By Toby McIntosh
After Zimbabwe journalist Hopewell Chin’ono was jailed, charged with inciting public violence for reporting about suspect government purchases of medical supplies, three African journalism groups asked the World Bank and the African Development Bank to get involved.
Both banks declined.
Mara Warwick, the Bank’s Country Director for Zimbabwe, wrote back, saying noncommittally, “We regard the media as vitally important everywhere we work….”
Now media groups and civil society allies are mounting a campaign to persuade the Bank, and other international financial institutions (IFIs), to do more to help protect journalists. They are stressing the role reporters are playing in fighting corruption related to the bulge of spending on Covid-19.
“Covid-19 has provided a pretext for governments to restrict access to information, limit public participation and suppress independent media,” said Courtney Radsch at the outset of an Oct. 8 webinar. Radsch, the Advocacy Director for the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) chaired the session at which five journalists described increasing repression in their countries.
The World Bank did not participate, although the event was part of the Civil Society Policy Forum, a series of now virtual meetings conducted in advance of the World Bank/IMF Fall meetings. (A Bank or IMF official appeared at 16 of the 19 webinars.)
Persuading the IFIs to get involved may prove complicated. The World Bank’s support for the media has historically been limited largely to training journalists and to supporting systemic reforms such as improving access to information laws. Officials cite the Bank’s charter as a “non-political institution” as a reason to avoid “sensitive political issues.”
This should change, the media groups argue, in light of increasing attacks on the press and the importance of ensuring the integrity of the 770 projects on Covid-19 supported by the IFIs, to the tune of more than $95 billion, according to data gathered by the International Accountability Project.
In Turkey and Egypt, Radsch noted, the World Bank is funding projects “that explicitly address the importance of media and yet those countries have doubled down on their press freedom crackdown.”
“They have arrested and expelled journalists in retaliation for their coverage of the pandemic,” she said. “These conditions are making it harder for health care systems and citizens to be fully informed, which compromises health outcomes, poverty alleviation, and the ability to effectively and transparency address the social and economic impacts of the pandemic.”
“If you want accountability, if you want facts, you will have to take action to protect people who are doing that,” said Maria Ressa, Chief Executive Officer of Rappler, who has been fighting multiple legal actions by Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s government. “Journalists have never been as under attack as we are today,” she said.
The media groups are seeking policy actions from the IFIs and asking IFIs to engage in specific egregious cases.
Multiple Suggestions for IFI Actions
The panelists at the webinar offered more than dozen ideas for IFI activity to support the media. The loose coalition of groups has not coalesced around a package of proposals.
Here’s a list of ideas from the webinar, supplemented with some from later EYE interviews with those involved:
– Speaking out when cases of press repression occur,
– Making a specific commitment to freedom of the press,
– Requiring creation of national mechanisms to protect journalists,
– Urging recipient governments to investigate complaints from the media,
– Requesting information from federal prosecutors about crimes against the press,
– Adopting media freedom as part of the “safeguards” for human rights to which recipient countries must adhere,
– Asking, as a condition for loans, how the government will act if allegations of reprisal are made.
– Training Bank officials on how work with reporters and ensure their safety,
– Requiring national commitments on media freedom,
– Creating an “enabling environment” for the media,
– Improving World Bank transparency,
– Having the World Bank create an “alliance” with the media to expose corruption,
– Having digital transformation funds provided to government also go to nongovernmental organization,
– Providing money for media development,
– Creating protocols to back up March statement on reprisals,
– Asking governments/federal prosecutors to provide the Bank with more information on attacks on the press, and
– Ensuring that the COVID-19 emergency isn’t used as an excuse to reduce transparency.
Help With International Media Fund?
Ressa drew attention to a feasibility study for an International Fund for Pubic Interest Media, prepared by BBC Media Action. The report even contemplates the possibility of World Bank involvement in administratively hosting the fund.
“In informal feedback ” the report says, “World Bank staff highlighted multiple ways through which World Bank loans and operations could, provided there was a credible and knowledgeable institutional interlocutor with which to partner or link strategically, possibly operate to create more enabling economic conditions for independent media.”
The feasibility study lays out possibilities “designed to be indicative of the potential opportunities that exist with multilateral institutions such as the World Bank but could apply equally to other regional development banks or similar entities.”
Bank Reprisal Policy Still Not Implemented
One opening may exist because of March statement in which the Bank said, “We do not tolerate reprisals and retaliation against those who share their views about Bank-financed projects.”
This reprisal commitment, however, is not yet backed up by operational guidance and so has not been applied. Nor does it mention reprisals against journalists. Also, while the Bank and other IFIs frequently invoke the value of the media and transparency, there’s no official Bank statement supporting freedom of the press.
Suggestions for implementing the reprisal policy were made recently by Oxfam International and the Bank Information Center (an NGO). “It is now critical that the institution put in place clear requirements and procedures for identification and prevention of, and response to, reprisals and retaliation,” they wrote.
More specifically they propose that the Bank develop tools to screen for reprisals and for potential reprisals “in a similar way to how they screen for other project-related risks.” Further, “The Bank should also proactively engage with the government to communicate its stance on reprisals both on a routine basis as well as when considering projects taking place in a particularly risky context and throughout its engagement.”
Past Bank Reports Laud Contribution of Media
The World Bank has acknowledged the value the media over the years.
“Access to media makes government more responsive to citizen’s needs,” according to the World Bank’s World Development Report of 2017.
A 2011 report, Developing Independent Media as an Institution of Accountable Governance; A How-To Guide, concluded:
One message that comes through loud and clear is this: Country-level demand and leadership are critical to changing the flat line that opens this report to an upward slope. Countries and their international partners need to focus on building broad domestic support and buy-in for a vigorous, independent and economically successful media sector that has a mandate to serve its audience as a source of truthful information. This will require integrating a better understanding of the needs of such a media into development plans and into the new institutions that developing countries are building. It will require high-level leadership and strong technical support from outsiders and from other countries in the South that are making more progress.
The Bank’s performance has not always matched its appreciative statements,
A 2009 article in FreedomInfo.org said, “The goal of strengthening the media as one way to fight corruption was adopted by the World Bank in 2006, but the promise has gone virtually unfulfilled.”
No Reply From Bank Officials
Eyeonglobaltransparency.net received no reply to an Oct. 8 request to interview a Bank official on the subject.
The other speakers at the Oct. 8 webinar were Vusumuzi Sifile, Executive Director, Panos Institute Southern Africa; Oscar Martinez, Journalist, El Faro; Baris Altintas, Journalist, President MLSA, The Media and Law Studies Association (Turkey); Leopoldo Maldonado, Director, Article 19 Mexico & Central America.
The groups involved on the loose coalition include Article 19, IFEX, CPJ, the Global Forum for Media Development and the Coalition for Human Rights in Development. CPJ is monitoring 10 types of global press freedom violations, including laws against ‘fake news,’ journalists’ arrests, and surveillance.
