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86-534: The Estonian Age of Awakening ( Estonian : Ärkamisaeg ) is a period in history where Estonians came to acknowledge themselves as a nation deserving the right to govern themselves . This period is considered to begin in the 1850s with greater rights being granted to commoners and to end with the declaration of the Republic of Estonia in 1918. The term is sometimes also applied to the period around 1987 and 1988. Although Estonian national consciousness spread in

172-566: A Finnic language rather than a variety of Estonian. Modern standard Estonian evolved in the 18th and 19th centuries based on the dialects of northern Estonia. During the Medieval and Early Modern periods, Estonian accepted many loanwords from Germanic languages , mainly from Middle Low German (Middle Saxon) and, after the 16th-century Protestant Reformation , from the Standard German language. Estonia's oldest written records of

258-470: A constitution or other legal protection and security. It is in opposition to paid press, where communities, police organizations, and governments are paid for their copyrights. Without respect to governmental information, any government may distinguish which materials are public or protected from disclosure to the public. State materials are protected due to either one of two reasons: the classification of information as sensitive, classified, or secret, or

344-508: A 2019 special report by the Committee to Protect Journalists , approximately 25 journalists were murdered on duty in 2019. The figure is claimed to be the lowest since 2002, a year in which at least 21 journalists were killed while they were reporting from the field. Meanwhile, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) reported 49 killings, the lowest since 2003, when almost 36 journalists were killed. Leading press watchdogs fear persisting danger for

430-455: A broad classical education and knew Ancient Greek , Latin and French . Consider roim 'crime' versus English crime or taunima 'to condemn, disapprove' versus Finnish tuomita 'to condemn, to judge' (these Aavikisms appear in Aavik's 1921 dictionary). These words might be better regarded as a peculiar manifestation of morpho-phonemic adaptation of a foreign lexical item. Article 1 of

516-648: A common feature of Estonian typologically over the course of history with the development of a rich morphological system. Word order is considerably more flexible than in English, but the basic order is subject–verb–object . The speakers of the two major historical languages spoken in Estonia, North and South Estonian , are thought by some linguists to have arrived in Estonia in at least two different migration waves over two millennia ago, both groups having spoken considerably different vernacular; South Estonian might be

602-550: A crime. The king was above public criticism and statements critical of the government were forbidden, according to the English court of the Star Chamber . The truth was not a defense to seditious libel because the goal was to prevent and punish all condemnation of the government. Locke contributed to the lapse of the Licensing Act in 1695 , whereupon the press needed no license. Still, some libels were tried throughout

688-450: A key mechanism of a functioning, healthy democracy . In the absence of censorship , journalism exists as a watchdog of private and government action, providing information to maintain an informed citizenry of voters. In this perspective, "government efforts to influence published or broadcasted news content, either via media control or by inducing self-censorship , represent a threat to the access of important and necessary information to

774-591: A long tradition of freedom of speech, including freedom of the press, which yet exists in the XVIII century and in the XIX century. After World War II, Hugh Baillie , the president of the United Press wire service based in the U.S., promoted freedom of news dissemination. In 1944, he called for an open system of news sources and transmission, and a minimum of government regulation of the news. His proposals were aired at

860-469: A memorandum inspired by Carl Robert Jakobson, called upon Emperor Alexander III of Russia for the introduction of zemstvo institutions (which had already existed in most parts of the Empire), with equal representation for Estonians and Baltic Germans and administrative unification of the ethnic Estonian areas. Postimees , the first Estonian daily, began appearing in 1891. According to the 1897 census ,

946-576: A nervous meltdown when called journalist Paul Pârvu asked him if he felt guilt over Romanian deaths during the revolution. During the exchange, Iliescu referred to Pârvu as an "animal". Modern, major media outlets were founded during the mid-1990s, such as Antena 1 in 1994 and ProTV in 1995. In 1999, the editor of a Ora , a local newspaper, Tiberiu Patru, was arrested before being able to publish an investigation of corruption in Dolj County under. In response, Ora moved its newsroom in front of

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1032-656: A period of Russification initiated by the Russian empire in the 1880s, Estonian nationalism took on even more political tones, with intellectuals calling for greater autonomy. As the Russian Revolution of 1905 swept through Estonia, the Estonians called for freedom of the press and assembly , for universal franchise , and for national autonomy. Estonian gains were minimal, but the tense stability that prevailed between 1905 and 1917 allowed Estonians to advance

1118-555: A second warning from the Russian censorship apparatus Roskomnadzor . On 17 June 2024, a Moscow court issued arrest warrants for IStories editor-in-chief and award-winning investigative reporter Roman Anin and Ekaterina Fomina, a journalist at TV Rain and a former IStories correspondent, on charges of disseminating "false information" about the Russian armed forces in Ukraine. Russia's Interior Ministry added two Russian journalists in exile to its wanted list. Fomina said

1204-417: A third of the world's people live in countries where there is no press freedom. Overwhelmingly, these people live in countries where there is no system of democracy or where there are serious deficiencies in the democratic process. Freedom of the press is an extremely problematic problem/concept for most non-democratic systems of government since, in the modern age, strict control of access to information

1290-734: Is based on central dialects, it has no vowel harmony either. In the standard language, the front vowels occur exclusively on the first or stressed syllable, although vowel harmony is still apparent in older texts. Typologically, Estonian represents a transitional form from an agglutinating language to a fusional language . The canonical word order is SVO (subject–verb–object), although often debated among linguists. In Estonian, nouns and pronouns do not have grammatical gender , but nouns and adjectives decline in fourteen cases: nominative , genitive , partitive , illative , inessive , elative , allative , adessive , ablative , translative , terminative , essive , abessive , and comitative , with

1376-457: Is considered a landmark in the fight for a free press. Between September 4, 1770 and October 7, 1771 the kingdom of Denmark–Norway had the most unrestricted freedom of press of any country in Europe. This occurred during the regime of Johann Friedrich Struensee , whose second act was to abolish the old censorship laws. However, due to the great amount of mostly anonymous pamphlets published that

1462-412: Is critical to the existence of most non-democratic governments and their associated control systems and security apparatus. To this end, most non-democratic societies employ state-run news organizations to promote the propaganda critical to maintaining an existing political power base and suppress (often very brutally, through the use of police, military, or intelligence agencies) any significant attempts by

1548-434: Is known to subjectively measure the level of freedom and editorial independence that is enjoyed by the press in every nation and significant disputed territories around the world. Levels of freedom are scored on a scale from 1 (most free) to 100 (least free). Depending on the basics, the nations are then classified in three types: 1. "Free" 2. "Partly Free" 3. "Not Free". A free and independent press has been theorized to be

1634-759: Is pronounced [æ], as in English mat . The vowels Ä, Ö and Ü are clearly separate phonemes and inherent in Estonian, although the letter shapes come from German. The letter õ denotes /ɤ/ , unrounded /o/ , or a close-mid back unrounded vowel . It is almost identical to the Bulgarian ъ /ɤ̞/ and the Vietnamese ơ , and is also used to transcribe the Russian ы . Additionally C , Q , W , X , and Y are used in writing foreign proper names . They do not occur in Estonian words , and are not officially part of

1720-492: Is pronounced) and in the use of 'i' and 'j'. Where it is very impractical or impossible to type š and ž , they are replaced by sh and zh in some written texts, although this is considered incorrect. Otherwise, the h in sh represents a voiceless glottal fricative , as in Pasha ( pas-ha ); this also applies to some foreign names. Modern Estonian orthography is based on the "Newer orthography" created by Eduard Ahrens in

1806-449: Is usually accompanied by legislation ensuring various degrees of freedom of scientific research (known as scientific freedom ), publishing, and the press. The depth to which these laws are entrenched in a country's legal system can go as far down as its constitution . The concept of freedom of speech is often covered by the same laws as freedom of the press, thereby giving equal treatment to spoken and published expression. Freedom of

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1892-757: The idamurre or eastern dialect on the northwestern shore of Lake Peipus . One of the pronunciation features of the Saaremaa dialect is the lack of the 'õ' vowel. A five-metre monument erected in 2020, marking the "border" between the vowels 'õ' and 'ö', humorously makes reference to this fact. South Estonian consists of the Tartu, Mulgi, Võro and Seto varieties. These are sometimes considered either variants of South Estonian or separate languages altogether. Also, Seto and Võro distinguish themselves from each other less by language and more by their culture and their respective Christian confession. Estonian employs

1978-555: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Estonian and English: Freedom of the press Freedom of the press or freedom of the media is the fundamental principle that communication and expression through various media, including printed and electronic media , especially published materials , should be considered a right to be exercised freely. Such freedom implies the absence of interference from an overreaching state ; its preservation may be sought through

2064-815: The EU Charter of Fundamental Rights (since 2000) as well as the European Convention on Human Rights (since 1950). Within the EU enlargement process, guaranteeing media freedom is named a "key indicator of a country's readiness to become part of the EU". According to the New York Times , "Britain has a long tradition of a free, inquisitive press", but "[u]nlike the United States, Britain has no constitutional guarantee of press freedom." Freedom of

2150-634: The Finnic branch of the Uralic language family . Other Finnic languages include Finnish and some minority languages spoken around the Baltic Sea and in northwestern Russia. Estonian is typically subclassified as a Southern Finnic language, and it is the second-most-spoken language among all the Finnic languages. Alongside Finnish, Hungarian , and Maltese , Estonian is one of the four official languages of

2236-712: The Germanic languages have very different origins and the vocabulary is considered quite different from that of the Indo-European family, one can identify many similar words in Estonian and English, for example. This is primarily because Estonian has borrowed nearly one-third of its vocabulary from Germanic languages, mainly from Low Saxon ( Middle Low German ) during the period of German rule , and High German (including standard German ). The percentage of Low Saxon and High German loanwords can be estimated at 22–25 percent, with Low Saxon making up about 15 percent. Prior to

2322-581: The Latin script as the basis for its alphabet . The script adds the letters ä , ö , ü , and õ , plus the later additions š and ž . The letters c , q , w , x and y are limited to proper names of foreign origin, and f , z , š , and ž appear in loanwords and foreign names only. Ö and Ü are pronounced similarly to their equivalents in Swedish and German. Unlike in standard German but like Swedish (when followed by 'r') and Finnish, Ä

2408-536: The Proto-Finnic language , elision has occurred; thus, the actual case marker may be absent, but the stem is changed, cf. maja – majja and the Ostrobothnia dialect of Finnish maja – majahan . The verbal system has no distinct future tense (the present tense serves here) and features special forms to express an action performed by an undetermined subject (the "impersonal"). Although Estonian and

2494-511: The Whigs or the Tories , and that they were "essentially and indispensably necessary" to the parties' operations. John Stuart Mill in 1869 in his book On Liberty approached the problem of authority versus liberty from the viewpoint of a 19th-century utilitarian : The individual has the right of expressing himself so long as he does not harm other individuals. The good society is one in which

2580-488: The "true Church of England , at this moment, lies in the Editors of its Newspapers. These preach to the people daily, weekly; admonishing kings themselves; advising peace or war, with an authority which only the first Reformers , and a long-past class of Popes , were possessed of". Similarly, Charles Dickens , in his Pickwick Papers (1837), caricatured the newspapers as but the "chosen organ and representative" of either

2666-452: The 1750s to 54 in the 1790s. By the end of the 18th century more than half of the country's rural adult male population was able to read, and the literacy rate in urban areas was already significantly higher. The first university-educated intellectuals identifying themselves as Estonians , including Friedrich Robert Faehlmann (1798–1850), Kristjan Jaak Peterson (1801–1822) and Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald (1803–1882), came to prominence in

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2752-399: The 1820s. The ruling elite had remained predominantly German in language and culture since the conquest of the early 13th century. Garlieb Merkel (1769–1850), a Baltic German Estophile, was the first author to treat the Estonians explicitly as a nationality equal to others; he became a source of inspiration for the Estonian national movement, modelled on Baltic German cultural world before

2838-485: The 1870s to the 1890s) tried to use formation ex nihilo ( Urschöpfung ); i.e. they created new words out of nothing. The most well-known reformer of Estonian, Johannes Aavik (1880–1973), used creations ex nihilo (cf. 'free constructions', Tauli 1977), along with other sources of lexical enrichment such as derivations, compositions and loanwords (often from Finnish; cf. Saareste and Raun 1965: 76). In Aavik's dictionary (1921) lists approximately 4000 words. About 40 of

2924-621: The 18th century, until "the Society of the Bill of Rights" led by John Horne Tooke and John Wilkes organized a campaign to publish Parliamentary Debates. This culminated in three defeats of the Crown in the 1770 cases of Almon, Miller and Woodfall , who all had published one of the Letters of Junius , and the unsuccessful arrest of John Wheble in 1771. Thereafter the Crown was much more careful in

3010-926: The 1930s. There are 9 vowels and 36 diphthongs , 28 of which are native to Estonian. All nine vowels can appear as the first component of a diphthong, but only /ɑ e i o u/ occur as the second component. A vowel characteristic of Estonian is the unrounded back vowel /ɤ/, which may be close-mid back , close back , or close-mid central . Word-initial b, d, g occur only in loanwords and some old loanwords are spelled with p, t, k instead of etymological b, d, g : pank 'bank'. Word-medially and word-finally, b, d, g represent short plosives /p, t, k/ (may be pronounced as partially voiced consonants), p, t, k represent half-long plosives /pː, tː, kː/, and pp, tt, kk represent overlong plosives /pːː, tːː, kːː/; for example: kabi /kɑpi/ 'hoof' — kapi /kɑpːi/ 'wardrobe [ gen sg ] — kappi /kɑpːːi/ 'wardrobe [ ptv sg ]'. Before and after b, p, d, t, g, k, s, h, f, š, z, ž ,

3096-524: The 19th century during the Estophile Enlightenment Period (1750–1840). The birth of native Estonian literature was during the period 1810–1820, when the patriotic and philosophical poems by Kristjan Jaak Peterson were published. Peterson, who was the first student to acknowledge his Estonian origin at the then German-language University of Dorpat , is commonly regarded as a herald of Estonian national literature and considered

3182-490: The 200 words created by Johannes Aavik allegedly ex nihilo are in common use today. Examples are * ese 'object', * kolp 'skull', * liibuma 'to cling', * naasma 'to return, come back', * nõme 'stupid, dull'. Many of the coinages that have been considered (often by Aavik himself) as words concocted ex nihilo could well have been influenced by foreign lexical items; for example, words from Russian , German , French , Finnish , English and Swedish . Aavik had

3268-707: The Estonians had the second highest literacy rate in the Russian Empire after the Finns in the Grand Duchy of Finland (96.1% of the Estonian-speaking population of the Baltic Provinces 10 years and older, roughly equally for males and females). The cities became Estonicized quickly, and in 1897 ethnic Estonians comprised two-thirds of the total Estonian urban population. In response to

3354-491: The Estophile educated class admired the ancient culture of the Estonians and their era of freedom before the conquests by Danes and Germans in the 13th century. When the Republic of Estonia was established in 1918, Estonian became the official language of the newly independent country. Immediately after World War II , in 1945, over 97% of the then population of Estonia self-identified as native ethnic Estonians and spoke

3440-463: The European Union that are not Indo-European languages . In terms of linguistic morphology , Estonian is a predominantly agglutinative language . The loss of word-final sounds is extensive, and this has made its inflectional morphology markedly more fusional , especially with respect to noun and adjective inflection. The transitional form from an agglutinating to a fusional language is

3526-482: The Finnic languages date from the 13th century. The "Originates Livoniae" in the Livonian Chronicle of Henry contains Estonian place names, words and fragments of sentences. The earliest extant samples of connected (north) Estonian are the so-called Kullamaa prayers dating from 1524 and 1528. In 1525 the first book published in Estonian was printed. The book was a Lutheran manuscript, which never reached

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3612-703: The Geneva Conference on Freedom of Information in 1948 but were blocked by the Soviets and the French. Since 1950, the European Convention on Human Rights includes "Article 10" related to Freedom of expression which applies to Member states of the Council of Europe . Media freedom is a fundamental right that applies to all member states of the European Union and its citizens , as defined in

3698-626: The National Theater of Craiova to protest Patru's arrest. The 2000s saw the creation of many new media outlets across television, radio, and the traditional press. In 2023, Reporters Without Borders identified safety as a concern for Romanian journalists. More than 120 journalists remained in prison in Turkey in 2019, making it the most prolific incarcerator of journalists in the world. In some countries, including Turkey, journalists were threatened or arrested for their coverage of

3784-726: The Romanian citizenry, was highly illegal and severe repercussions for existed for listening. Directly following the Romanian Revolution , post-communist corruption was largely the subject of investigative reports. At the same time, widespread violence against journalists began. During the June 1990 Mineriad , a series of protests against the National Salvation Front , counter-demonstrators assaulted reporting journalists. In 1992, President Ion Iliescu had

3870-591: The Russian military and its operations in Ukraine, forcing independent media in Russia to stop reporting on Ukraine or cease operations. At least 1,000 Russian journalists have fled Russia since February 2022. About 85% of Russians get most of their information from Russian state-controlled media. Novaya Gazeta 's editor-in-chief Dmitry Muratov was awarded the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize for his "efforts to safeguard freedom of expression". In March 2022, Novaya Gazeta suspended its print activities after receiving

3956-462: The abolition of the king's prerogative to cancel licenses in the 1840s. The US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo , criticized Russia for limiting the activities of VOA and Radio Free Europe in Russia with a governmental order demanding reviewing the subject by Moscow. On 4 March 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed into law a bill introducing prison sentences of up to 15 years for those who publish "knowingly false information" about

4042-410: The alphabet. Including all the foreign letters, the alphabet consists of the following 32 letters: Although the Estonian orthography is generally guided by phonemic principles, with each grapheme corresponding to one phoneme , there are some historical and morphological deviations from this: for example preservation of the morpheme in declension of the word (writing b, g, d in places where p, k, t

4128-538: The application of libel ; for example, in the aftermath of the Peterloo Massacre , Burdett was convicted, whereas by contrast, the Junius affair was over a satire and sarcasm about the non-lethal conduct and policies of the government. In Britain's American colonies, the first editors discovered their readers enjoyed it when they criticised the local governor; the governors discovered they could shut down

4214-467: The arrest warrant would affect her professional life as she would not be able to travel to many countries that could arrest her and extradite her to Russia. Until 1989, Romania was part of the communist bloc as the Socialist Republic of Romania . The communist regime heavily restricted freedom of the press and other civil liberties. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty , though available to

4300-577: The aspiration of national statehood. Following the February Revolution of 1917 Estonian lands were for the first time united in one administrative unit, the autonomous Governorate of Estonia . After the Bolshevik takeover of power in Russia in 1917, and the following successful German invasion further into Soviet Russia , Estonia declared itself an independent nation on 24 February 1918. Estonian language Estonian belongs to

4386-762: The author's work, then the author must turn to self-publishing . Beyond legal definitions, several non-governmental organizations use other criteria to judge the level of press freedom worldwide. Some create subjective lists, while others are based on quantitative data: Each year, The Committee to Protect Journalists produces a comprehensive list of all working journalists killed in relation to their employment, including profiles of each deceased journalist within an exhaustive database, and an annual census of incarcerated journalists (as of midnight, December 1). The year 2017 reported record findings of jailed journalists, reaching 262. Turkey , China , and Egypt account for more than half of all global journalists jailed. As per

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4472-413: The case and number of the adjective always agreeing with that of the noun (except in the terminative, essive, abessive and comitative, where there is agreement only for the number, the adjective being in the genitive form). Thus the illative for kollane maja ("a yellow house") is kollasesse majja ("into a yellow house"), but the terminative is kollase majani ("as far as a yellow house"). With respect to

4558-445: The course of the 19th century, some degree of ethnic awareness in the literate middle class preceded this development. By the 18th century the self-denomination eestlane (Estonian) along with the older maarahvas (country folk) spread among Estonians in the then provinces of Estonia and Livonia of the Russian Empire . The Bible was translated in 1739, and the number of books and brochures published in Estonian increased from 18 in

4644-543: The eight countries with the most press freedom are, in order: Norway , Denmark , Sweden , Estonia , Finland , Ireland , Portugal , and Costa Rica . The ten countries with the least press freedom are, in order: North Korea , Eritrea , Iran , Turkmenistan , Myanmar , China , Vietnam , Cuba , Iraq , and Syria . Freedom of the Press is a yearly report by the US-based non-profit organization Freedom House . It

4730-422: The end of the 20th century has brought the proportion of native Estonian-speakers in Estonia now back above 70%. Large parts of the first- and second-generation immigrants in Estonia have now adopted Estonian (over 50% as of the 2022 census). The Estonian dialects are divided into two groups – the northern and southern dialects, historically associated with the cities of Tallinn in the north and Tartu in

4816-591: The film industry, from directors to the lowliest assistant, had to sign an oath of loyalty to the Nazi Party due to the opinion-changing power Goebbels perceived movies to have; Goebbels himself maintained some personal control over every single film made in Nazi Europe. Journalists who crossed the Propaganda Ministry were routinely imprisoned. One of the world's first freedom of the press acts

4902-589: The founder of modern Estonian poetry. His birthday, March 14, is celebrated in Estonia as Mother Tongue Day. A fragment from Peterson's poem "Kuu" expresses the claim reestablishing the birthright of the Estonian language: In English: In the period from 1525 to 1917, 14,503 titles were published in Estonian; by comparison, between 1918 and 1940, 23,868 titles were published. In modern times A. H. Tammsaare , Jaan Kross , and Andrus Kivirähk are Estonia 's best-known and most translated writers. Estonians lead

4988-427: The greatest number of persons enjoy the greatest possible amount of happiness. Applying these general principles of liberty to freedom of expression, Mill states that if we silence an opinion, we may silence the truth. The individual freedom of expression is therefore essential to the well-being of society. Mill wrote: The December 1817 Trials of writer and satirist William Hone for publishing three political pamphlets

5074-531: The idea, writing "when as debtors and delinquents may walk abroad without a keeper, but inoffensive books must not stir forth without a visible jailer in their title." Although at the time it did little to halt the practice of licensing, it would be viewed later a significant milestone as one of the most eloquent defenses of press freedom. Milton's central argument was that the individual is capable of using reason and distinguishing right from wrong, and good from bad. In order to be able to exercise this ration right,

5160-470: The individual must have unlimited access to the ideas of his fellow men in "a free and open encounter." Milton's writings developed the concept of the open marketplace of ideas , the idea that when people argue against each other, good arguments will prevail. One form of speech that was widely restricted in Great Britain was seditious libel , and laws were in place that made criticizing the government

5246-456: The language. When Estonia was invaded and reoccupied by the Soviet army in 1944, the status of Estonian effectively changed to one of the two official languages (Russian being the other one). Many immigrants from Russia entered Estonia under Soviet encouragement. In the 1970s, the pressure of bilingualism for Estonians was intensified. Although teaching Estonian to non-Estonians in local schools

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5332-735: The law may suppress abuses of this freedom. However, Bibles, catechisms, liturgical and prayer books shall not be printed without the prior permission of the Bishop. After the abolition of the monarchy in 1946 and the abrogation of the Statute in 1948, the Constitution of the Republic of Italy guarantees the freedom of the press, as stated in Article 21, Paragraphs 2 and 3: The press may not be subjected to any authorisation or censorship. Seizure may be permitted only by judicial order stating

5418-483: The life of journalists. The drop in the murder of in-field journalists came across during the "global attention on the issue of impunity in journalist murders", focusing on the assassination of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in October 2018 and Daphne Caruana Galizia , a Maltese blogger in October 2017. Every year, Reporters Without Borders establishes a subjective ranking of countries in terms of their freedom of

5504-504: The media or individual journalists to challenge the approved "government line" on contentious issues. In such countries, journalists operating on the fringes of what is deemed to be acceptable will very often find themselves the subject of considerable intimidation by agents of the state. This can range from simple threats to their professional careers (firing, professional blacklisting ) to death threats , kidnapping , torture , and assassination . Central, Northern, and Western Europe have

5590-500: The middle of the 19th century. However, in the middle of the century the Estonians, with such leaders as Carl Robert Jakobson (1841–1882), Jakob Hurt (1839–1907) and Johann Voldemar Jannsen (1819–1890), became more ambitious in their political demands and started leaning towards the Finns as a successful model of national movement and, to some extent, the neighbouring Young Latvian national movement . Significant accomplishments were

5676-458: The newspapers. The most dramatic confrontation came in New York in 1734, where the governor brought John Peter Zenger to trial for criminal libel after the publication of satirical attacks. The defense lawyers argued that according to English common law, the truth was a valid defense against libel. The jury acquitted Zenger, who became the iconic American hero for freedom of the press. The result

5762-464: The press was established in Great Britain in 1695, with Alan Rusbridger , former editor of The Guardian , stating: "When people talk about licensing journalists or newspapers the instinct should be to refer them to history. Read about how licensing of the press in Britain was abolished in 1695. Remember how the freedoms won here became a model for much of the rest of the world, and be conscious of how

5848-580: The press was formally established in Great Britain with the lapse of the Licensing Act in 1695. Sweden was the first country in the world to adopt freedom of the press into its constitution with the Freedom of the Press Act of 1766. Freedom of the press is not construed as an absence of interference by outside entities, such as a government or religious organization, but rather as a right for authors to have their works published by other people. This idea

5934-568: The press was suppressed in Nazi Germany by the Reichstag Fire Decree of President Paul von Hindenburg , just as Adolf Hitler was coming to power. Hitler suppressed freedom of the press through Joseph Goebbels ' Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda . The Ministry acted as a central control point for all media, issuing orders as to what stories could be run and what stories would be suppressed. Anyone involved in

6020-469: The press. The Press Freedom Index list is based on responses to surveys sent to journalists that are members of partner organizations of the RWB, as well as related specialists such as researchers, jurists, and human rights activists. The survey asks questions about direct attacks on journalists and the media and other indirect sources of pressure against the free press, such as non-governmental groups. In 2022,

6106-502: The public and affect the quality of democracy". An independent press "serves to increase political knowledge, participation, and voter turnout ", acting as an essential driver of civic participation. Turkey , China , Egypt , Eritrea , and Saudi Arabia accounted for 70% of all journalists that were imprisoned in 2018. CPJ reported that "After China, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt, the worst jailers are Eritrea, Vietnam, and Iran." According to Reporters Without Borders , more than

6192-401: The publication of the national epic, Kalevipoeg , in 1862, and the organization of the first national song festival in 1869. By the end of the 1860s the Estonians became unwilling to remain reconciled with German cultural and political hegemony. Before the attempts at Russification in the 1880s–1890s their view of Imperial Russia remained positive. In 1881 seventeen Estonian societies, in

6278-774: The reader and was destroyed immediately after publication. The first extant Estonian book is a bilingual German-Estonian translation of the Lutheran catechism by S.   Wanradt and J.   Koell dating to 1535, during the Protestant Reformation period. An Estonian grammar book to be used by priests was printed in German in 1637. The New Testament was translated into the variety of South Estonian called Võro in 1686 (northern Estonian, 1715). The two languages were united based on Northern Estonian by Anton thor Helle . Writings in Estonian became more significant in

6364-868: The reason and only for offences expressly determined by the law on the press or in case of violation of the obligation to identify the persons responsible for such offences. The Constitution allows the warrantless confiscation of periodicals in cases of absolute urgency, when the Judiciary cannot timely intervene, on the condition that a judicial validation must be obtained within 24 hours. Article 21 also gives restrictions against those publications considered offensive by public morality , as stated in Paragraph 6: Publications, performances, and other exhibits offensive to public morality shall be prohibited. Measures of preventive and repressive measure against such violations shall be established by law. In 1933, freedom of

6450-603: The relevance of the information to protecting the national interest . Many governments are also subject to " sunshine laws " or freedom of information legislation that define the ambit of national interest and enable citizens to request access to government-held information. The United Nations ' 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights states: "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference, and to seek, receive, and impart information and ideas through any media regardless of frontiers." This philosophy

6536-492: The second half of the 19th   century based on Finnish orthography. The "Older orthography" it replaced was created in the 17th   century by Bengt Gottfried Forselius and Johann Hornung based on standard German orthography. Earlier writing in Estonian had, by and large, used an ad hoc orthography based on Latin and Middle Low German orthography. Some influences of the standard German orthography – for example, writing 'W'/'w' instead of 'V'/'v' – persisted well into

6622-419: The sounds [p], [t], [k] are written as p, t, k , with some exceptions due to morphology or etymology. Representation of palatalised consonants is inconsistent, and they are not always indicated. ŋ is an allophone of /n/ before /k/. While peripheral Estonian dialects are characterized by various degrees of vowel harmony , central dialects have almost completely lost the feature. Since the standard language

6708-405: The south, in addition to a distinct kirderanniku dialect, Northeastern coastal Estonian . The northern group consists of the keskmurre or central dialect that is also the basis for the standard language, the läänemurre or western dialect, roughly corresponding to Lääne County and Pärnu County , the saarte murre (islands' dialect) of Saaremaa , Hiiumaa , Muhu and Kihnu , and

6794-514: The wave of new loanwords from English in the 20th and 21st centuries, historically, Swedish and Russian were also sources of borrowings but to a much lesser extent. In borrowings, often 'b' and 'p' are interchangeable, for example 'baggage' becomes 'pagas', 'lob' (to throw) becomes 'loopima'. The initial letter 's' before another consonant is often dropped, for example 'skool' becomes 'kool', 'stool' becomes 'tool'. Estonian language planners such as Ado Grenzstein (a journalist active in Estonia from

6880-464: The world in book ownership, owning on average 218 books per house, and 35% of Estonians owning 350 books or more (as of 2018). Writings in Estonian became significant only in the 19th century with the spread of the ideas of the Age of Enlightenment , during the Estophile Enlightenment Period (1750–1840). Although Baltic Germans at large regarded the future of Estonians as being a fusion with themselves,

6966-546: The world still watches us to see how we protect those freedoms." Until 1694, Great Britain had an elaborate system of licensing ; the most recent was seen in the Licensing of the Press Act, 1662 . No publication was allowed without the accompaniment of a government-granted license. Fifty years earlier, at a time of civil war , John Milton wrote his pamphlet Areopagitica (1644). In this work Milton argued forcefully against this form of government censorship and parodied

7052-578: Was an emerging tension between the media and the government. By the mid-1760s, there were 24 weekly newspapers in the 13 colonies, and the satirical attack on the government became common features in American newspapers. In the Victorian era , the press became more influential than it had been previously, to the dismay of some readers. Thomas Carlyle , in his essay " Signs of the Times " (1829), said that

7138-638: Was critical and often slanderous towards Struensee's own regime, he reinstated some restrictions regarding the freedom of press a year later, October 7, 1771. After the Italian unification in 1861, the Albertine Statute of 1848 was adopted as the constitution of the Kingdom of Italy . The Statute granted the freedom of the press with some restrictions in case of abuses and in religious matters, as stated in Article 28: The press shall be free, but

7224-415: Was famously summarized by the 20th-century American journalist , A. J. Liebling , who wrote, "Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one". Freedom of the press gives the printer or publisher exclusive control over what the publisher chooses to publish, including the right to refuse to print anything for any reason. If the author cannot reach a voluntary agreement with a publisher to produce

7310-477: Was formally compulsory, in practice, the teaching and learning of Estonian by Russian-speakers was often considered unnecessary by the Soviet authorities. In 1991, with the restoration of Estonia's independence , Estonian went back to being the only official language in Estonia. Since 2004, when Estonia joined the European Union, Estonian is also one of the (now 24) official languages of the EU . The return of former Soviet immigrants to their countries of origin at

7396-560: Was introduced in Sweden in 1766 ( Swedish Freedom of the Press Act ), due in part to classical liberal member of parliament, Ostrobothnian priest, Anders Chydenius . Excepted and liable to prosecution was only vocal opposition to the king and the Church of Sweden . The act was largely rolled back after King Gustav 's coup d'état in 1772, restored after the overthrowing of his son, Gustav IV of Sweden in 1809, and fully recognized with

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