Montreal, Tuesday, May 2, 2006

I am deeply moved to be here with you today, to see old colleagues, friends, so many familiar faces. This celebration to mark World Press Freedom Day has a personal resonance for me. Allow me to explain as I take you back to my childhood for a moment. As a child, I learned that things could change dramatically from one day to the next. I knew from an early age that freedom, speech and respect for human dignity could be easily, shamelessly abused. This early realization left its mark; it may in fact be why I was drawn to journalism, a profession that I practised with passion and resolve for many years. It may also explain my commitment to Reporters Without Borders. I grew up in a country where journalists were imprisoned, murdered.

But my first lesson in journalism came as I followed Haitian journalists when, at the invitation of National Film Board of Canada filmmaker Tahani Rached, I returned to my country of birth in 1987 as a research assistant and interpreter to film a documentary on Haiti’s first free elections. With the many resources available to us, the Canadian team, we were to document the work of Radio Haïti Inter journalists. What is perhaps most striking as you approach Radio Haïti Inter is the façade riddled with bullets, the only reminder of the repeated attacks to silence the women and men working within its walls. Radio Haïti Inter, whose founder was Jean-Dominique, a man I had seen work and for whom I had the greatest respect. He will never again take to the airwaves. The executioners of free speech also got the better of him and took his life. No one has ever answered for this crime. His family and friends are still demanding justice.

Everything about the way the journalists I met in Haiti worked, their meagre resources, their paltry salaries, filled me with admiration. I saw them walk several kilometres to reach completely isolated segments of the population. Though they often felt the pangs of hunger, they were filled with an unwavering determination. And the passion with which they covered the events, reporting with such colour and zeal, using language—both French and Creole—rich and full of imagery, at long last breaking with decades propaganda.

As I watched them, I finally understood the power of the microphone, of letting others speak and be heard, in a climate where terror still maimed and killed. When the mic was turned on, I saw women and men stand up to fear and speak out, risking their lives. Speaking out in rebellion, openly, out loud. In Haiti, speaking out is like a release; to the Haitian people, having suffered under the painful and humiliating yoke of slavery, it was a victory.

Plantation slaves, stripped of themselves and their native languages, ingeniously created a new language, Creole, to satisfy an urgent need to communicate. And those of their descendents who mastered French wholly appropriated the language of the old slave masters for themselves. Both languages have set them free; both give them a vehicle to speak out and express themselves. “Atansyon! Nou ka analfabèt, min nou pas bèt!” [translation: “Make no mistake! We may be illiterate, but we are by no means stupid!”] I saw journalists with that same conviction, very much aware of their civic responsibility, informing citizens, but also teaching them how to exercise their fundamental democratic rights and cast their ballots. To go to the polls as though reborn. In 1987, voter turnout was phenomenal—over 80%—due in large part to the work of the journalists. But now let me remind you of what followed: Duvalierist militias, on seeing the winds of change, swept through the polling stations and massacred hundreds of voters. In the escalating terror, beginning two days before the elections, journalists were the first to be targeted; initially, the local journalists, but foreign teams as well, including ours. They fired their machine guns on us for hours, and our sound man was hit in the back of the neck with a bullet fragment.

The lessons I learned from that experience stayed with me during my eighteen years as a journalist.

Why do so many journalists risk torture and imprisonment, why are they so willing to put their very lives in danger? Passion for their profession? The sense of adventure? There is more to it than that, as Céline could tell you. These women and men share an ideal. They have a deep conviction that their work will open our eyes. They inform us and teach us to value free speech, particularly in places where propaganda and censorship overshadow the truth.

Let us take a moment to acknowledge the courage—the temerity—that journalists and news organizations need to carry out their work in regions rife with misery, conflict, horror. I know first‑hand their power to liberate and bring about social change. The threat that the media represent to regimes seeking to silence them systematically, sometimes brutally, is indicative of their scope and power.

One third of the world’s people still live in countries where there is no freedom, and more journalists lost their lives in 2005 than in each of the previous ten years. I would therefore like to take this opportunity to pay tribute to all of the women and men who have given their lives in the name of free speech. My thoughts are also with our fellow journalists who, at this very moment, are languishing in prison cells around the world: we know who, where, why and how; we cannot pretend not to know when organizations like Reporters Without Borders are there to ensure we never forget.

There is yet another issue that concerns me, and I would like to begin by quoting Jean-Paul Mari, who covered the genocide in Rwanda for the Nouvel Observateur and who wrote with great emotion: [translation] “The words that I wove together across the screen before sending them out into the world (…) those words drawn together, floating across a fragile screen, yet still standing black on white, to my mind represented all of those people who had disappeared, whom I was not leaving alone in the dark (…) as though the horror, once written down, once pulled from the shadow of the unspoken, of silence, were finally unmasked, no longer acceptable, no longer ignored, no longer a forgotten crime against a fellow human being (…) if we do not decry inhumanity, then evil will surely triumph.”

Through the words that they weave and draw together, as Mari put it, journalists are engaged in the duty to remember, in the need to understand, in the fight against indifference, against a feeling of powerlessness, against ignorance. Having said that, journalism, which is increasingly subject to economic constraints, the long-term effects of which are difficult to predict, is becoming a product, a commodity, a profit. There is no doubt about this: like any other business, news organizations must ensure their financial viability and, if possible, turn a profit. Ratings, circulation, increased ad revenues—these are the dictates to which journalists must now submit. With this market‑driven logic, the risk is that profitability will gain the upper hand over accuracy; it may even yield misinformation.

To these ever-increasing financial pressures on news organizations and their staff, I would add the concentration of media. If this trend remains unchecked, it may reduce the independence that is so vital to free expression and give rise to a homogenization of content. I would again like to ask two questions that I raised during the presentation of the Michener Awards: How can there ever be debates, which encourage citizens to think and reflect, if there is no differing vision; if we are satisfied with repeating the same news in the same way, often without even verifying the source, from one medium to the next—in some cases, the same rumour, or the same lie, the same point of view, particularly if it is the most “marketable”? How can journalists report on the world in a feature article, an investigation, or a documentary, how can they show us all there is to see and bring us to understand, if there is nowhere where they are free to think or act? These issues have much to do with the democratic health of our societies.

We live in a world where the speed of communication gives us instant access to information. Every day, information of every kind is circulated around the world, and we are bombarded with fleeting, instantaneous images. At our fingertips is every imaginable communications vehicle. It is our responsibility to make them true instruments of democracy. It is our responsibility to put them to use as a forum for expressing diverse points of view and ideas. Because the more information is able to circulate, the more our fellow citizens will have access to it, and the greater their opportunity to participate in the democratic life of our societies.

However, under this steady stream of news washing over us, sweeping us along, the complexity of life can begin to erode. But this complexity needs a more subtle approach. Because the contemplation so vital to your work and to a better understanding of events so that we might participate with insight and awareness in the evolution of this world, well, such contemplation takes time. Journalists are giving up on this cornerstone of the profession, increasingly giving in to the demands of machines that produce and market information. The journalistic role and commitment, the very ethics of the profession are suffering.

On the occasion of World Press Freedom Day, I have one wish: that the efforts to record humanity at its most heinous and most sublime will find their rightful place and time of expression. And to this I add that journalists once again shed light on this world and offer a glimmer of hope to the peoples and individuals of this earth who crave truth and freedom.

I would like to make special mention of someone here this evening with whom I often shared these thoughts and concerns about the profession. I am delighted to see Michel Roy, for whom I have the greatest respect. He has practised journalism, but he has also observed it, as a diplomat, as a professor, even more closely on the Quebec Press Council, where we first met, and then again with Reporters Without Borders, where we supported the foundation of its Canadian chapter. It is an honour for me to pay tribute to you tonight on behalf of all of us. For me, you will forever be a man wholly dedicated to throwing light upon our world. Michel, please allow me to present you with this magnificent book by Yann Arthus‑Bertrand entitled La terre vue du ciel, in recognition of your commitment and contribution to Reporters Without Borders. Michel, if you please.