>>>Washington – Last week, the United States Department of State and the advocacy group Human Rights First launched the 2013 Free The Press Campaign to bring awareness to the importance of media freedom worldwide in the lead-up to today’s World Press Freedom Day. Officials say that free and unobstructed journalism is crucial for healthy societies.

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, 70 journalists were killed in direct relation to their work in 2012, and of that number, 32 were murdered. The organization says it was one of the deadliest years on record for reporters.

Tara Sonenshine is the Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs at the US Department of State. She says that governments around the world should make developing and supporting independent journalism a top priority.

“It takes work and resources and training and ethics and an enabling environment. Just as you need an enabling environment for economic growth or for democratic transition, you need an enabling environment for media development,” she said. “It’s its own development sector and we haven’t always seen it in those terms.”

Sonenshine added that media freedom isn’t just important – it’s necessary.

“Information is as basic to me as water and air because without it, you are trapped,” she said.

Experts claim that many countries prefer their citizens not to have this information. As Senior Government Fellow at Human Rights First, Sonni Efron says that many journalists suffer in their line of work, and she noted the killing of Isaiah Diing Abraham Chan Awuol in South Sudan last December.

“Obviously, people have faced illegal detention, beatings and assassinations. As I’m sure your listeners know, last December Isaiah Diing Abraham Chan Awuol was assassinated in front of his home,” she said. “These attacks and murders of journalists have a profound chilling effect on the free flow of information that is so important to all countries, but especially to the development of new democracy like South Sudan.”

No suspects have ever been apprehended for Diing’s murder.

Efron says the chilling effect on journalism is particularly concerning as more and more people consume their information through mobile phones and other electronic devices.

“So, digital repression is really a threat in a range of ways that haven’t been fully recognized yet. Of course, governments are very worried now about what people are tweeting and what people are blogging,” she said. “But in order to really solve the problems that all of us face together, we have to have a healthy public debate.”

A healthy public debate will have far-reaching positive effects for South Sudan, according to Efron.

“I think that a healthy, free media, where journalists can practice their profession without fear of repression or attack or god forbid, even murder is something that’s going to be in the interest of South Sudan as a country as it matures,” she said. “It’s going to be of course useful to the South Sudanese people but it’s also going to be good for South Sudan’s position in the world.”

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization has designated May 3 as World Press Freedom Day to shine a spotlight on violations of press freedom and to pay tribute to journalists who have lost their lives in the line of duty.