adminself-arrogated role of policing the world. Crudely placed, the West expects world governments to promote an unregulated media environment that guarantees non-interference by the State into media matters.
It is, however, worth noting that this yardstick is meant for other countries and never for Western nations who regularly breach this media benchmark without any qualms.
History is replete with cases where Western countries have continuously suppressed media freedom without attracting the reproach usually visited upon the other members of the globe who are said to repress the media.
Notably, on November 12, 2011, before the Northern Alliance (backed by NATO forces) marched into the Afghan capital, Kabul, they deliberately bombed the studios of the Arab TV station Al-Jazeera as a tactical move to silence the media organisation which, in their view, presented a huge obstacle to the West’s propaganda bid to woo Muslims into their ideological orbit.
It is of significance to note that the destruction of the Al-Jazeera office by the Alliance forces was an indubitable act of media strangulation and a pre-meditated move to enforce a media blackout that would ensure that whatever massacres committed by the Alliance would either not be reported at all or get scant coverage.
In fact, to ensure that their hideous tracks were covered, the Alliance forces also seized and assaulted into silence Al-Jazeera’s Kabul correspondent, Tayseer Allouni, who had become world famous for his reports showing the devastation caused by the US bombing of the Afghan capital.
In a way, these so-called champions of media freedom successfully muzzled a media organisation that they saw as a hindrance to their military and imperial designs in Afghanistan.
In this sense, the West stood guilty of abrogating the principle of media freedom with impunity.
In France, the highest administrative court, the Council of State, on December 13, 2004 ordered a blanket ban on the Lebanese television station, Al-Manaar, on spurious grounds that it broadcast programmes that encouraged hatred against Israel.
The order was specifically directed at the French satellite operators, Eutelsat, who provided satellite access to the rest of Europe. In effect, Al-Manaar was blocked from broadcasting its pro-Islamic programmes into the continent.
Al-Manaar was arbitrarily indicted for its constant and unflinching stance of beaming programmes that unsparingly highlighted the deteriorating plight of Palestinians at the hands of the Israeli army.
Such a stance was viewed by the French and their Western compatriots as fanning hatred against Israel and therefore intolerable. As a result, the West proved that they would irrefutably block any media organisations that broadcast programmes they deemed to be inimical to their imperial cause.
Conversely, as the Western countries continued to block pro-Islamic media organisations, they were busy raising the banner of media freedom in defence of some subversive pro-Western media practitioners elsewhere in the world who they claimed were under persecution from their home countries.
In this regard, the case of Salman Rushdie of The Satanic Verses infamy quickly comes to mind. The fellow published the book, The Satanic Verses, in September 1988 and courted the ire of all Muslims in the world due to its palpably irreverent depiction of Prophet Muhammad.
The row ignited a backlash that saw the Muslim world calling for the head of Rushdie, accusing him of blasphemy. The ensuing demonstrations and searches for the author compelled his adopted country, Britain, to turn him into a champion of free speech.
In camaraderie, the rest of the Western world ironically rallied behind him, arguing that he was a victim of a religion intent on stifling media freedom and freedom of expression.
Calls for the release of Rushdie to duly face justice in the Muslim world were met with unbridled scorn.
Again, in 2006, the West made deafening noises for the release of Rosana Saberi, a freelance journalist, who was formally tried by the Iranian Court of Appeal and sentenced to eight years in prison for spying for the US.
Similarly, a Western cartoonist caused a worldwide row when his work deriding Prophet Muhammad was published in the Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, on September 30, 2005.
As expected, the cartoon ruffled feathers in the Muslim world, whose members spontaneously responded by staging demonstrations in various capitals to register their anger against the clear denigration of their exalted Prophet.
Arab League Secretary General Amir Mousa weighed into the fray, accusing the West of employing double standards when it came to media freedom and freedom of expression.
“What about freedom of expression when anti-Semitism is involved?” asked Mr Mousa.
“Then it is not freedom of expression. Then it is a crime. But when Islam is insulted, certain powers … raise the issue of freedom of expression. Freedom of expression should be one yardstick, not two or three,” he said.
At the time, the Western-based media watchdog, Reporters Without Borders, said the reaction in the Arab world “betrays a lack of understanding” of press freedom as “an essential accomplishment of democracy”.
It became apparent that Westerners would do anything to protect errant journalists who do not only promote their interests but also those who denigrate other people’s religious beliefs and icons.
The height of the double standards came to the fore during the recent uprisings in North Africa which eventually became known as the “Arab Spring”. The West celebrated the significant use of social media such as Facebook and Twitter by the protesters to plan, organise and communicate.
The West applauded Twitter and Facebook as a democratic tool – and a powerful one that clearly assisted the people of Tunisia, Egypt and Libya in their struggle against so-called repressive governments.
In the course of these uprisings, governments that sought to block the use of social media for security reasons were branded undemocratic and averse to media freedom.
Unbeknown to the West, similar social uprisings were to be replicated in Britain where the youth, demonstrating against police brutality and other social and economic ills, made significant use of social media, particularly the impregnable Blackberry messenger service, to organize themselves.
Unashamedly, unlike in the Arab Spring where protestors were hailed as champions of democracy and human rights, the British government collectively branded their protesters as criminals who had no rights.
Hurried efforts were made by the British government to suspend the use of the Blackberry messenger services, with the Member of Parliament for Tottenham, David Lammy, calling on the communication giant to immediately shut down its mobile messaging service to forestall any further communication among the rioters.
The British Government subsequently unleashed experts at the Government Communication Headquarters (GCHQ), the listening post, to try and intercept social media communications between the “criminals”.
As a result, six people – the youngest being 17, the oldest 22 – appeared in courts in England and Scotland accused of using Facebook to organize riots.
This remains an irrefutable case of double standards where social media in the Arab Spring was praised as a tool of democracy but was roundly condemned in the UK as a tool of incitement.
In Zimbabwe, the West has made fervent attempts to push for media self regulation and has, in this vein, founded and funded civic organisations like the Voluntary Media Council of Zimbabwe (VMCZ) to stand as an independent media body responsible for overseeing media operations.
While they are feverishly pushing for media self- regulation in Zimbabwe, Western countries are busy whipping their media organisations into line. In Britain, the government flexed its regulatory muscle when the weekly newspaper, The News of the World, went astray and surreptitiously infringed on other peoples’ rights by illegally hacking into their private conversations.
Pressure from the government and outside government forced the 168-year-old News of the World to shut down.
Yet the British constantly condemn Zimbabwe for equally coming down hard on errant media organisations in the country.
It is puzzling that while these so-called champions of media freedom, in connivance with their local Zimbabwean proxies, are at the forefront of pushing for media reforms in the country, they are concomitantly engaged in treacherous attempts to muzzle progressive journalists who do not subscribe to their imperial designs by placing them on their sanctions list.
This is a case of unadulterated hypocrisy that the West continues to exhibit to the world.
The West preaches media freedom only when it suits and promotes its imperial designs but shamelessly frowns at the same freedom when it poses a danger to its interests.
We should therefore vigilantly guard against being driven by this double-faced and fork-tongued world policeman into promulgating untenable laws and reforms that will, at the end of the day, compromise our national security and territorial integrity.
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Online Reporter
Bongani Ndlovu