Just in case you ever had any doubt that the United Nations will only be happy once it has rolled back our freedoms one at a time, news came last week that the world body has now turned its attention to the freedom of the press. U.N. Attacks Freedom of the Press

Just in case you ever had any doubt that the United Nations will only be happy once it has rolled back our freedoms one at a time, news came last week that the world body has now turned its attention to the freedom of the press.

A U.N.-authored report, ostensibly penned with the fanciful notion of fighting terrorism, includes restricting press freedom worldwide as one of its primary recommendations. Indeed, in the report, the U.N. endorses "voluntary" codes to restrict journalists' ability to do any number of things including, of course, interviewing terrorists.

The model for such a voluntary code is now in place in Russia, where the government has routinely closed down newspapers and broadcast media outlets that it deems too friendly to Chechen rebels or anyone else on its enemies list. The Russian version of the code requires that journalists seek permission from the police before they undertake any reporting that might be suspect.

Columnist Mark Fitzgerald, writing for Editor & Publisher magazine, adds this keen observation:

Expect this nonsense -- in which the police and government effectively deputize the press as enforcement agents - - to get a respectful hearing at the General Assembly. After all, only last week, the U.N. re-launched its discredited Human Rights Commission as the Human Rights Council -- and promptly elected as members such well-known lovers of press freedom as Cuba, China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Tunisia.

Needless to say, the U.N.'s anti-terrorism proposals aren't exactly full of gusto either. Indeed, one could reasonably put aside the report and wonder whether the world body had mistaken the target of their anti-terrorism efforts, deciding to target reporters instead of indiscriminate killers.

While U.N. pronouncements will have no effect in the War on Terror, the the world body's attack on press freedom will provide an important means for dictators and other totalitarian regimes to justify further crackdowns within their own borders.

We've written many times about the importance of a free press, and the importance of defending our freedoms even if the content that's being targeted is inflammatory or disgusting.

No one likes to see the terrorists on Al Jazeera, parading around. But the only way for people around the world to understand and value freedom is for them to see and understand major threats to that freedom for themselves.

Of course, the U.N. isn't interested in that because the world body is an organization of governments, not peoples. And the banana republics and third-rate regimes that dominate the U.N. have no interest in seeing their peoples free to do anything. So driven by its Lilliputian members and its own radical agenda, the U.N. persists in attacking freedom, whenever and however it can.

June 1, 2006
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