Reporters Without Borders give dictators the finger

In honor of Friday's World Press Freedom Day, the non-governmental organization Reporters sans frontières (Reporters Without Borders) launched a campaign depicting world-famous dictators giving everyone the finger, or the international equivalent thereof.

Agence France Press interviewed the group's leader, Christophe Deloire, who said that that they want to show how these "predators against press freedom" -- the 39 worst according to the group's own accounting -- "make a mockery of press freedom and their own people."

The group's analysis of press freedom around the world lists some well known dictators as among the worst: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad, Russian President Vladimir Putin and the new Chinese President Xi Jinping, but it also lists the United States' press freedoms as only in a "satisfactory situation." (By comparison, Canada's press freedom is graded as a "good situation.")

In 1991, the United Nations established World Press Freedom Day, which "serves as an occasion to inform citizens of violations of press freedom - a reminder that in dozens of countries around the world, publications are censored, fined, suspended and closed down, while journalists, editors and publishers are harassed, attacked, detained and even murdered."

Watch the video, posted by AFP on May 3.

[Photo courtesy of Reporters Sans Frontières]