The 3rd May of every year has been earmarked as the World’s Press Freedom Day (WFPD), and it is definitely not a public holiday for the press, rather it is a day of reflection among all media personnel’s and professionals to examine the state of press freedom.
The 2017 theme is “Critical Minds for Critical Times: Media’s role in advancing peaceful, just and inclusive societies.” This year’s international event is held in Jakarta, Indonesia.
The WPFD was declared by the United Nations General Assembly in 1993 to raise awareness on the importance of freedom of the press and remind governments of their duty to respect and uphold the right to freedom of expression enshrined under Article 19 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The declaration was made after a 1991 UN conference held in Windhoek, Namibia, where African newspaper journalists presented a paper on press freedom principles which was famously called the Declaration of Windhoek.
Every year, UNESCO marks World Press Freedom Day by conferring the UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize on a deserving individual, organisation or institution that has made an outstanding contribution to the defence and/or promotion of press freedom anywhere in the world, especially when this has been achieved in the face of danger.
The prize was created in 1997 and is named in honour of Guillermo Cano Isaza, a Colombian journalist who was assassinated in front of the offices of his newspaper, El Espectador, in Bogotá, on 17 December 1986. Cano’s writings had offended Colombia’s powerful drug barons. It has also been won once by a Nigerian – Christina Anyanwu, who was imprisoned by Gen. Sani Abacha for reporting on a failed coup d’etat against the government in 1998. The WPFD 2017 prize will go to Dawit Isaak, the imprisoned Eritrean-born journalist who will be represented by his daughter, Bethelem Isaak, during a ceremony that will be hosted by Joko Widodo, the President of Indonesia.
The World Press Freedom Day (WPFD) is also marked each year by bringing together media professionals, press freedom organisations and UN agencies to assess the state of press freedom worldwide and discuss solutions for addressing challenges. Each conference is centred on a theme related to press freedom, including good governance, media coverage of terrorism, impunity and the role of media in post-conflict countries.
The United States of America is not left out in this day’s event as the office of the US consulate in Nigeria is collaborating with Lagos Television (LTV) to host an event in line with the global theme for the WPFD 2017. The US celebrated the WPFD for the first time in 2011.
This program scheduled to hold on Wednesday in Lagos will bring together senior Nigerian journalists and editors and is also open to journalism students and faculty personnel’s to further discuss the measures for safeguarding press freedom and the sustenance of democratic values, particularly in the digital age.
Some of the scheduled speakers for the event include: Funke Egbemode, President, Nigeria Guild of Editors; Dapo Olorunyomi, Publisher of Premium Times, Simon Kolawole, Publisher, TheCable; David Ajikobi, Nigeria Editor at Africa Check; and Tomi Oluyomi-Lords, Media Law and Ethics lecturer at the Nigeria Institute of Journalism (NIJ).
Even as the world commemorates the World Press Freedom Day today, is the situation in Africa any better and will there ever be press freedom? Are journalists exercising their right to freedom of expression? And according to Freedom House’s report, press freedom has drastically declined in Africa and around the world since 2015.
However, there are approximately 80WPFD events going on around the world today. A special selection of cartoons has also been curated for showing by UNESCO and Cartooning for Peace, an international organisation founded by former UN Secretary-General and Nobel Peace Prize for Literature winner, Kofi Anan.
You can follow the conversation on social media using #PressFreedom2017, #World PressFreedomDay, or #WorldPressDay.
