FOTP 2013 Full Report

government monitored private e-mail. Cases of physical attacks or harassment aimed atjournalists or media outlets are rare, in part because of the substantial roles already played bylegal restrictions and self-censorship in limiting controversial coverage.Fiji’s media landscape consists of both public and private outlets. The private radionetwork Communications Fiji Limited operates several multilingual stations and competes withthe public broadcaster, Fiji Broadcasting Corporation, which launched a television channel in2012. An independent station, Mai Television, also competes with the long-established privateoutlet Fiji TV. The internet was accessed by about 34 percent of the population in 2012.Under the MIDD, foreign owners can hold no more than a 10 percent stake in mediaoutlets. This clause was reportedly designed to make critical sections of the news media morepliant. It led to the sale of the Fiji Times, the country’s oldest and most influential newspaper,founded in 1869 and previously wholly owned by the Australian branch of Rupert Murdoch’sU.S.-based News Corporation. Since the 2006 coup, the newspaper had been the most criticalmedia opponent of the regime and the strongest voice for a return to democracy. In 2010,Murdoch was forced to sell the Fiji Times to a local trading company, the Motibhai Group.Meanwhile, the rival daily Fiji Sun, which supports the regime, has benefitted from a virtualmonopoly on state advertising. Despite overall economic improvement, media outlets continue torely in large part on government advertising revenue.FinlandStatus: FreeLegal Environment: 4Political Environment: 3Economic Environment: 4Total Score: 11Survey Edition 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012Total Score, Status 9,F 10,F 10,F 10,F 10,FFinland continued to rank among the most free media environments in the world in 2012.Freedom of expression and access to information are guaranteed under Article 12 of theconstitution. Although journalists and media outlets are generally allowed to operate freely,defamation is considered a crime, and the government actively pursues cases involvingdefamation of religion or ethnicity. Finnish law gives every citizen the right of reply and theright to have false information corrected in both internet-based and traditional publications.In June 2012, the Supreme Court ruled that Jussi Kristian Halla-aho, a member ofparliament with the True Finns party, was guilty of “inciting hatred against an ethnic group” fora 2008 blog post that compared Islam to pedophilia and implied that Somalian immigrants areprone to theft and dependence on welfare. Halla-aho had deliberately written the post to provokethe state prosecutor after a court sentenced nationalist activist Seppo Lehto to two years in prisonfor racism and blasphemy.The self-regulatory Council for Mass Media (CMM) is responsible for upholding ethicalstandards across print, broadcast, and online media. The CMM is primarily made up of mediarepresentatives, but it also includes members of academia and the public. The council accepts167