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By Jean-Paul Marthoz

All around the planet, authoritarian rulers and their officials hold forth about the "responsibility of the press."

Most of the time, their preaching and talk of the need for codes of conduct or ethical guidelines serve to clip the wings of independent journalists and tame the press. Their invocation of lofty notions of patriotism, honor, reputation, and respect for authority are meant to deter investigations and exposs of their abuses of power or ill-acquired wealth.

Ethics are also brandished when the press covers sensitive subjects, such as religion, nationalism, or ethnicity. Under the pretext of protecting minorities against hate speech, or of preventing incitement to violence, governments often strive to censor stories that are in the public interest and should be told.

In authoritarian countries, calls for journalists to exercise a sense of responsibility or decency are mostly code for censorship. In Egypt, after the overthrow of the Muslim Brotherhood-led government in July 2013, the new military-backed rulers immediately announced their intention to create a journalistic code of ethics and made its adoption a condition for lifting existing censorship.

In Ecuador, President Rafael Correa has been indulging in media bashing for years, calling journalists unethical, trash-talking, or liars. After his landslide re-election in February 2013, he warned, as reported by CPJ correspondent John Otis, that one thing that has to be fixed is the press, which totally lacks ethics and scruples. Correa has since fixed the press through a new communications law that severely restricts press freedom by establishing government regulation of editorial content and giving the authorities power to impose arbitrary sanctions on the press.

In June 2013, the Sri Lankan government tried to impose a new code of media ethics in order, according to Keheliya Rambukwella, the minister of mass media and information, to create a salutary media culture. Although the protests of national and international journalists associations forced the government to backtrack, some observers fear that the code might resurface. The media code was part of a sustained campaign to control the media and curtail dissent, Brad Adams, the Asia director for Human Rights Watch, told CPJ. Its vagueness would likely have led to greater self-censorship to avoid government retaliation. The code prohibited criticisms affecting foreign relations and content that promotes anti-national attitudes. It also forbade material against the integrity of the Executive, Judiciary and Legislature and warned against the publication of content that offends against expectations of the public morality of the country or tend to lower the standards of public taste and morality.

In Burundi, The discussions around the drafting of the new Press Law, which was promulgated in June 2013, constantly referred to the alleged ethical breaches of the press, Marie-Soleil Frre, a Brussels University researcher and author, told CPJ. Members of the ruling party repeated ad nauseam that journalists are biased, unfair, and indulge in defamation, lies and insults.

Authoritarian governments also have a way of playing up alleged ethical breaches when it fits their interests in order to discredit troublesome journalists and even to downplay physical assaults on reporters at work.

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Would-Be Repressors Brandish 'Ethics' as Justification ...