Africa/Global: “Knowledge Societies” Impossible Without Press Freedom

Efforts to close the “digital divide” between rich and poor societies and create “knowledge societies” will fail unless developing nations embrace freedom of expression, the Director General of the World Association of Newspapers said Wednesday. “In more and more countries, the struggle for freedom of information, freedom of expression, freedom of the media, is today being fought out on the internet rather than in print, where it has traditionally taken place,” said the WAN Director General, Timothy Balding, in a speech to the World Electronic Media Forum in Geneva, Switzerland.