FRANCAISReporters sans frontières - Comments
5) Public Relations
-RSF has contributed to raise public awareness on press freedom as a fundamental human right. Denunciation is at the core of its mission. Consequently, RSF is not confronted with the dilemma faced by humanitarian NGOs that sometimes have to keep silent in order to be able to carry out their relief operations in the field. On the contrary, its militants do not hesitate to demonstrate in the streets, disrupt conferences and lead spectacular actions to question the media and the population. For instance in December 2003, at the ski resort of Courchevel, RSF demonstrated in front of the holiday home of the King of Morocco, Mohammed VI, to ask for the release of its local correspondent Ali Lmrabet, a satirical journalist who was sentenced to 4 years’ imprisonment. In the same vein, Robert Ménard climbed on the top of the cathedral Notre-Dame to disrupt the exhibition of the Olympic flame in Paris in April 2008. Generally speaking, an official of the association, Vincent Brossel, explains that RSF tries to reconcile the rigorous research work of Amnesty International with the non-violent method of action of Greenpeace.
-Thanks to an easy access to the media, the credibility of RSF is quite high among the public as well as within national and international institutions. Today, the UN backs the World Press Freedom Day, originally an initiative of RSF.
-The strategy of RSF, which created a website in 1994, requires the mediatization of “individual tragedies” likely to touch public opinion. Following a journalistic logic, the victim has more value if he/she is French or if his/her case illustrates a topic in current affairs. In this respect, Brice Fleutiaux is emblematic: a French photographer, he was kidnapped by Chechen fighters in 1999, and RSF mobilized until his liberation. The campaign proved a double success because it also helped to raise public awareness on the difficulties to inform in conflict areas. Other operations, on the other hand, have failed, like with the Tunisian Taoufik bin Brik. For instance, RSF lost control of its campaign for Taslima Nasreen, a Bangladeshi writer it invited to France in March 1994 and against whom Muslim fundamentalists had issued a fatwa. During her visit in Paris, the media distorted the facts by blaming the Bangladeshi government without worrying about the consequences of such an accusation on the young woman upon her return to Dacca. “In such a commotion, explains Robert Ménard, the French only remember that Taslima Nasreen escaped from a dictatorship that wanted to physically eliminate her. The writer became a symbol of the fight for the freedom of expression, which was in part our fault. She was untouchable and thus no one tried to rectify the facts.”
