On the eve of World Press Freedom Day, we republish this article from the December 2007 issue, of CPQ, the quarterly magazine of the Commonwealth Press Union, on problems faced by Commonwealth newspapers when governments withdraw their advertising.

Since this was published the Government of Guyana has renewed its advertising with the Stabroek News, but only after a 17-month boycott. In March, the Government of Bermuda announced it would not advertise in The Royal Gazette, citing the need to cut costs.

Bethuel Thai is just about getting used to the empty desks in the Public Eye office, even though there aren't as many as there used to be. Each morning the founding editor and publisher of Lesotho's best-known independent newspaper walks into his publication's office on Princess Margarett Road in the capital Maseru, he thinks about the 27 staff members who've left the decade-old paper since June, 2007.

They didn't go because of Thai's management style. They didn't go because of the paper's editorial stance. And they didn't go because they were tired of being journalists. They went because the government of Lesotho, unhappy with the paper's consistently critical coverage, slapped an advertising ban on the Public Eye.

What also went, eventually, were some of the empty desks. They were sold to help pay benefits to some of the 27 staff who chose to take a voluntary redundancy package the paper had devised to help cut costs. Staff that chose to stay had their monthly salaries cut by half.

"They thought we were against them because of what we were writing," Thai told CPQ. "Many stories bugged them because we are the only paper that writes about corruption. At the moment, it's like we have moved eight years back in history."

Thai's words are a common refrain for many newspapers in the Commonwealth – large and small – which refuse to shy away from reporting or commenting critically on the government.

Lesotho, Namibia, Botswana, Pakistan and Guyana are just a few of the Commonwealth countries whose newspapers have refused to back down and have paid the price by seeing government advertisements suddenly dry up with little or no explanation.

Elsewhere, government officials actively call for punishing the press through advertising.

South Africa's Sunday Times recently found itself facing such a situation after it published a contentious story about the Minister of Health based on stolen medical records; the country's Minister in the Presidency, Essop Pahad, urged his government colleagues and supporters to use advertising budgets to punish media they do not approve of.

As they should, these papers use words like 'corruption', 'incompetence', 'powerhungry', 'directionless', 'inept', 'misguided' and other, sometimes much stronger, variants to inject a sense of vibrancy and urgency into their reporting, comment and opinion.

But governments often don't like being described with such vocabulary, let alone being held to account for their activities.

Instead of lashing out physically (which regrettably still happens all too often) and incurring international opprobrium, governments will choose a 'softer' option of trying to stifle criticism or dissent and cease advertising with the papers.

It's a particularly effective strategy that can suck the life out of a paper; a lack of advertising revenue means less money to spend on the staff, equipment and supplies that go into creating the publication.

The knock-on effect is that the newspaper struggles to stay afloat; its staff leave, its coverage of issues and stories flags, and its readers – the same ones whose taxes help sustain the government – lose out.

This is the current scenario at the PublicEye. The ban starved the paper of a staggering 85 per cent of its revenue, forcing Thai to cut costs.

"We had 43 staff before the ban was imposed. We now have 16." Thai told CPQ. "It's very difficult because now you have people doing two or three jobs." The receptionist doubles as one of the advertising officers but also handles distribution, the news editor doubles as the production desk and subeditor and the editor is also the publisher and managing editor.

The staff shortages lead the paper to rely on copy from Reuters and the South African Press Association (SAPA) for coverage, which creates another problem.

A Lesotho story provided by SAPA might also be covered by Lesotho's state-owned newspaper and news agency (both places where two former Public Eye staffers ended up). In other words, the story doesn't get coverage from an independent Lesotho-based source.

Since the ban was imposed, the PublicEye has dropped to 56 pages from 64 pages. Thai says it might have to drop to 40 pages if the ban continues and enough alternative sources of advertising aren't found.

Some readers can no longer even get those 56 pages of news they might have once looked forward to. To save money, Thai was forced to stop distributing the paper to the mountainous region of Lesotho; it is now only available in the lowland region.

Thai's battled gamely to keep the paper alive, establishing an office in neighbouring South Africa to lure potential advertisers there. But that venture only started in September and has yet to return significant gains.

How did it come to this?

In 2000, the Lesotho government awarded a tender for its government fleet to Imperial Fleet Services, 20 percent of which was owned by the government.

"As part of a plan to 'attract competent leaders into government'," South Africa's Business Day newspaper reported in 2006. "Imperial Fleet Services was asked to structure a deal that effectively gave Lesotho government officials the right to buy three-year-old luxury vehicles for only 1% of their original value.

"This meant officials got to buy C-Class Mercedes-Benzes for as little as ZAR3000 (GBP205). The Toyota Camry, not exactly the flashiest vehicle in the cold light of 2006, went for a comparative song at ZAR1700 (GBP116)," the Business Day report said.

The beneficiaries of the scheme, which used taxpayers' money, included judges, politicians and ministers.

The Public Eye covered the story extensively and Thai believes stories like it are examples of the type of journalism his paper produced that the government grew frustrated with: "They never gave us reasons but they had been complaining about our reporters."

In June 2007, Thai started to hear from several state and parastatal advertisers. They told him they had received an order not to buy any more advertising space in the Public Eye. Thai asked the advertisers to see a copy of the order but they all referred him to government secretary Tlohang Sekhamane. Sekhamane confirmed to Thai the government had made the decision but said there was no written order.

Thai later obtained a copy of a message from the government ministry's human resources department. Addressed to project and section chiefs of state and parastatal institutions, it said: "I have been ordered to inform you that requests for advertising services to the newspaper PublicEye… must cease with immediate effect. I thank you for your usual cooperation."

It saddens Thai tremendously that the publication he built up from an A-4 size photocopy to Lesotho's most widely distributed and read newspaper has reached this stage.

Thai says he is hesitant to take legal action, even though he knows he has constitutional grounds to make a case and international convention to back him up. It comes down to the very thing the government has deprived the paper of: money.

"Our suspicion is that they are only waiting for the slightest excuse to put us out," Thai says. "It's been difficult but we intend to survive."

Difficult days in Guyana

It's been difficult for David de Caires and the staff of Guyana's Stabroek News too. Publisher and editor-in-chief de Caires estimates the paper has lost between GYD25 and 30 million (about GBP £59,000-GBP £71,000) since government advertisements suddenly dried up in November 2006.

In a vibrant economy like Trinidad and Tobago's this wouldn't be a huge blow, says de Caires. But in a country like Guyana – whose commercial economy de Caires describes as "limping" – it's something that impacts and continues to do so.

"We are certainly not in danger of folding, we're not there yet," de Caires says. "But in effect we are under siege." De Caires suspects the paper's sustained critical coverage of President Bharrat Jagdeo's administration has a significant role to play in the withdrawal of government advertising.

The government denies this, however, claiming its decision to pull advertising from the Stabroek News and shift it to the more government-friendly Kaiteur News was strictly a commercial decision based on the paper's circulation.

It's a notion that infuriates de Caires, who says the circulation of the two newspapers currently receiving state ads is unknown because neither has been audited.

"If you say it's an economic argument then let's test it," de Caires says. "But we have never bought this nonsensical circulation argument. It's everything to do with that we're critics of his government. It's a well recognised phenomenon in this part of the world. Governments are well aware this is a weapon they can use against critical papers."

De Caires proposed to the government that the Audit Bureau of Circulation be invited to audit the paid circulation of both papers. "We believed we had the target audience for the ads they wanted to place," he says. The government did not so much decline as remain completely silent on the issue.

A regional media team comprised of respected Guyanese journalist Rickey Singh and Harold Hoyte of the Nation Group in Barbados stepped in to try and mediate.

It proposed to the government that an agreeable mechanism be devised for allocating ads. The team was ignored and the mediation attempt ended in failure.

De Caires and his team lodged a complaint with the Organisation of American States (OAS). Ignacio J. Alvarez, the Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression with the OAS' Inter-American Commission on Human Rights took up the case and wrote to the Guyana government, requesting information about how advertising was allocated. To date, the government has ignored Alvarez.

In a July 2007 press release, Alvarez called on the government to "review its withdrawal of ads from the Stabroek News and to ensure transparency in the allocation of official advertising."

Alvarez went on to emphasise that the awarding of advertising by states should be done "on the basis of transparent and objective criteria", adding that measures which starve a media outlet of official advertising for being critical of the administration constitute "an indirect restriction on freedom of expression". The announcement was met with silence by the government.

Debate and discussion had been closed down on every front. CPQ tried to reach Roger Luncheon, head of Guyana's Presidential Secretariat and Cabinet Secretary, for comment on the issue but calls were not returned.

De Caires believes the government is being silent because it knows its position is weak: "Silence is acquiescence. I think they're thinking 'We don't have a case' and are just hoping we stop talking about it."

De Caires says that although the paper has missed out on ad revenue it remains a viable but very tightly run ship. "We've not let anyone go but we're not employing any new staff either," he says.

Still, the economic squeeze hasn't tempered the paper's editorial position or criticism of the government – a feature that's commonly the first thing to be toned down or disappear completely from a paper's pages in the face of such 'soft'' punishment.

"It hasn't affected us at all in that respect,' a feisty-sounding de Caires says. "We're as militant as we've ever been. If anything it's pushed us the other way. There will be no self-censorship here."

The Public Eye and the Stabroek News are both relatively small papers operating in relatively small countries.

Both are battling to survive by cutting costs and running as tight a financial ship as possible. But what happens when larger papers in bigger countries encounter the same problems? Their financial might can carry them through, but there have been instances of newspapers suspending or coming perilously close to ceasing publication altogether because of the withdrawal of government advertising.

In 2006, the Dawn Group – one of Pakistan's most wealthy and esteemed newspaper publishing houses – was forced to suspend The Star, an evening paper it had been publishing for 50 years. It did so as a temporary cost-saving measure after the federal government banned nearly all advertising with the group.

The government was upset with Dawn Group's coverage of topics like the war against Al-Qaeda and Taliban in North and South Waziristan, the possible resurgence of covert government support to Kashmiri militants, and the confusion surrounding policy over an insurgency in Balochistan.

In a March 2007 open letter Hameed Haroon, Dawn Group's CEO and publisher, detailed why he believed the ban was imposed and what it was meant to accomplish: "In September 2006 when the government approached DAWN in its attempt to seek a news blackout regarding Balochistan and the troubled FATA [Federally Administered Tribal Areas] agencies of North and South Wazirstan, the editor…and the Directors of the Board… concluded that the government's 'request' was unreasonable and needed to be firmly turned down.

"As a consequence, the government imposed an almost comprehensive ban on Federal Government advertising…with an intent to provoke the financial collapse of the DAWN Group."

Botswana's Guardian and its sister paper, the Midweek Sun, have also come close to financial collapse.

"The papers were suffering terribly. We were operating at a loss," says Guardian editor Mike Mothibi, who edited the Midweek Sun when the government boycotted advertising in both papers in May 2001. "If it had gone on any longer it would have been the end of the papers."

Again, critical coverage is suspected of having a significant role to play in the government's decision to cease advertising in the two papers.

Both had reported on a leaked report from the government Ombudsman''s office that investigated allegations of abuse of office by the then vice-president, Ian Khama. The report examined Khama's liability for flying military aircraft after having left the armed forces and reached the conclusion he had abused his office.

"It was the straw that broke the camel's back," says Mothibi. Advertisements stopped coming in and the papers lost 40 per cent of their revenue.

Although the government initially said the decision had been made for financial reasons, it later said it was simply exercising its right to choose its business partners.

It was later revealed the government had written to parastatal institutions directing them not to advertise with either paper because of the way they reported on government.

Both papers lodged a High Court application for a judicial review of the government's decision to ban advertising.

In a resounding – and relieving – decision in favour of press freedom, the judge in September 2001 declared the ban on advertising to be unconstitutional. The court found the ban had violated the papers' constitutionally guaranteed right to freedom of expression and stated it had been designed to influence the editorial policies of both papers. Although victorious, the papers barely survived the ordeal.

Winning the case with costs had kept them afloat; winning without, says Mothibi, would have meant the beginning of the end. As it was, the ban and its financial effects ended up being one of the main reasons publisher William Jones sold it in 2002, 20 years after he'd founded it.

Seven years after the legal victory, the ban's lingering effect is still being felt – in what could be considered the worst way for journalism, those who practise it and those who are informed by it.

"You start to think or watch that things aren't going to lose the publishers money because that is a concern," says Mothibi. "They will tell you not to tone down if they are self-respecting publishers, but I know that there must have been some subtle effect on us all. We want to believe we remain vigilant and defiant. But this has a psychological effect on you. I don't think we report now as we did then."