By Charles W. Corey
USIA Staff Writer

April 26, 1996

WASHINGTON -- Key elements in every society must demand a free and fair press and then nurture and protect it from government encroachment if it is to serve the overall public good.

Rose Umoren, a Washington-based journalist with the Interpress Press Service, and Joan Mower, foundation officer for the Freedom Forum for journalists, stressed that point in a Worldnet "Dialogue" program broadcast to U.S.Information Agency posts in Africa.

Pressure for a free press, Umoren said, can be exerted from three key points inside each country: society as a whole, the media themselves, and an "activist" judiciary.

"In the case of a civil society, it is important that people know what their rights are and be prepared to exact those rights from their government," added Umoren, who is Nigerian by birth.

"Very, very fundamental to this is the rule of law," she said. "Without the rule of law in any country, you cannot have press freedom...and nobody from outside can impose that rule of law. The civil society must demand it" from within.

Focusing on the courts, Umoren said, "If you have a judiciary which thinks it owes everything to an incumbent government, then you are in trouble. So you must insist on the rule of law and an activist judiciary" to protect the press.

When people understand what press freedom really means for them -- that is, "the ability to express yourself, to have real freedom -- I think that is a huge force" to counteract what tends to be a natural government encroachment on the press, Mower said.

Mower urged the journalists participating in the program to "educate" their audience on the value of having a totally free and independent press. "As journalists, we do have an educational component to our work," she noted.

She stressed that "there is no government that will give you your freedom." Pressuring for a free press "is like going to the shop floor" she said. Citizens, like workers, must lobby for their rights.

A natural tension always exists between a free and independent press and its government, Umoren said. "No government, no matter how sophisticated, is going to respect press freedom just like that. You must extract press freedom from government."

Mower reminded her audience that although the United States enjoys one of the freest press environments in the world, "the struggle is still going on" with "journalists who are constantly trying to beat back efforts by the government" to control, limit, or overly influence their coverage. "No government likes to have total press freedom. They would like to control it," she asserted.

Asked about the importance of public versus private media operations, Umoren said everyone benefits when people with money are allowed to set up privately owned and operated newspapers and broadcasting stations.

"Competition will force the government to allow its media to either die -- because nobody will buy propaganda when they have a choice -- or allow them to operate like media, in which case journalists would be allowed to do what they are supposed to do," which she said is to cover stories fully, objectively, and accurately, free of interference.

Agreeing with that point, Mower said, "If you completely eliminate restrictions on the media -- as Mali has done -- you will see a real, vibrant media and you will see people making money too, which is important" to sustain the press.

Asked about legal restrictions in certain countries which limit press coverage, Umoren said laws are only "respectable as long as they are for the common good. If laws appear to jeopardize the interests of the very people the government is supposed to be representing, then I don't see the need for such laws to be respected."

She cautioned, however, that "when you flout such a law, you are doing it not for yourself, but for your people, for your country."

Asked if total press freedom is a "utopian idea" -- because many journalists must often compromise their reporting so as to avoid government scorn -- Mower said good reporting begins and ends with "the accuracy of your facts."

"If your facts are accurate and you know the facts to be true, they should be reported and they should be reported regardless of whether the government likes the idea or dislikes the idea," she said.

"In the United States, there are always efforts to control what should be reported by journalists," she added. "If you know the facts to be true and have confidence in your information, you should report that."

Umoren said editors play an important role in the overall journalistic process. "As an editor, you are not editing just for grammatical mistakes; you are also editing for the wider interests of society. There are many faces of the truth. It depends on what portion you are being told.

"What this means is that you must weigh everything that you publish in the context of the wider society.... Not everything you get you put out. It is up to you -- your experience, your training" -- to decide what is to be reported.

As an editor and journalist, Umoren explained, "you must interact...with other segments of the society -- that way you will be in a better position to balance interests.

"Journalism" she added, "is about balancing interests.... There is nothing utopian about press freedoms. Everybody balances interests. The lawyer balances interests. The judge balances interests. The doctor balances interests. The journalist is no exception."

Concluding, Umoren said that rather than compromising, a journalist balances "competing interests in a society for the common good, not just for the present but for the future."