On this thirty first World Press Freedom Day I call for the universal recognition of journalism as a sacred calling to pursue the truth which supercedes the rights of any state to authorize and enforce versions of it in service to power and identitarian politics, and for a United Humankind in solidarity as guarantors of each other’s universal rights, which include the Four Primary Duties of a Citizen; to Question Authority, Expose Authority, Mock Authority, and Challenge Authority, and to preserve the independence of the press and the transparency of all governments as institutions which must answer ultimately to their people.
Freedom of the press and of information, the right to speak, write, teach, organize, research and publish in an environment of transparency of the state, along with rights of protest and strike, are instrumental to the agency of citizens and to the idea and meaningfulness of democracy.
Any power or authority held by a government of any form is granted by its citizens or has been appropriated from them unjustly, and it is the highest principle of natural law as articulated in our Declaration of Independence that we may seize and reclaim it at any time it is held without our participation and co-ownership, or used against our general interests.
True democracy as a free society of equals requires the four ideals of liberty, equality, truth, and justice, and one thing more; an engaged electorate of truth tellers who will hold our representatives and the institutions of our government responsible for enacting our values
Like the role of a free press in the sacred calling to pursue the truth, the role of a citizen is to be a truth teller. Both serve Truth, and truth is necessary to the just balance of power between individuals which is the purpose of the state.
As I wrote in my post of August 16 2020, Democracy, the Right of Free Speech Versus the Crime of Hate Speech, and the Principle of Open Debate; To free ourselves of the ideas of other people; such is the essence of democracy. Conversely, the use of social force in marginalizing and silencing dissent is the definition of tyranny.
Much talk of late has employed the term cancel culture to deflect and obscure the true issues involved with the disambiguation of free speech from hate speech and the role of open debate in a democracy; cancel culture is a figment used without sincerity to obfuscate loathsome acts of white supremacist and patriarchal sexual terror, incitement to violence and dehumanization.
Conversely, antifascist action in defense of equality and our universal human rights such as platform denial and forms of peer ostracism and boycott are part of the free market of ideas and have no relation to silencing and erasure used by authoritarian tyrannies of force and control to subjugate a population and repress dissent, as exemplified by the Chinese Communist Party’s arrest of newspaperman Jimmy Lai in their campaign against democracy and truth in Hong Kong, the gruesome butchery of Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi Arabia in their games of imperial dominion, the assassination of Palestinian witness of history Shireen Abu Aqleh by Israel in service to state terror and the Occupation, and countless others.
The state is embodied violence.
Against this we have only our loyalty to and solidarity with each other, our witness of history and the bond of our word, and our power of vision to reimagine and transform ourselves, our ways of being human with each other, and our future possibilities of becoming human.
But the values and issues which the phenomenon of repression of dissent raises are interesting, as they signpost the heart of what democracy means and our responsibility to others as well as our freedom from the ideas of others. Freedom from is as important as freedom to.
Democracy is reducible to a simple idea; the abandonment of social force and control in shaping others to our own image, in the authorization of identity, in our freedom of conscience, and from the establishment and policing of boundaries of the Forbidden.
The autonomy of individuals takes precedence over all rights of authority and the state, which exists only to secure those rights which we cannot secure for ourselves. The state protects us from the tyranny of other people’s ideas of virtue; and others from our own.
Any society or culture requires shared values and principles, agreements about things such as freedoms of and freedoms from, whether in systems of law and justice or as standards of courtesy. Democracy is unique in that it requires rights of free access to information and the sharing of it, and freedoms from surveillance, censorship, and lies disguised as truths, but also requires for its functioning the tradition of open debate founded with our civilization in the Forum of Athens.
Hate speech, which seeks to harm a class of persons, is the only exception to the right of free speech as parrhesia, the sacred calling to expose injustice, and the independence of journalism as a sacred calling to seek the truth, for hate speech dehumanizes others as a criminal theft of humanity, citizenship, and identity which violates our ideals of equality and liberty; hate speech is an act of tyranny and terror which is subversive to democracy as a free society of equals.
To make an idea about a kind of people is a hate crime and an act of violence.
I explored the implications of parrhesia and Foucault’s extension of this classical principle as truth telling in my post of May 27 2020, On Speaking Truth to Power as a Sacred Calling; I found myself responding with candor to a conversation today in which a friend, a fearless champion of the marginalized and the wretched of the earth, the powerless and the dispossessed, the silenced and the erased, expressed fear of retribution in calling out the police as an institution of racist state force and control, thereby illustrating the mechanism of silencing on which unjust authority depends.
Of course this was a preface for an act of Breaking the Silence; I did say they are my friend.
Here is the beginning of that conversation; “Today I’m going to do something stupid.
On my Facebook and Twitter feeds I am going to express a viewpoint that I have long held to myself. A viewpoint I believed, if ever made public, would kneecap my dreams of a political career and public service.
Today I realized my silence was just a vestige of my own internalized oppression and respectability politics, and f*** respectability. It has never, and will never, save us. So here goes: here’s why I am a #PoliceAbolitionist”
What followed was a brilliant and multivoiced discussion of the role of police violence in white supremacist terror, as an army of occupation whose purpose is to enforce inequality and elite hierarchies of exclusionary otherness and to subvert the institutions and values of democracy, and of the use of social force in a free society of equals. This is among the most important issues we face today and questions some of the inherent contradictions of our form of government, of which George Washington said, “Government is about force; only force.”
But this is only indirectly the subject on which I write today; far more primary and fundamental to the institution of a free press is the function of other people’s ideas of ourselves, of normality and respectability, in the silencing of dissent.
To our subjugation by authorized identities, I reply with the Wicked Witch; I will fuck respectability with you, and their little dog normality too.
Authorized identities and boundaries of the Forbidden are about power, and we must call out the instruments of unequal power as we see them. Foucault called this truthtelling, and it is a crucial part of seizure of power and ownership of identity; always there remains the struggle between the masks others make for us and those we make for ourselves.
Against state tyranny and terror, force and control, let us deploy parrhesia and the performance of our best selves as guerilla theatre. Go ahead; frighten the horses.
Often have I referred to this key performative role in democracy as the Jester of King Lear, whose enactments of mockery and satire, the exposure and deflation of the mighty as revolutionary seizures of power which reclaim that which we the people have lent them when it is used unjustly, are necessary to maintain the balance of interests in a society in which government is co-owned equally by its citizens and has as its overriding purpose the securement of the freedom and autonomy of individuals and of their universal human rights.
Without citizens who refuse to be silenced and controlled by authority, democracy becomes meaningless.
So with my arts of rhetoric and poetry as truthtelling, and with my praxis of democracy in my daily journal here at Torch of Liberty; to incite, provoke, and disturb.
For democracy requires a participatory electorate willing to speak truth to power.
To all those who defy and challenge unjust authority; I will stand with you, and I ask that all of us do the same.
As written by Jonathan Watts in The Guardian, in an article entitled Across the world, journalists are under threat for sharing the truth: Last year was the most dangerous to be a reporter since 2015. Without the courage of correspondents risking everything to report from conflict areas, we could be at risk of ‘zones of silence’ spreading around the world; “Conflict in Gaza, war in Ukraine, a battle over the global environment – the world is becoming an increasingly hostile place, particularly for frontline journalists.
Last year saw 99 killings of reporters, up 44% on 2022 and the highest toll since 2015.
Without the courage of correspondents to continue working in conflict areas, press organisations warn the world will start to see “zones of silence”, where the risks are so great that important stories go unreported.
Last year’s high toll was almost entirely due to Gaza, where a Guardian editorial noted “no war has killed so many journalists so quickly”.
The vast majority are Palestinian reporters who, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, appear to have been targeted by Israeli forces. The Guardian was among more than 30 news organisations that signed an open letter expressing solidarity with journalists working in Gaza and calling for their protection and freedom to report.
This is much more than a matter of principle; solidarity is a matter of survival. Over the years, Guardian reporters have been kidnapped in Iraq and Afghanistan, beaten in Pakistan, expelled from Russia, and arrested in Egypt, Zimbabwe and China.
The search for the truth can come at a horrific cost.
Two years ago, a regular Guardian contributor, Dom Phillips, was murdered in the Brazilian Amazon, with the Brazilian Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira. On the first anniversary of the killings last year, the Guardian joined an international collaboration to amplify their work.
A group of Dom’s journalist friends, including myself, are also working on a crowdfunded project to finish the book that he was working on at the time of his death: How to Save the Amazon: Ask the People Who Know. It will be published next year.
Reporting on the war against nature might generate fewer headlines than Gaza or Ukraine, but it is also high risk with little legal protection. The number of environmental journalists being attacked or killed is rising and it continues to be one of the most dangerous fields of journalism after war reporting. Though the trend is accelerating, prosecutions remain dismally low, with very few cases leading to convictions.
Instead, the law appears to be increasingly used against journalists. One of the most disturbing trends in recent years has been the arrests or police harassment of journalists covering environmental protests. This has stirred outrage in the UK, the Netherlands, France, Spain, Canada, Australia, Azerbaijan, the US and China, which is consistently the biggest jailer of reporters.
But huge challenges remain for the media in general.
Throughout this week we will be marking Friday’s World Press Freedom Day with a series of articles about different threats posed to all types of reporters, from those working in exile and still facing threats from their home states, to environmental journalists facing up to violence and censorship as well as female journalists being targeted because of their sex. We want to use our platform to highlight the work they are doing, often in incredibly dangerous circumstances.
The risks may be growing, and the space to operate may be increasingly constrained, but we are more determined than ever to tell the stories of our age so that you, the readers, have the information to act as voters, citizens, consumers and participants in the web of life on Earth.”
Where can we look for a model free press, even one beset by catch and kill journalism as election interference, propaganda and falsification from every angle, hate speech disguised as free speech, and the erosion of truth and meaningful public debate? When most of our world is enslaved by tyrannies who enforce state power with brutal repression, there are few where one can mock a ruler and be met with humor and on equal terms by the ruler himself.
Here follows the speech of President Biden at the 2023 White House Correspondent’s Dinner; “Thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Thank you, Steve, for that introduction. And a special thanks to the 42% of you who actually applauded.
I’m really excited to be here tonight with the only group of Americans with a lower approval rating than I have. That’s hard to say after what we just saw.
This is the first time a president attended this dinner in six years. It’s understandable. We had a horrible plague followed by two years of Covid.
Just imagine if my predecessor came to this dinner this year. Now, that would really have been a real coup if that occurred. A little tough, huh?
But I’m honored to be here at such an event with so much history.
As already referenced, the very first president to attend the White House Correspondents’ Dinner was Calvin Coolidge in 1924. I had just been elected to the United States Senate. And I reme — I remember telling him, “Cal, just be yourself. Get up there and speak from the heart. You’re going to be great, kid. You’re going to do it well.”
Of course, Jill is with me tonight. Jilly, how are you, kid? I think — I think she’s doing an incredible job as first lady. The first lady to continue working full-time, and she does as a professor.
She doesn’t pay much attention to the polls, though she did say the other day: Instead of introducing myself as Jill Biden’s husband, maybe I should introduce myself as her roommate.
I’ve attended this dinner many times, but this is my first time as president. And the organizers had — had it hard — made it pretty hard for me tonight. Although the good news is, if all goes well, I have a real shot at replacing James Corden.
It was great having him over at the White House the other day, just as he announced he’s leaving the show. A great performer is going out on top after eight years in the job. Sounds just about right to me.
And it’s tough to follow pros like James and Billy Eichner. Billy, where are you again? Do you — where is he?
Well, Billy, you’re famous for interviewing — your interviewing skills. Billy, you should know what you’re doing, pal. You know it, you know it well. And you should — I think — you should host “Meet the Press.” Maybe they’ll start to watch it again.
I’ve never had — never had to — I’ve never had to open — I’ll never be — I’ll never be invited to “Meet the Press” again. Anyway.
I’ve never had to open before Trevor Noah. Trevor is great. When I was elected, he did a show and he called me “America’s new dad.” Let me tell you something, pal: I’m flattered anybody would call me a “new” anything. You’re my guy.
And, folks, it’s been a tough few years for the country. That’s one reason why it’s great to be here again.
Everyone at the White House is so excited. I told my grandkids and Pete Buttigieg they could stay up late and watch this show tonight.
Tonight — tonight we come here and answer a very important question on everybody’s mind: Why in the hell are we still doing this?
I know there are — I know there are questions about whether we should gather here tonight because of Covid. Well, we’re here to show the country that we’re getting through this pandemic. Plus, everyone had to prove they were fully vaccinated and boosted.
So, if you’re at home watching this and you’re wondering how to do that, just contact your favorite Fox News reporter. They’re all here, vaccinated and boosted — all of them.
And, look, Fox — Fox News, I’m — I’m really sorry your preferred candidate lost the last election. To make it up to you, I’m happy to give my chief of staff to you all so he can tell Sean Hannity what to say every day.
In fact, Ron Klain is here at the CBS table, which hired Mick Mulvaney. Mick, on CBS? I was stunned. I figured he’d end up on “The Masked Singer” with Rudy.
Amazing hire, guys. Really quite amazing.
Look, I know this is a tough town. I came to office with an ambitious agenda, and I expected it to face stiff opposition in the Senate. I just hoped it would be from Republicans.
But I’m not worried about the midterms. I’m not worried about them. We may end up with more partisan gridlock, but I’m confident we can work it out during my remaining six years in the presidency.
And, folks, I’m not really here to roast the GOP. That’s not my style. Besides, there’s nothing I can say about the GOP that Kevin McCarthy hasn’t already put on tape.
And, you know, at the same — at the same time, a lot of people say the Republican Party is too extreme, too divisive, too controlled by one person. They say, “It’s not your father’s Republican Party.”
Ronald Reagan said, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear this wall down.” Today’s Republicans say, “Tear down Mickey Mouse’s house.” And pretty soon, they’ll be storming Cinderella’s castle, you can be sure of it.
But Republicans seem to support one fella — some guy named Brandon. He’s having a really good year, and I’m kind of happy for him.
Let me conclude with a serious word.
We live in serious times. We’re coming through a devastating pandemic, and we have to stay vigilant. I know Kamala wanted to be here, for example, and thankfully she’s doing well. You should all know she sends her best.
We’re in a time when what we so long have taken for granted is facing the gravest of threats. And I’m being deadly earnest.
Overseas, the liberal world order that laid the foundation for global peace, stability and prosperity since World War II is genuinely, seriously under assault.
And at home, a poison is running through our democracy of all — all of this taking place with disinformation massively on the rise, where the truth is buried by lies and the lies live on as truth.
What’s clear — and I mean this from the bottom of my heart — that you, the free press, matter more than you ever did in the last century. No, I really mean it.
I’ve always believed that good journalism holds up a mirror to ourselves, to reflect on the good, the bad and the true. Tonight, I want to congratulate the awardees and the scholarship winners who carry on that sacred tradition.
We’ve all seen the courage of the Ukrainian people because of the courage of American reporters in this room and your colleagues across the world, who are on the ground, taking their lives in their own hands.
We just — we just saw a heartbreaking video: Nine have been killed reporting from Kyiv — struck by a kamikaze drone strike after a shopping mall attack; shot in the neck while decounci- [sic] — while — while documenting Ukrainians fleeing; killed when Russian missiles hit the television tower in a residential neighborhood. One journalist from Radio Liberty just killed days ago.
So many of you telling the stories and taking the photos and recording the videos of what’s happening there, the unvarnished truth shown — showing the — the destruction and the devastation and, yes, the war crimes.
Tonight, we also honor the legacy of two historic reporters, and that is Alice Dunnigan and Ethel Payne. I’m glad you saw that tonight. I didn’t know you were doing that. These are the first Black women to be White House reporters, who shattered convention to cover a segregated nation.
We honor journalists killed, missing, imprisoned, detained and tortured; covering war, exposing corruption and holding leaders accountable.
We honor members of the press, both national and local, covering a once-in-a-century pandemic where we lost a million Americans, a generation reckoning on race and the existential threat of climate change.
The free press is not the enemy of the people — far from it. At your best, you’re guardians of the truth.
President Kennedy once said, and I quote, “Without debate, without criticism, no administration, no country can succeed, and no republic can survive.”
The First Amendment grants a free press extraordinary protection, but with it comes, as many of you know, a very heavy obligation: to seek the truth as best you can — not to inflame or entertain, but to illuminate and educate.
I know it’s tough. And I’m not being solicitous. The industry is changing significantly.
There’s incredible pressure on you all to deliver heat instead of shed light, because the technology is changing so much, the system is changing. But it matters. No kidding. It matters. The truth matters.
American democracy is not a reality show. It’s not a reality show. It’s reality itself. And the reality is that we are a great country.
Our future is bright. It’s not guaranteed, because democracy is never guaranteed. It has to be earned. It has to be defended. It has to be protected.
As you’ve heard me say many times: There’s not a damn thing this country can’t do when we stand united and do it together. And I know we can do anything we want to do that’s right.
I’ve been around a long time, as has been pointed out many times tonight. But I give you my word as a Biden: I’ve never been more optimistic about America than I am today. I really mean it.
At times of enormous change, it presents enormous opportunities. For despite all the crises, all the partisanship, all the shouting and the showmanship,
I really know this and you know it too: We are a great nation because we’re basically a good people.
And here in America, good journalism, good satire about our leaders, about our society is quintessentially an American thing. It demonstrates the power of our example.
And I, honest to God, believe it reveals our soul — the soul of our nation. And that’s what I’d like to toast tonight, if I may.
(The President offers a toast.)
To the journalists and their families, to the people and their elected representatives, to the United States of America.
And by the way, Madeleine Albright was right: We are the indispensable nation.
Ladies and gentlemen, I’m going to turn this over to Trevor now, strap myself into my seat.
And, Trevor, the really good news is: Now you get to roast the President of the United States and, unlike in Moscow, you won’t go to jail.
The podium is yours.”
As written by Margaret Sullivan in The Guardian, in an article entitled When journalists are persecuted, we all suffer; “Jodie Ginsberg remembers an important lesson from her decade as a Reuters foreign correspondent and bureau chief: there simply is no substitute for being at the scene.
“The first and most important source is what journalists see in front of them – their ability to give a firsthand, eyewitness account,” says Ginsberg, now the president of Committee to Protect Journalists, the non-profit advocacy organization based in New York City.
A memorable case in point was how two Associated Press journalists last year were able to tell what was happening on the ground in Mariupol, Ukraine. As a Russian siege largely destroyed the city, children’s bodies filled mass graves and shells demolished a maternity hospital, but Russian officials tried to deny it and called the horror stories nothing but fiction.
“The Russians said this was all a fake, but the AP journalists at the scene were able to say no, and tell the real story,” Ginsberg said. One of them, Yevgeny Maloletka, took an unforgettable photograph, seen on front pages around the world, of an injured pregnant woman being carried on a gurney from the bombed-out hospital by emergency workers; her baby was born dead and she died soon afterwards.
But with journalists threatened with harassment, danger and even imprisonment around the world, that crucial ability to report on the ground – to get the invaluable eyewitness account – has been sorely diminished.
The situation is dire; as democracy declines worldwide, there are more journalists in prison now than at any time since the CPJ began keeping track. The organization’s annual prison census showed 363 reporters in prison at the end of last year – an increase of 20% from the previous year, with the most journalists jailed in Iran, China, Myanmar, Turkey and Belarus.
This ugly trend means less on-the-ground reporting – not only by the imprisoned journalists but by many others who flee conflict zones or are forced to censor themselves in order to avoid the growing dangers.
When the Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich was arrested in late March on false espionage charges in Russia – he remains imprisoned – many western journalists finally fled the country joining those who had left months earlier. The threats had simply become untenable.
“Evan’s arrest sends a powerful message to other journalists – that you may face something similar,” Ginsberg told me. “That has a chilling effect on reporting, which is the aim of the repressive governments doing this kind of harassment and imprisonment. It is meant to silence journalists.”
No longer is it just war correspondents who face extreme danger. These days, the dominance of authoritarian governments around the world make life hazardous for all kinds of journalists. Local and regional reporters around the world may bear the brunt most, partly because they don’t have the protection and legal resources of large news organizations.
In addition to the countries named above, Ginsberg said that Mexico, Haiti, Russia and parts of Latin and South America are particularly difficult places for journalists to do their work now.
Concerned people can help. They can show they care about journalism by subscribing to news organizations or donating to free-speech and press-rights organizations including CPJ, Pen America and Reporters Without Borders.
And perhaps most important of all, they can keep jailed journalists in mind, and keep their plight in the public consciousness. That goes for Austin Tice, a freelance journalist who went missing in Syria in 2012 and is believed to be a captive of the Syrian government. It goes for Gershkovich, of course, and for the hundreds of lesser known reporters who are threatened or jailed around the world.
It was encouraging to hear Joe Biden bring up Tice and Gershkovich at the White House correspondents’ dinner last weekend in Washington DC. He spoke of Evan’s “absolute courage”, and said US officials are working every day to bring him home.
“Our message is this,” Biden added. “Journalism is not a crime.”
Not only is journalism not a crime, it’s a necessity – one that’s becoming harder than ever to carry out with every passing month.
That’s not only terrible for those directly involved. It also hurts everyone who cares about the truth.”
As written last year by Oliver Holmes in The Guardian, in an article entitled Media freedom in dire state in record number of countries, report finds: World Press Freedom Index report warns disinformation and AI pose mounting threats to journalism; “Media freedom is in dire health in a record number of countries, according to the latest annual snapshot, which warns that disinformation, propaganda and artificial intelligence pose mounting threats to journalism.
The World Press Freedom Index revealed a shocking slide, with an unprecedented 31 countries deemed to be in a “very serious situation”, the lowest ranking in the report, up from 21 just two years ago.
Increased aggressiveness from autocratic governments – and some that are considered democratic – coupled with “massive disinformation or propaganda campaigns” has caused the situation to go from bad to worse, according to the list, released by the advocacy group Reporters Without Borders (RSF).
“There is more red on the RSF map this year than ever before, as authoritarian leaders become increasingly bold in their attempts to silence the press,” the RSF secretary general, Christophe Deloire, told the Guardian. “The international community needs to wake up to reality, and act together, decisively and fast, to reverse this dangerous trend.”
Wednesday marks the 30th anniversary of the first World Press Freedom Day, which was created to remind governments of their duty to uphold freedom of expression. However, the environment for journalism today is considered “bad” in seven out of 10 countries, and satisfactory in only three out of 10, according to RSF. The UN says 85% of people live in countries where media freedom has declined in the past five years.
The survey assesses the state of the media in 180 countries and territories, looking at the ability of journalists to publish news in the public interest without interference andwithout threats to their own safety.
It shows rapid technological advances are allowing governments and political actors to distort reality, and fake content is easier to publish than ever before.
“The difference is being blurred between true and false, real and artificial, facts and artifices, jeopardising the right to information,” the report said. “The unprecedented ability to tamper with content is being used to undermine those who embody quality journalism and weaken journalism itself.”
Artificial intelligence was “wreaking further havoc on the media world”, the report said, with AI tools “digesting content and regurgitating it in the form of syntheses that flout the principles of rigour and reliability”.
This is not just written AI content but visual, too. High-definition images that appear to show real people can be generated in seconds.
At the same time, governments are increasingly fighting a propaganda war. Russia, which already plummeted in the rankings last year after the invasion of Ukraine, dropped another nine places, as state media slavishly parrots the Kremlin line while opposition outlets are driven into exile. Last month, Moscow arrested the Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, the first US journalist detained in Russia on espionage charges since the end of the cold war.
Meanwhile, three countries: Tajikistan, India and Turkey, dropped from being in a “problematic situation” into the lowest category. India has been in particularly sharp decline, sinking 11 places to 161 after media takeovers by oligarchs close to Narendra Modi. The Indian press used to be seen as fairly progressive, but things changed radically after the Hindu nationalist prime minister took over. This year, the BBC was raided by the country’s financial crimes agency in a move widely condemned as an act of intimidation after a BBC documentary was critical of Modi.
In Turkey, the administration of the hardline president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, had stepped up its persecution of journalists in the run-up to elections scheduled for 14 May, RSF said. Turkey jails more journalists than any other democracy.
Some of the 2023 index’s biggest falls were in Africa. Until recently a regional model, Senegal fell 31 places, mainly because of criminal charges brought against two journalists, Pape Alé Niang and Pape Ndiaye. Tunisia fell 27 places as a result of President Kais Saied’s growing authoritarianism.
The Middle East is the world’s most dangerous region for journalists. But the Americas no longer have any country coloured green, meaning “good”, on the press freedom map. The US fell three places to 45th. The Asia Pacific region is dragged down by regimes hostile to reporters, such as Myanmar (173rd) and Afghanistan (152nd).
“We are witnessing worrying trends, but the big question is if these trends are a hiccup or a sign of a world going backwards,” said Guilherme Canela, the global lead on freedom of speech at Unesco. “Physical attacks, digital attacks, the economic situation, and regulatory tightening: we are facing a perfect storm.”
A separate Unesco report released on Wednesday said healthy freedom of expression helped many other fundamental rights to flourish.
Nordic countries have long topped the RSF rankings, and Norway stayed in first place in the press freedom index for the seventh year running. But a non-Nordic country was ranked second: Ireland. The Netherlands returned to the top 10, rising 22 places, following the 2021 murder of the crime reporter Peter R de Vries. The UK was listed at 26.
The western world’s media landscape remains mixed, according to RSF and other press freedom groups, with political and financial pressures. In the first quarter of this year, news media job cuts in the UK and North America ran at a rate of 1,000 jobs a month, a Press Gazette analysis found.
Last week, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists released a report warning against complacency in the EU, which has traditionally been considered among the world’s safest and freest places for journalists.
The group expressed concern about rising populism and illiberal governments such as in Hungary and Poland trampling on the rule of law, including press freedom. The Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia and the Slovakian journalist Ján Kuciak had been murdered in connection with their work.”
As written by Kelly Walls in The Guardian, in an article entitled Trust, diversity and independence: three key elements for a thriving press: Newspapers’ power is being eroded and disinformation is rife – but there is a way forward; “Our understanding of the world is driven by information. It feeds our ability to make informed decisions about our lives, our communities, the way we’re governed. This fundamental freedom, the power to be able to access reliable information, sits at the heart of a thriving democratic society.
But increasingly that power is being eroded. Indeed, some never had it to begin with. Press freedom is being threatened, compromised and denied in an increasing number of countries around the world.
In parallel, trust in news among the general public is declining. Financial pressures are multiplying. And for every technological advancement to counter disinformation, there is another that can more effectively spread it.
As the Nobel laureate Maria Ressa put it recently: “This is not a content problem, it isn’t a freedom of speech problem, it is a distribution problem. It is the fact that by design, lies are distributed faster and further than facts.”
Ahead of the 30th anniversary this week of World Press Freedom Day, it is becoming clearer than ever that three things have to happen to assure a future for media organisations.
The first is financial independence. The Media Development Investment Fund (MDIF) say that media can only be truly independent if there are no financial strings. They created Plūrālis for this reason, a blended funding model that combines philanthropic and commercial capital to make interventions when media are most vulnerable, acting as a shield against capture from governments or individuals who seek to compromise their editorial independence. “A new approach was needed and this was an experiment, but it really could be a model for the future,” their chief strategy officer, Patrice Schneider, said.
But beyond philanthropic grants and investment, ultimately media organisations strive to be self-sustaining. To that end, more are turning to membership and reader revenue models. In a world where so much information is available for free, to persuade a reader to voluntarily pay for news is tough. It relies on an exchange of value and trust.
In recent months, the Guardian Foundation team, in collaboration with our colleagues at the Guardian, have worked with the Kyiv Independent, Holod, Telex and +972, to exchange knowledge, skills and tactics. The hope is that if we can share with young, vibrant, independent startups what is working for others, they will flourish in parts of the world that desperately need them.
Zakhar Protsiuk, chief operating officer of the Kyiv Independent, said the mentorship “gave us practical advice that we could act on quickly. One tip resulted in an increase of more than 150% in reader support that week.”
They went on to achieve their goal of 10,000 members. At the recent International Journalism festival, editor-in-chief Olga Rudenko reflected on their broader journey over the last 18 months: “We just hope that other media can draw from our success and that this isn’t just something for us.” This is key: a community of independent media who are working together in solidarity, not competition.
The second vital factor is plurality of voice and agency. News organisations must include diverse perspectives and reporting by journalists from a broad range of backgrounds. If certain communities are excluded or misrepresented in the news coverage they see, then trust is lost. To combat this effectively, the barriers to entry and progression in the industry must be broken, alongside the recognition that more inclusive and representative news organisations create better journalism and engage the audiences they seek to serve in a more successful way.
The third crucial element is news literacy. If the long-term sustainability of news organisations relies, at least in part, on people willing to pay for it, then audiences who can seek out, value and trust those organisations must exist. A report by Impress, based on research by the universities of Leeds and Derby, found a link between lack of trust in journalism and low levels of news literacy among the UK population.
Without educating audiences to critically evaluate sources and discern reliable information, trust cannot be built. Without trust, news has no value, meaning readers won’t pay for it, news organisations won’t be viable and public access to fact-based journalism will decrease. With that, our ability to make informed decisions and hold power to account is weakened.
Thankfully, news and media literacy is gaining more support, being seen as a vital part of the journalism ecosystem and an underpinning of democracy.
So as World Press Freedom Day approaches, while we must recognise the very real threats, let’s also take a moment to look forward with some hope for a society in which people can find and use their power to participate, influence and act.”
Across the world, journalists are under threat for sharing the truth | Jonathan Watts
Attacks on press freedom around the world are intensifying, index reveals
The tragic history of journalists killed in the U.S. for doing their job
‘I decided to not let anybody silence my voice’: the journalists in exile but still at risk
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/may/01/trust-diversity-independence-press-newspapers
Freedom of the Press and Journalism as a sacred calling in pursuit of truth, a reading list
Discourse and Truth: The Problematization of Parrhesia, by Michel Foucault
The Trial of Socrates, by I.F. Stone
Manufacturing Consent : The Political Economy of the Mass Media, Edward S. Herman, Noam Chomsky
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12617.Manufacturing_Consent?ref=nav_sb_ss_1_21
The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth, Jonathan Rauch
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54616040-the-constitution-of-knowledge?ref=rae_2
Uninhibited, Robust, and Wide-Open: A Free Press for a New Century, Lee C. Bollinger
Dangerous Ideas: A Brief History of Censorship in the West, from the Ancients to Fake News, Eric Berkowitz
Truth in Our Times: Inside the Fight for Press Freedom in the Age of Alternative Facts, David E. McCraw
The Idea of a Free Press: The Enlightenment and Its Unruly Legacy, David A. Copeland, Daniel Schorr (Foreword)
Torch of Liberty 
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