COMMENTARY
By Gordon Hahn
American mainstream
media produces an inordinately large number of articles highlighting the
murders of journalists in Russia.
These articles are in part motivated by, and often include data from the
Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) which does important work on documenting
murders, beatings, and imprisonments of journalists across the world. However, the use of CPJ’s raw data can
sometimes be misleading. For
example, their list of the 20 ‘deadliest countries’ for journalists does not
take into account that many of the countries on the list have few independent
journalists to be killed and many off the list who have none – and this is why
they do not appear on the list.
Journalistic and
analytical articles usually cite the raw figure for the number of killings per
country for one year or several, but these data are never put in context. For example, the size of the population
and the number of journalists influences the likelihood of such violence. The larger the population and the
number of journalists in a given country, should increase the likelihood and
occurrence of such events. The
more molecules or atoms in a given space, the more often they will collide if
in motion. Similarly the greater
the population the more journalists there are likely to be, the more corrupt
bureaucrats and businesses to be investigated, more crimes to be exposed and so
on. All this increases the
likelihood that someone under investigation by a journalist will use force or
use their connections with the state apparatus to shut down investigating
journalist’s activities. Below,
Russia Media Watch takes a first step towards incorporating other factors into
the calculus by bringing in population size.
A better methodology
would also factor in the number of journalists in each country; unfortunately,
reliable data for all countries is unavailable. It would also be good to factor in the population in the
years each journalist was killed and produce an average population over the
period 1992 through July 2009, the date for which the population figures are
relevant. Regardless of the limits
of bringing in the single new factor of country population in order to put the
CPJ’s raw data in better context of population, it is more useful to consider
this factor than not to. The
results of this factor’s inclusion are included in the tables below.
Russia in Global
Comparative Perspective
Simply using the
number of killings leaves Russia, with 52 killings since 1992, appearing as one
of the world’s worst violators of journalists’ rights and free speech with the
fourth highest volume of murdered journalists. When one introduces the country
population factor into the CPJ’s list of the “20 Deadliest Countries” for
journalists, a rather different picture of Russia appears. Russia moves from the position of
fourth highest volume of murdered journalists to fourteenth in the top twenty
on the CPJ list as of December 2009 (see Table 1).
TABLE 1. CPJ
Ranking and Number of Journalists Killed since 1992 for Countries Listed in
CPJ’s “20 Deadliest Countries” List Compared with Journalists’ Murdered Per
Capita for the Population of the Countries Listed on CPJ’s “20 Deadliest
Countries” List with an Adjusted Rank.
A comparison of the CPJ ranking and the
per capita rank shows just how much a difference this contextual factor
makes. The rating of democratic
but very populous country like India highlights the skewed effect of ignoring
the population variable. Its
ranking under the per capita method becomes more commensurate with its relative
political comity and respectable record of protecting civil rights. It also should be noted that some
countries that were not included in the top twenty that used CPJ’s simple
counting method, would likely surpass India and even Russia among others on the
list, if the per capita method were used; Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Latvia among
them (see below). Furthermore,
there are numerous other intervening variables. For example, the entire CPJ ‘20 Deadliest Countries’ list is
composed of countries where there has been some significant level of press
freedom along with war, most often jihadist insurgencies, or major criminal
drug cartel violence.
Comparison with other
Post-Soviet States
Simply using the number
of killings leaves Russia, with the highest number of journalists killed among
the post-Soviet states since 1992, tainting Moscow as the worst violator of
journalists’ rights and free speech in the region. However, when the per capita method is used, Russia emerges
as an average post-Soviet country (see Table 2). The worst violators become Tajikistan,Georgia, Azerbaijan. These three countries as well as democratic and NATO member Latvia turn out to have more journalists murdered since 1992 per capita than Russia.
TABLE 2. Number of
Journalists Killed Since 1992 in former USSR by Country Listed in Order of
Highest Number of Killings Per Capita Population (CPJ Number of Killings since
1992 in brackets if any, CPJ Ranking in List of “20 Deadliest Countries” if any
in parentheses)
The Imprisonment of
Journalists in Russia in Comparative Perspective
The
murder of journalists is actually more prevalent in less authoritarian and weak
democratic regimes. More
authoritarian and totalitarian regimes arrest them before they can get very far
in their investigations. Such
regimes have tight control over their allies in government and business,
usually state-owned or state-controlled and the ruling party’s, clique’s, or
junta’s penetration of society is so deep that dissident journalists are
uncovered and arrested before they can challnge a protected state elite or
economic interest. This becomes
clear when one looks at the CPJ’s list of countries in which journalists are
imporisoned and the number imprisoned in each (see the CPJ’s table 3 below). The top three oppressors are
neo-tatalitarian China, Iran, and Cuba.
TABLE 3. CPSJ's List of Imprisoned Journalists for 2009
Russia’s lone imprisoned
journalist wound find himself in prison in most countries around the
world. Even in some democratic
countries he would be judged as having violated the law by calling for the
overthrow of the constitutional order and cooperating with terrorists. Boris Stomakhin, imprisoned in march
2006, wrote numerous articles supporting the Chechen separatists and Caucasus
jihadists on their site www.kavkazcenter.com. These jihadists, now calling themselves the Caucasus
Emirate, have killed and wounded some six thousand people since the end of the
second Chechen conventional war in 2002.
Russian authorities
convicted him for the following words: “Let tens of new Chechen snipers take
their positions in the mountain ridges and the city ruins and let hundreds,
thousands of aggressors fall under righteous bullets! No mercy! Death to the
Russian occupiers! ... The Chechens have the full moral right to bomb everything
they want in Russia.” (Database on Imprisoned Journalists, CPJ,
www.cpj.org/imprisoned/2009.php, accessed December 14, 2009.)
To conclude, the raw
numbers, shorn of context and analysis of intervening variables provide an
exceedingly misleading snapshot of the comparative strength or weakness of any
particular state’s repression of terrorists. The raw numbers are often used by the U.S. mainstream media
to convey to American readers that Russia is among a handful of grevious
violators of journalists’ rights and freedom of speech. Although that record is not
particularly good, it is not nearly as bad as the U.S. mainstream media or the
raw numbers would lead one to believe.
