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Role Of The Free Press In UK Foreign Policy - 2002 speech by Jack Straw 
Role Of The Free Press In UK Foreign Policy Speech given by UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, annual awards ceremony of the Foreign Press Association, London, 26 November 2002 I am delighted to be here tonight at the annual awards ceremony of the Foreign Press Association. This is a tremendous occasion and a tribute to the work not only of the many distinguished journalists who have been nominated for awards tonight but to the Association itself. One of the latest roles the FPA has taken on is to host the Government's daily briefings. This gives the media the opportunity to marvel at the FPA's headquarters in Carlton House Terrace, which was once the home of one of this country's greatest statesmen, William Gladstone. He was in his time, of course, a famous public speaker. Indeed in the Midlothian campaign in the 1870s he would often speak for an hour and a half at a stretch. He observed, apparently without irony, that those who fainted during these orations were passed out over the heads of the crowd looking 'like the dead'. I do not intend to test your endurance to that extent this evening. For some the fact that political debate these days tends to be conducted in a more manageable fashion is a matter for regret. But public debate today is more energetic and better informed than it has ever been. The huge advances in information technology has given access, which would have been unimagined just a decade ago. News from around the globe reaches our homes almost instantaneously by television, radio and the internet. Our world has truly become a single media village. This communications revolution has played an enormous role in creating a real sense of a global community, and has served as a vital catalyst for global action to address the problems of war, famine, disease and oppression. Every time the media reports a human rights abuse, a stolen election or a looming famine - that global community is strengthened. People are no longer willing to accept that morality stops at state borders. They rightly demand action. In the 1930s Neville Chamberlain could claim of a fellow European country that it was 'a far off country & of whom we know nothing'. Even if that what was true then, there is no country, no corner of the world however remote, however isolated, of which it is true today. There are still governments that try to deny access to foreign correspondents, jam the BBC or block the internet. But the media have brought home successfully the message that foreign policy is relevant to everyone wherever they live. It was the pictures of famine in Ethiopia in 1984 that awakened the world to the tragedy that was happening there. And through the media Bob Geldof's Live Aid was able to raise millions of pounds in public donations, which, together with action by Governments, helped relieve that suffering. In Bosnia in the early 1990s the appalling inhumanity of the conflict and the ethnic cleansing of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians was brought home to public opinion by the many journalists who risked their lives to cover the conflict. It was they more than anyone else who stung Governments into action. In Kosovo where the world acted against Milosevic to prevent humanitarian disaster the media showed the effects of Milosevic's policies, and showed also the consequences of the allied military action. Few now challenge that the allies took the right action. One has only to look at the transformation that has occurred in the region - a democratically elected President in Serbia, a Kosovo with elected institutions and Slobodan Milosevic on trial in The Hague. But for all democratic governments accounting for the means as well as arguing for the ends has rightly become a way of life. And in Afghanistan, last year, it was the pictures of celebration on the liberation of Kabul that showed more than anything that we were right to do what we did. Girls going to school for the first time in years and children flying the kites that had been banned under the Taliban. Sometimes reporting from the world's trouble spots has been presented as a question of technology: the inevitable impact of mobile phones, videophones, satellite technology and the internet. But you can't send a piece of technology to report from Kandahar or Kinshasa - you have to send a journalist, a camera operator, a sound engineer. And each year there is an ever-increasing toll of those who have died in order to bring home the news. Some are caught in the crossfire, some are deliberately targeted by warring factions, some arrested or killed by their own Governments. So, tonight I want to pay tribute to the media professionals who continue to risk their lives to shine light on abuses in dark corners of the world. The dramatic increase in media access and opportunity has rightly led to enhanced scrutiny of governments across the world. For democratic governments, this comes as part of the territory of operating in a free society - even if, as a result, we are the subject of press criticism. But for tyrannical regimes, the international media plays a vital role in making it harder for the suppression of freedoms to go unnoticed. Little wonder then that it is a free press which is often the first victim of those in power who fear democracy and accountability. In Zimbabwe, for example, the Mugabe regime has imposed more and more desperate restrictions on the media in an attempt to conceal its oppression of basic human rights and its economic incompetence. But these measures have failed, not just because of the bravery of the many journalists inside Zimbabwe, but because it is increasingly difficult for undemocratic regimes to curtail popular access to the free international media. The satellite dish and the internet are now among the greatest enemies of tyranny. Just as the dictators of central and eastern Europe could not hold back the tide of freedom, so other oppressive governments elsewhere cannot suppress the truth forever. Iraq Saddam Hussein's record of oppressing the Iraqi people, intimidating his neighbors, and defying the United Nations is second to none. We in the international community cannot allow this to go on indefinitely. The unanimous vote in favor of Resolution 1441 has sent a powerful signal of an international community with a common purpose. The UN has declared itself ready to accept its responsibilities. We will continue to build and maintain the broadest domestic and international support for the policy on Iraq. Last night, the House of Commons gave an overwhelmingly positive endorsement to the United Nations and to the British Government's strategy, and we will continue to make our case to the British public. But we will also seek every opportunity to set out our case to those in Arab countries, and to the people of Iraq itself. Although Iraq has no free press, some Iraqis do have satellite dishes with access to international television and many listen regularly to radio stations broadcast outside Iraq, such as the BBC World Service. We will be seeking to address the Iraqi people directly. Our quarrel is not with them but with the regime which has made their lives a misery and has turned a potentially prosperous and successful country into an international pariah. And we will continue to resist those voices which seek to portray our stance as anti-Muslim. Our aim is an Iraq which no longer possesses weapons of terror, no longer defies the UN, and no longer oppresses its people. Resolution 1441 sets out a pathway to a peaceful solution of this issue. If Saddam complies then there will be no military action. The choice is his. We want to deal with Iraq by the force of law, not the force of arms. But we know that the Iraqi regime will not comply without the credible threat of force, and therefore while we do not seek confrontation, we will not shirk it. In 1945 countries of the world came together to declare a United Nations to help secure peace, justice and freedom for all the peoples of the world. We have some way to go to complete this task - and perhaps we never will. But with the work of a free press helping to expose oppression, together with an international community determined to act in support of the vision of the UN's founders, we will ensure that we continue to move closer to achieving it. |