Journalists mark World Press Freedom Day
Many journalists will mark World Press Freedom Day. I’ll be remembering the five who died this year while simply doing their jobs.
Between 1992 and 2019, 1,340 journalists died while working. The highest number were killed and reported missing in the last five years. Human rights lawyer Amal Clooney said: “It has never been more dangerous to report the news.”
Journalists work in fewer safe countries
Nowhere seems safe from escalating violence towards journalists. Over the last 27 years, they have died in places where you’d expect them to face danger, including war zones, countries with poor human rights and authoritarian regimes. But one of the most high-profile last year was the premeditated murder of Jamal Khashoggi, a columnist for The Washington Post. The CIA believe he was killed in the Saudi consulate in Turkey.
Indeed, there were many deaths in countries that you wouldn’t expect to be perilous for writers. In France, eight cartoonists and editorial staff died in the Charlie Hebdo atrocity. A submarine owner murdered Swedish freelancer Kim Wall when she covered his story. And in the United States, a man shot five journalists to death in Maryland because he had a grudge against the paper they worked for: the Capital Gazette.
Detaining journalists is not rare
Although these appalling statistics from the Committee to Project Journalists make grim reading, murder is only the half of it. Last year, 250 were also imprisoned – often on ‘anti state’ charges but also for reporting ‘false news’.
Underlying all this is a worrying increase in hatred towards the media, with those operating in what Reporters Without Borders (RSF) calls “an intense climate of fear”.
The tyranny of fake news
With his attacks on ‘fake news’, US President Donald Trump did little to reduce the tension.
In the 2019 World Press Freedom Index, the United States fell three places. What a sad state of affairs for the country that produced two of the most famous investigative writers of all – Bernstein and Woodward, whose diligence uncovered the Watergate scandal.
Where does this lead us? Without journalists, who will uncover bribery and corruption? Who will shine a light on political chicanery and human rights abuses? To keep democracy safe, we need to defend media freedom rigorously and uphold the rights of journalists to do their job without fear.
Updated: 28 June 2024
