More than 95 per cent of Vietnamese journalists were hindered from publishing news at least once during their career, according to a report by RED Communication announced yesterday. — Photo vietnamnet.vn

HÀ NỘI – More than 95 per cent of Vietnamese journalists were hindered from publishing news at least once during their career, according to a report by RED Communication announced yesterday.

The report, drawn from online surveys of 384 domestic journalists, indicates that about 76 per cent were denied access to information at least five times in their carreers and another 60 per cent had their articles refused by newspapers to be printed due to third party pressures.

Other kinds of obstruction included bribes, threats and physical assaults against the journalists to stop writing stories.

The report shows a steep increase in the number of recorded violent cases, verbal and/or physical, against reporters nationwide in the four year span from 2012 in comparison to previous year. Accordingly, there were 17 reporter assaults in 2011, which rocketed up to 32 in the following year and doubled to the peak of 38 in 2014.

Such disturbances, mostly from the authorities, business firms, or smugglers and criminals, somehow proved to work out as 70 per cent journalists said they could not write and publish their articles, according to RED’s report.

The journalists, however, were not at all innocent. About 56 per cent of the survey takers believed that part of the reason for such work hinders came from the journalists themselves “due to a lack of skills which caused annoyance to relevant parties”.

Some 9 per cent thought that the obstruction also came in response for the reporters’ misdeed intention while reporting the news, for example to blackmail business firms.

“Not a lot of news agencies have working guidelines or monitor the implementation of such guidelines of their reporters,” said Pháp luật TP.HCM (HCM City Legal Affairs) newspaper General Secretary Nguyễn Đức Hiền.

RED Communication is a non-governmental organisation and as a pioneer in development communication in Việt Nam, it uses the power of communication to achieve optimal results from development programmes and create conditions for their spreading. – VNS