Be thankful for press freedom
So often as you watch American movies in which they celebrate Thanksgiving Day, you find people sitting around a table and each person present gets a chance to say what they are thankful for in their life.
Yes, I know, it is irritating and a cliché, but these days it feels like in our depressing times we also need to find something, no matter how small, to be thankful for to cheer ourselves up.
So, give it a go … Not so easy is it?
You know, we can complain about a lot of things, considering in Boksburg there are a lot of things that are going pear-shaped, especially service delivery.
We will not even talk about the cost of living (I am at this point of trying to find the golden nugget that simply has to be hidden in that chicken drumstick).
But you know what, I also learnt our food prices are not so incredibly insane. Yes, I know, you have just spilt coffee when reading that statement, but it is true.
Speaking to a friend in Oman, they pay more than R200 for a kilogramme of beef (of course you will find not find cattle grazing in that extreme heat), while apparently paying for stuff like internet data is just as costly.
So we should probably be thankful for the small things, such as cattle grazing in our pastures, and I am confident we will survive even this economic storm because we are strangely adaptable to adversity.
By the way, I have to really wonder if life is really all that terrible, considering how many people streamed to a recent big store opening in Brakpan and to the new mall in Midrand.
Or maybe the alternative is true – we survive on specials. Now doesn’t that make you feel special?
It really does seem we love to complain and moan, but there is definitely money on the streets, judging by shopping centres’ hive of activity and the truckload of smart SUVs pushing you off the road on a daily basis.
But there is one other thing that I am thankful for, and I mean this is all sincerity and this is something every person in this city should be thankful for – press freedom.
No really, go on your knees and sing an ode, or clap your hands or do a dance that there is press freedom, because we live in a country where there is thankfully free flow of information without the risk of being imprisoned in a cell sporting a hole in the floor as a toilet.
The right to freedom of speech of course has its limits, in the case where violence and hate is propagated (evident in a couple of social media posts lately).
This is a good thing, which makes you wonder why a certain political leader with a red beret is still allowed to incite violence without being properly reprimanded. Go figure.
Ever wondered what you would do without press freedom? Those who lived in the 1970s and 1980s will know about media censorship and how a government can manipulate information for its own propaganda.
Hitler played this propaganda card to the maximum and that did not end well. Right now in the world there are a lot of countries without press freedom, where journalists live in fear of being imprisoned or even killed.
Remember the attacks in Paris? On January 7, 2015 two brothers, Saïd and Chérif Kouachi, forced their way into the offices of the French satirical weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo.
Armed with assault rifles and other weapons, they killed 11 people and injured 11 others in the building. That was clearly an attack on press freedom.
Ban Ki-moon (no, this is not some kind of new diet), who is the UN Secretary-General, said in celebrating World Press Freedom Day on May 3 that human rights, democratic societies and sustainable development depend on the free flow of information.
And therefore, right to information depends on press freedom.
He said a free, independent and safe media environment is essential in the wake of journalists across the world too often being threatened, harassed, obstructed or even killed in the pursuit of information.
He urged all governments, politicians, businesses and citizens to commit to nurturing and protecting an independent, free media.
This is essential, and should remain a fundamental right in this country, because without it people will be less free and less empowered.
So yes, while we are sitting around this proverbial round table, clutching tightly onto our valuables, I am thankful for press freedom, and that Ki-moon agrees.
What are you thankful for?
