Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Number of Journalists in Jail Is Highest Since 1996, Group Says
The number of journalists in jail (145) is at its highest since 1996. This has been fueled by a small group of countries, including predominantly Iran and China. In China, for instance, the rate rise has been from detaining Tibetan journalists who try to voice out their opinions. Is there anyway we can help out?
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4 comments:
Unfortunately no - if China wants to limit free speech they have the right to do so. Every country limits speech a lot more than we think. For example, in the United States, corporations are not allowed to campaign for political officials.
I agree there isn't really anything the U.S. could do to help journalists jailed in China. But it is hardly reasonable to equate the jailing of journalists with limitations on campaigning by corporations. Should corporations even have the same rights to speech as people? They have more rights than people when it comes to campaign financing because even though they can't run ads endorsing candidates themselves, they can donate unlimited money to campaigns to run their own ads. People are limited to donating $2300 to a candidate while corporations have no limit. And is $2300 too low a limit in a country where only the rich can afford to fund this form of "speech"?
Jailing a journalist actually takes away someone's right to speech. Campaign laws don't hurt corporate "speech" - they coddle big businesses that drown out the speech of real people.
There really isn't anything that we can do to help out this situation. If China wants to limit free speech, they have to power to do so. I do not think it is fair at all. Journalists can go to far sometimes and present to much information to the general public, which puts them in the wrong. I do not think they should be put in jail for this though.
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