RSF press freedom campaign video features Turkish PM Erdoğan

ISTANBUL

Screen captured from RSF video

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has launched a new campaign video to promote press freedom with appearances from many world leaders, including the Turkish prime minister, who are mostly criticized for their governments’ policies on restricting press freedom.

The video, titled Great People, is a collage of world leaders’ photos, the “enemies of press freedom,” in which the politicians appear very kind; at the end of the video, there is a message that says, “Without independent journalists, this would be the news.”

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is seen holding and kissing a little child in the video, Russian President Vladimir Putin is seen giving a hug to a dog while Syria’s Bashar al-Assad is depicted blowing out the candles of a birthday cake with his family.




The overall level of freedom of information violations continues to be very high, while the situation continued to be worrying in 2013, RSF said in a report released last week.