Canada lacks the courage of Somali journalists.

ROSS HOWARD

Special to Globe and Mail Update

August 15, 2007 at 12:28 AM EDT

I have long feared the arrival of news that one of "my journalists" had been killed. For the past two months, I've been anxiously scanning reports from Somalia about the resurgent violence there, in case it concerned one of the Somali reporters I trained in June.

But the news of Mahad Ahmed Elmi's assassination on the weekend was even more disheartening because he was a member of a much earlier training course, and he had been broadcasting the bravest of conflict-sensitive journalism, for so long, in Mogadishu of all places. Until last weekend.

Unidentified men pumped bullets into Mahad's head Saturday morning as he entered CapitalFM's studios, where his talk show had enormous popularity for challenging human-rights abusers and warlords and extremists.

Hours later, returning from Mahad's funeral, the Somali-Canadian co-founder of HornAfrik Radio, which owned CapitalFM, died after a land mine detonated under his vehicle. Colleagues believe Ali Iman Sharmarke was targeted. HornAfrik is a beacon of media courage and integrity in Mogadishu and all Somalia.

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For several years, I've worked for international organizations and a small Canadian group, training journalists in countries wracked by conflict. It is part journalism basics, part rudimentary conflict analysis, and considerable strategizing with them about how to do good work in their sometimes frightening circumstances. Beyond whatever I've imparted, I have learned how absolutely critical a reliable, responsible news media is to stabilizing conflict-stressed states. My respect for media workers in those places is now boundless.

Mahad Ahmed Elmi showed up in a two-week workshop program for radio broadcasters in Bujumbura, Burundi, two years ago. How this skinny, slightly scruffy Somali reporter managed to get from the then utterly anarchic Mogadishu to a gathering of professionals across central Africa is a story in itself. But he was hungry to learn new techniques of reporting on conflict and the conciliatory effect of reliable media, and take them back to Mogadishu.

Among the tributes to him flowing this week between trainers and African broadcasters who were at Bujumbura, Niyoyita Aloys of Burundi recalls that "at the airport, he told me he believed one day Somalia would recover peace. He told me he was not afraid of warlords. Unfortunately, he dies without seeing peace in Somalia."

At least six other Somali journalists have died, and possibly a dozen have been wounded since June of 2006, when the Western-backed Ethiopian army suppressed an Islamic-led uprising that earlier that year drove underground most of the warlords who previously had carved the then-corrupt Somalia into terrorized fiefdoms. What awes me about many local journalists in such chaotic places as Somalia is their belief in journalism, despite it all. They don't lack for courage. Nor awareness. Many come with an appreciation that truthful reporting can ultimately enable well-informed citizens to address or confront those who dictate, intimidate or devastate their lives.

What they lack are specific skills — the majority of reporters in conflict-stressed zones are untrained and abysmally paid — and technology. And they lack freedom to do what for most journalists in comfy democracies like Canada passes for the basic and mundane: report both sides, watchdog the powerful and seek alternative views, without fear.

There's a lesson and a question for Canadian journalists and for Canadian policy-makers in Mahad Ahmed Elmi's death.

More than 128 journalists and media workers have died so far this year around the globe. A thousand have died since 1997. As the International News Safety Institute and others now note, beyond Iraq the trend in deadly journalism is not toward media workers on the front lines covering military campaigns, firefights and shootouts. The rising toll is among those courageous enough to simply report on local community conflict and violent politics even-handedly, and among those who dare to dig deeper, to investigate and reveal corruption.

As Sir Harold Evans, a former editor of The Times put it recently: "This is different from the sadly familiar fact that by-lined war correspondents, who knowingly risk their lives, get fatally caught in the crossfire of a battlefield, they walk on a land mine, they hitch a ride on a fated combat plane, they are mistaken for combatants. … The majority of journalists' deaths are not bad luck. They are planned assassinations. They have been targeted, sought out for death at home for a very simple reason: They did their jobs of seeking the truth. Rarely do these local crimes attract international attention."

Much of what is killing people like Mahad Ahmed Elmi is professional insistence on presenting both sides of an event — not just the local war lord's version — and reducing community misperception. What cost Ali Iman Sharmarke his life was the courage to scramble worldwide for funding for a truly independent media outlet beholden to no warlord or clan leader and their self-interested version of news coverage.

HornAfrik also paid its reporters as well as possible, to alleviate their dependency on bribes to slant the news. And HornAfrik was willing to put Mahad on the air with a news and talk-radio show that consciously sought to explore reconciliation, instead of attracting and frightening listeners with screaming antagonists. Mahad's huge audience proved that, even in Mogadishu, there's a public market for peace-building. But there's no rule of law.

What goes unappreciated in the West is how many journalists elsewhere are denied the ordinary freedoms Western media has enjoyed. With corrupt judges and licensing, intimidated regulators and partisan police, the possibilities of retaliation against fair and balanced reporting are endless. With media owners on political, military or gangster payrolls, the job security for impartial reporters is tenuous.

There are neither journalists' unions nor civil and criminal laws, let alone political commitment, strong enough to protect even the basics of journalism. In places where I've trained, we inevitably end up discussing this.

And yet, in my experience, even in these dire environments, there are journalists who want to sneak balanced reporting into their copy or programming; to make their work a public service rather than political or extremist or purely corporate propaganda. Several of the nearly two-dozen Somali journalists I trained in June (in nearby, safer Djibouti), on behalf of the Danish NGO International Media Support, reminded me of Mahad Ahmed Elmi. They were keen, albeit war-weary. They wanted more training and more handbooks. They believed their work would make a difference, that one day Somalia would recover peace.

What depresses me beyond Mahad Ahmed Elmi's death is how little Canada does about basic journalism abroad, and resultant reporter tragedies.

Canadian official and non-government support for media development abroad, as a portion of foreign aid, is minuscule, compared to all other major Western democracies. (Ottawa has funded HornAfrik Radio.) The lack of interest by public and private funders is particularly embarrassing considering Canada's reputation for a financially healthy, legally sheltered, efficiently regulated and exceptionally skilled media industry, including journalism. Yet, we have almost nothing to offer the world's journalists.

And what surprises me is how modest is most of the debate among Canadian journalists, and journalism schools, and professional bodies (the Canadian Association of Journalists is a welcome exception) about threats to fundamental journalism in Canada from corporate concentration, deregulation and government secrecy. Perhaps it is because unlike Somalis, Canadians don't require courage to be journalists.

Ross Howard is a former Globe and Mail reporter who teaches journalism at Langara College in Vancouver and is president of Media&Democracy Group, a Canadian non-profit consortium of international media trainers.