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Inside story of Reporters Without Borders

By Ji Ze and Tao Duanfang (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-07-03 07:37

Olympics is a big stage which attracts athletes as well as gamblers. Just like "Reporters Without Borders" (RSF). This NGO used Olympics as a stage for its political gambling. Vivas Maxime, a journalist who has researched this organization for five years, expresses his feeling of this NGO thus, "A clumsy plane cannot fly too high, but makes big noise".

RSF was established in 1985 by its current Secretary General Robert Mnard, Rony Brauman (then president of Doctors Without Borders) and the journalist Jean-Claude Guillebaud.

Mnard, in Maxime's view, is a ghost lousing around the French media. Everybody in touch with him has an opinion on his personality.

As they define it, RSF is seeking the freedom of the press. Under this advocacy, more than 1,000 reports are published every year. For the small organization with at most 60 staff, 1,000 reports mean that each staff churns out at least 17 reports in a year.

No one, Menard included, explains how they achieve this high efficiency and who are responsible for the accuracy and fairness of these reports.

Another important mission set by them is to protect reporters, especially those who are in persecution. But this project takes only 7 percent in their annual budget of 4 million Euros. Most money has been consumed within the organization. For example, the salary of Mnard is 5,000 Euros per month.

Though RSF claims to seek the freedom of the press, Mnard doesn't allow any negative reports on themselves. He jumps at every criticism that comes out.

In their yearly worldwide press freedom ranking, all countries and territories who give them financial support get good ranking.

RSF had blamed Taiwan for expelling the Chinese mainland's reporters, but soon changed Taiwan's ranking after they got a $100,000 cheque and a medal for Mnard from Taiwan.

The National Endowment for Democracy of United States and the Center For a Free Cuba are two main foundations for its sources. According to the rules of these two foundations, the organization that receives their donation must not do anything against the United States and must take actions against Cuba.

For issues about China, RSF takes almost extreme positions. The five-handcuffs flag takes a prominent position in its website to campaign against Beijing Olympic Games. Just a few days ago, it urged the meeting of Council of the European Union to call for a boycott of the Beijing Olympic Games.

China is not its original target. Before 2001, it focused on Cuba. But after that, it tried to shore itself up by writing open letters to worldwide celebrities.

In June 2007, RSF wrote to Jacques Rogge, the International Olympic Committee president, saying the world's worries about the Beijing Olympics were "deteriorating".

In December, it wrote again to complain that Rogge never replied to it, and claimed that Rogge's silence made the worries "come true". Before the French President Nicolas Sarkozy visited China in Nov 2007, it put up the show in the same way for "China's human rights".

After riots in Tibet, RSF didn't miss this opportunity to attack China. It instigated the campaign for that nobody should attend the Beijing Olympic Games.

When the 2008 Olympic flame was ignited on March 24 in Ancient Olympia of Greece, its members rushed to the platform with five-handcuffs flag to disturb the ceremony. When the flame traveled in Paris, RSF members continued to make trouble during the torch relay. Even Mnard did it himself.

This was not their first show. New York Sun reported that the RSF made a big offensive poster in New York in November 2006 against China. In Feb this year, they tried to put pressure on the sponsors of Olympic Games.

The aims of RSF are very clear: China, Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, and so on.

As remarked by Maxime, the RSF never saw the offences to the freedom of the press in Western countries.

The RSF never reported anything bad about France. It is busy "exposing" issues in Bosnia, Gabon, and Algeria.

Obviously the RSF cannot offend both sides. It needs the French media to publish its attacks on other countries. RSF has become a tool for some interest groups.

As a tool, RSF has no choice but to meet the group's interests. A senior expert in the French media revealed that giant interest groups had to "control" the organization after it finally "set fire" to itself.

However, the RSF had become increasingly close to some US groups, and any move to provoke conflicts between China and France would only benefit the US groups, the expert said.

The article first appeared in the Global Times

(China Daily 07/03/2008 page9)