LONDON: New year after year starts with new records of pain and loss among journalists. So 167 reporters, editors, cameramen and translators in 37 countries died during 2006 in the line of duty (according to the International News Safety Institute). Sixty six of them were Iraqi, of course, but see 15 Filipinos, eight Mexicans and seven Sri Lankans falling in behind. There is no more eloquent demonstration of why press freedom matters than this dismal, growing toll of those who die to try to tell a necessary story. And the media’s own freedom organisations are not slow to make that point.

But, just for once, let’s go a little deeper -- because not all of the dead 167 were victims pure and simple. Some were Sunnis, some were Shias; some had made a living under Saddam, some opposed his tyranny. Some worked for giant media companies, some for tiny community papers. Everybody, in short, was different. Bring them together in debate and there’s probably very little they would have agreed about: a rather more complex definition of press freedom.

Consider, for it’s a looming headline event in 2007, the Hugo Chavez dilemma. On the one hand, many committed media freedom warriors in Britain -- including Jeremy Dear, general secretary of the National Union of Journalists -- vociferously support Venezuela’s totemic president and all his egalitarian works. They raise money for his causes, pass NUJ conference motions of support and generally despise scribblers on the other side who think him a bit of a demagogue.

On the other hand, Aidan White, general secretary of the International Federation of Journalists, wrote recently that the IFJ Caracas office had ‘recorded 700 incidents of harassment, intimidation and violence against the media in the last four years alone.’

It’s crunch time with hundreds of journalists’ jobs at risk -- and the absolute necessity for union officials and members to say what they think. Journalism has to be the broadest church; after all, that’s what freedom of expression means, from Polly Toynbee to Roger Ailes, boss of Fox TV. Disagreement is therefore endemic. But the free flow of ideas has to be just that: free. —Dawn/The Observer News Service