questions about Reporters Without Borders funding

[donsu]

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0319-25.htm


Government Funds Color Press Group’s Objectivity

Over the past year, U.S. news stories about press freedom increasingly have cited the work of a Paris-based organization, Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans Frontières, or RSF). Indeed, despite its small size and lack of high-profile principals, Reporters Without Borders has achieved nearly the same name-recognition as the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, which can boast of having Walter Cronkite, Dan Rather and Tom Brokaw on its board of directors.

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But RSF, unlike the CPJ, is heavily funded by government grants, raising questions about its objectivity. And a closer examination of the battles RSF wages—and those it ignores—strongly suggests a political agenda colored by its choice of patrons. Unfortunately, the organization appears unwilling to address such concerns: RSF’s New York representative, Tala Dowlatshahi, terminated a telephone interview when asked if the organization had applied last year for any U.S. government grants other than one received from the National Endowment for Democracy.

Most notable, perhaps, is the group’s obvious political bias in its reporting on Haiti. RSF expressed its support for the Feb. 29, 2004, Franco-American overthrow of Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide at the same time that it received 11% of its budget from the French government (€397,604, or approximately $465,200 in 2003). According to Haiti-based journalist and documentary film-maker Kevin Pina, the organization selectively documented attacks on opposition radio stations while ignoring other attacks on journalists and broadcasters to create the impression of state-sponsored violence against Aristide’s opponents.

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Reporters Without Borders also has gone after Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez for allegedly threatening the private media. The conflict between the Chávez administration and the media goes back to before April, 2002, when Venezuela’s four private television stations actively aided and abetted a military coup against the government. On the night of the coup, following months of broadcasting anti-Chávez speeches and calling for a “transitional government,” media mogul Gustavo Cisneros’s station hosted meetings among the plotters—including would-be dictator Pedro Carmona.
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follow the money, where it goes, where it comes from