. The CIA file also describes sending Guatemalan Communists “death notice” cards for 30 days in a row, some of whom we now know were journalists. Friendly journalists, or journalists who received “anonymous” tips, would then act as foot soldiers in the cover up. “According to [REDACTED] draft memorandum, after creating story that [REDACTED] was preparing to oust the Communists, he could be eliminated. His assassination would be “laid to the Commies” [by American-friendly reporters] and used to bring about a mass defection of the Guatemalan Army.”
Coercion tactics for journalists in Guatemala today are inspired by the very same tactics that the CIA trained local, far right operatives to use during its attempt to thwart the spread of communism. Many cartels having a rich institutional memory of this training — a Guatemalan delegate to the UN in March 2018 described these very same techniques being deployed today.
Or take Nicaragua, ranked 90th. Reporters Without Borders notes that journalists there are often harassed, arrested or threatened with death. In the 1980s, the CIA trained guerrillas in psychological warfare utilizing these very same techniques. The “Psychological Operations in Guerrilla Warfare” guide provided U.S.-backed fighters with instructions on how to manipulate local intellectuals into creating a pro-American ideological atmosphere.
As they did in Guatemala, the CIA inspired the bombing of a press conference organized around a Nicaraguan revolutionary leader’s defection from the Sandanista. The CIA’s presumable goal, again, was to create a media spectacle falsely blamed on communists, and to encourage violent revolution against a popularly elected Communist-leaning government. In the past month, journalists have been quick to point to this history in their coverage of protests.
Meanwhile, the US also mobilized in Iran in such a way that lives on in the cultural climate against press freedom. Ranked 164th, “The Islamic Revolution [in Iran] keeps a tight grip on most media outlets and never relents in its persecution of independent journalists, citizen-journalists, and media outlets, and uses intimidation, arbitrary arrest, and long jail sentences imposed by revolutionary courts at the end of unfair trials.”
The CIA’s “Initial Operational Plan for TPAJAX” (1 June 1953), recounts clandestine operations in Iran during the 1980’s. This operation included the US’ direct and explicit installation of the Fundamentalist government as part of an attempt to loosen the Soviet Union’s grip over Middle Eastern oil. Collaborating with religious leaders and the British Secret Intelligence Service, the CIA prepped and aided the fundamentalist government to “make strong assurances over radio and in mosques after coup that new government faithful Moslem principles” (sic). Journalists who were seen as departing from this message were “refused access and framed as anti-Moslem.”
In 1985, the CIA further worked with a consultant to write an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, providing him the information necessary to critique the Nicaraguan arms build-up (which had been secretly engineered by the CIA themselves as part of the Iran-Contra affair). Similar op-eds were planned for The Washington Post and The New York Times according to the CIA file. This approach to media agenda setting had its origins in what is popularly referred to as Operation Mockingbird, wherein the CIA coerced, threatened and blackmailed international journalists to write fake stories, provide intelligence, and distribute agitation propaganda — all based on fabricated information.
Journalists in Iran, Nicaragua, and Guatemala, bear the burden for U.S. clandestine interventions. And, their rank in the World Press Freedom Index suffers. Ours does not.
Celebration, but with reflection
There is much to celebrate about press freedom. It facilitates democratic participation, intercultural understanding, and a shared sense of responsibility for the environment and humanity. But, without historical, geopolitical context, the World Press Freedom Index fails to inspire solutions to historical and structural challenges to press freedom.
These clandestine operations have created a vacuum in the world of free and independent press. The current corruption mimics strategies deployed by the industrialized, Communist-fearing “First World” during the Cold War, filling that vacuum with practices that repeat the past. And the U.S. is far from the only perpetrator. There are many examples of the British and other European states abusing journalism in past and recent history.
But, even with this context, ranking World Press Freedom creates a fool’s errand of defining the line between legitimate and illegitimate State violence, between historical precedents and antecedents, and between a State’s right to kill a story or kill a person.
If journalists and policymakers want to celebrate World Press Freedom Day, then we are obligated to recount the historical foibles of those, like the U.S., who are ranked higher in the index. For, as the saying should go, those who forget history make it possible to repeat and exploit it.
