DATE: Saturday, May 3, 1997                 TAG: 9705030001

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B6   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: OPINION 

SOURCE: BY ROY HOFFMAN 

                                            LENGTH:   84 lines

FREEDOM OF THE PRESS IS YOUR FREEDOM!

Journalism, said Walter Lippmann, is a picture of reality we can act upon. In assembling that picture, it is essential for journalists to enjoy free expression.

The founders of our democracy enshrined free speech at the outset of the Bill of Rights. Today, on World Press Freedom Day, we celebrate this freedom and condemn those who wield the censor's pen - or gun - against those laboring to tell the truth through newspapers, magazines, radio reports, television news, photo images and Web sites around the planet.

World Press Freedom Day commemorates the 1991 Windhoek Declaration - principles stated by journalists from the African continent ``to preserve and extend freedom of the press around the world.''

For journalists it is an often chaotic and dangerous world.

The Committee to Protect Journalists' report, ``Attacks on the Press in 1996,'' is a 375-page chronicle of the latest abuses.

Its numbers tell a frightening story: 27 journalists were killed last year; 185 were imprisoned in 24 different countries.

``Turkey is once again the single most egregious example of a government that criminalizes independent reporting,'' said CPJ's executive director. Ethiopia, Kuwait, Nigeria, China and Burma also are among the most dangerous places for journalists.

The individual portraits of journalist-victims tell a story of fear - and courage - that comes in many languages.

Read about Jorge Luis Monroy, a radio commentator in Honduras beaten by two men while broadcasting a show on politics. Or about Nourredine Guittoune, editor of L'Independant in Algeria, wounded by gunmen. Turn to the page on Belarus, where police reacted to a march on the 10th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster by beating or arresting several journalists, among them Tsesary Golinsky of Gazeta Wyborcha and Vladzimir Dzyuba of Belarus Radio.

In Jordan, it is a crime to speak ill of the government; in Cuba, it is illegal for a journalist to be, as the Committee to Protect Journalists puts it, ``irreverent.''

The Freedom-to-Write Committee of Poets and Playwrights, Editors and Essayists, and Novelists (PEN) gave its 1997 PEN/Barbara Goldsmith award to Nigeria's Godwin Agbroko, editor of The Week. Agbroko was abducted by Nigeria's State Security service and, PEN believes, is being held at a detention center in Lagos. PEN reports that ``he is to be charged with criticizing Nigeria's military.''

Where ``rogue governments'' are in control, PEN concludes, ``multinational corporations and businesses must be persuaded to play a larger part in promoting democratic freedoms.''

Violence against journalists occurs in the United States, too, and we must continue to work hard at bringing perpetrators to justice. This past year, defendants were sentenced in the 1992 drug cartel murder of Manuel de Dios Unannue, editor of El Diario-La Prensa - in front of a restaurant in New York City.

Wherever violence occurs, it often springs from the anxiety of those in power who can only maintain it by brute force. The drug lords of New York, the hooligans outside a Central American radio station, the authorities at a Belarus rally, the military police in Nigeria - what they fear is the truth. Goliath, today, faces a David armed with note-pad, camera and modem.

The silencing of journalists, either by edict or street-corner violence, turns up the volume on the fate of a nation. As China resumes its control of Hong Kong this summer, the world will be watching to see how Hong Kong's freedoms are affected. We will know, in part, by what happens to its journalists.

The murder of journalist Veronica Guerin in Ireland by drug barons she was investigating has galvanized the public's concern over crime. That issue may have an impact on the upcoming election for the country's prime minister.

On World Press Freedom Day, we remember to stay vigilant about encroachments on the freedom of our own press. Every public meeting that is closed to the reporter, every back-room deal done in the state house, every special committee that conceals its findings, takes away from honest dialogue.

``Once newspapers drew people to the public square,'' says Bill Moyers. ``They provided a culture of community conversation.''

The newspaper is now joined by other forms of media, and the public square takes in the world, but the community conversation keeps on.

On World Press Freedom Day we celebrate and defend that conversation, and the picture of reality that allows us to think, and act, as responsible citizens. MEMO: Roy Hoffman is writer in residence at the Mobile Register in

Mobile, Ala.

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