Our Collective Conscience •  Media and journalists, however, face impediments to their work in a number of OSCE participating States. In his March 2007 report to the Permanent Council,54 the Representative identified several major emerging challenges that threaten freedom of the media in the OSCE area: • • • • The most intimidating for free speech is when states tolerate harassment, physical attacks, and even murders of media workers; In several participating States, pluralism is considerably restricted by undue governmental influence over broadcasting; by favouritism towards the state-owned press, and by administrative discrimination against the non-governmental media sector; Tightened security concerns – not only in the wake of the global terrorist threat – have prompted authorities to deny investigative rights for journalism regarding governmental data, or to force journalists to reveal their sources to law enforcement agencies; In a world of dissolving boundaries, the otherwise legitimate expectation that the media should be culturally sensitive has increased attempts to label offending or critical views as punishable “extremism” or “hate speech”. The ongoing work of the Representative on Freedom of the Media to decriminalize libel and defamation, to foster access to information, to assist in the establishment of genuine public service broadcasters at arm’s length from governments, as well as supporting the privatization of former state-owned media in order to increase pluralism, enhances the media’s role in providing the public space for a thorough human rights debate. New challenges, such as preserving the freedom of the Internet, are equally suited to provide public platforms for human rights defenders. In this sense, free media is one of many prerequisites that human rights defenders depend on. 54 OSCE Representative on the Freedom of the Media, Miklós Haraszti, “Regular report to the Permanent Council”, 29 March 2007, <http://www.osce.org/fom/documents.html?lsi=true&limit=10&g rp=296>.