For 13 years, Reporters without Borders has been giving French and foreign news staffs an opportunity to sponsor journalists imprisoned simply for doing what they were being paid to do : to seek out and report the truth.
Because jailing journalists is tantamount to eliminating essential witnesses and threatens everyone's right to be informed, the press freedom defence organisation has been fighting relentlessly since 1985 and working around the clock to protect freedom of information.
Each year on Sponsorship Day, sponsors from around the world (now numbering over 160)-from the media, journalism festivals, press clubs or municipalities in Europe-are called upon to take specific steps to request the release of their sponsored journalist by making his or her situation known to the media so that his case will not be forgotten and thereby protect the journalist from abusive jailers.
Whenever news staffs make their readers, listeners, television viewers and Web users aware of their "adopted" journalist's case, whenever they protest to the authorities concerned and send letters to their sponsored journalist and establish contact with his or her families, they are actively helping Reporters without Borders to provide support to these men and women whose only crime is that they rejected the premise that might makes right and have maintained their belief in democracy.
Because jailing journalists is tantamount to eliminating essential witnesses and threatens everyone's right to be informed, the press freedom defence organisation has been fighting relentlessly since 1985 and working around the clock to protect freedom of information.
Each year on Sponsorship Day, sponsors from around the world (now numbering over 160)-from the media, journalism festivals, press clubs or municipalities in Europe-are called upon to take specific steps to request the release of their sponsored journalist by making his or her situation known to the media so that his case will not be forgotten and thereby protect the journalist from abusive jailers.
Whenever news staffs make their readers, listeners, television viewers and Web users aware of their "adopted" journalist's case, whenever they protest to the authorities concerned and send letters to their sponsored journalist and establish contact with his or her families, they are actively helping Reporters without Borders to provide support to these men and women whose only crime is that they rejected the premise that might makes right and have maintained their belief in democracy.