Silenced: International Journalists Expose Media Censorship

In this collection of 14 articles recounting their personal stories, journalists describe how the truth became more important than their personal safety. In all cases they received information they knew to be dangerous, decided to publish it, and dealt with the consequences, which range widely in terms of the intensity of the violence against them. The motives for the suppression of the journalists were largely financial, such as in China's trying to protect the inflow of foreign investments, but include the political, when a few words of criticism of Zimbabwe's president led to a reporter's arrest and expulsion. Annotation ©2005 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Publishers Weekly

This hard-hitting collection shows that pressure and persecution are still inescapable aspects of a journalist's job description. Dadge (Casualty of War: The Bush Administration's Assault on a Free Press) gathers 14 mostly first-person stories from journalists on the obstacles and threats they have faced. Many of the reports concern underdeveloped countries-like Charles Arthur's account of the murder of Haitian radio journalist Jean Dominique, and Andrew Meldrum's portrait of Zimbabwe's campaign to demolish independent media-and follow the traditional, lamentable script of state repression. But Dadge also includes plenty of examples of the subtle but effective censorship imposed by private interests on Western journalists, including Tom Gutting's dismissal from the Texas City Sun for criticizing President Bush's handling of 9/11 in an opinion column, Stephen Kimber's account of the ideological strictures imposed by the Asper family on its Canadian newspaper chain, and Jasper Becker's story of the undermining of Hong Kong's once proud South China Morning Post by owners who toe the Beijing line to protect their Chinese investments. The journalists take on a range of targets, from overmighty bureaucrats to media conglomerates as well as their own colleagues' lazy collusion with official sources. The result is a vigorous defense of press freedoms by journalists who are unafraid to confront the powers that be. Photos. (Aug.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

David Dadge (Vienna, Austria), editor at the International Press Institute, is the author of Casualty of War: The Bush Administration's Assault on a Free Press. He writes frequently on the media and freedom of the press.