A woman takes part in a protest against the murder of journalists in Mexico, at Reforma Avenue. Mexico City. March 25, 2017. NurPhoto/SIPA USA/PA Images. All rights reserved.

“We must all know that each mediocrity, each
surrender, each act of complacency will harm us as much as the enemy's rifles.”

– Albert Camus

Being a journalist in Turkey or Egypt may cost you your
freedom. In Syria or Mexico, it may cost you your
life. According to the 2017 World Press
Freedom Index, the world is becoming a more dangerous place for
journalists to do their job.

Governments and non-state actors limit the
freedom of the press for a variety of reasons. The Obiangs and Berdymuhamedovs do it simply to hold
on to power. The Rouhanis and Salman bin Abdulazizs, to “defend morality”.
And the Erdogans and Maduros to stifle
opposition, using social unrest as an excuse. The problem, however, goes well beyond
Cold War era dictatorships, autocratic regimes and religious zealots. According to Freedom
House,
only 13% of
the world’s population enjoys a free press and media freedom is becoming weaker in modern,
pluralist democracies, such as Canada and New Zealand. Even in Europe, the
region with the lowest level of media freedom violations in the world, it is
losing ground: in the last five years, attacks on the freedom of the press have
risen by 17.5%. If you think that Poland and Hungary are the only states to
blame for the region´s declining performance, you better think twice.

Only 13% of the world’s population enjoys a free press.

A global
epidemic

Attacks on media freedom are not new, not
even in formal democracies. What is changing is
the nature of the attacks. Governments, criminals and other non-state actors have
always tried to stop journalists from holding them accountable. Institutionalised
censorship, political pressure and physical violence are not a thing of the
past. Turkey, the world’s largest
prison for journalists, is a good reminder of this reality. But according to
Reporters Without
Borders and Freedom House, states are using new,
more subtle and sophisticated techniques to intimidate, harass and delegitimate
journalists. These practices weaken our democracies and make them prone to manipulation
and misinformation. The truth, as Orwell predicted, is on its way to becoming what our leaders want
it to be.

Donald Trump is arguably championing the
backlash against journalism worldwide. His crusade against
journalists not only jeopardizes his country’s long-standing tradition
for defending freedom of expression and media freedom, but opens the door for
other politicians to do the same. Authoritarian leaders now think that it is normal to discredit and harass the
press. The Egyptian government, for example, relied on fake news
rhetoric to criticize CNN´s coverage of the terrorist attack on a mosque in
Sinai. Libya did the same to discredit a CNN report
on slavery. Nigel Farage in the United
Kingdom and Beppe Grillo in Italy are among the
admirers of this ideal method for distracting citizens and drawing their attention
away from the real issues, which consists on focussing on the messenger rather
than the message This is the means by which populists of all sorts seek to link
journalists to “the Establishment”, and in so doing undermine the role of
the media as watchdogs of power.

Attacks on media freedom are not new, not even in formal democracies. What is changing is the nature of the attacks. 

Other countries are taking different paths
to thwart media freedom. Andrzej Duda in Poland and Viktor Orban in Hungary, for example, are combining
political and economic pressure to undermine independent media: they choke them by suppressing
public sector advertising, while they favour government-friendly private
outlets, and thus curtail media freedom. In Poland, in addition, purges in the public
media are becoming common and the access of independent media to Parliament
has been constrained. In Hungary, a leading left-wing opposition newspaper had
to close down after seeing its distribution restricted, its subscriptions
cancelled and its advertising drop dramatically after it exposed several cases of corruption in Mr Orban´s
government.

But while indirect methods of repression
seem to have become the new normal in illiberal democracies, the liberal ones, like Germany or New Zealand, are adopting
measures that threaten the journalists’ capacity to find and protect their
sources: persecuting
whistle-blowers and introducing gag laws are direct attacks
on media freedom and on their ability to protect the public interest. The Investigatory Power
Act enacted in the United Kingdom is another example.

Demonstrators protest in front of the Turkish embassy in Berlin, Germany, 3 May 2017. Maurizio Gambarini/DPA/PA Images. All rights reserved.

Latin American
sins

Sophisticated as the new methods to make it
more difficult for journalists to do their job may be, most of them are not
deadly. They may eventually kill our
democracies, but journalists in Canada, Namibia or New Zealand are less likely
to be shot than their counterparts in Mexico or Syria. As a matter of fact,
Latin America and the Caribbean was the deadliest region in the world for
journalists in 2017.

Mexican journalists who cover political corruption cases and organised crime are systemically harassed, targeted and killed.

More journalists died in Mexico than in Syria or Iraq, even though the overall
number of casualties around the world dropped slightly last year. What is worse, justice
is not expected any time soon, as corruption and impunity permeate local power.
Mexican journalists who cover political corruption cases and organised crime
are systemically harassed, targeted and killed. The assassination of
Gumaro Pérez Aguilando, who was shot while attending his son´s school
Christmas pageant, speaks for itself. Criminals run free in Mexico, while
journalists are killed with impunity.

Violence against journalists is an
epidemic in many countries in the region. Reporting on police abuses and
government corruption is a very dangerous activity in El Salvador, or Honduras,
and the lack of
protection mechanisms, corruption and political instability in Brazil explain why it
continues to be one of Latin America’s most violent countries for journalists.
As for Colombia, it still has a long
way to go to fight off drug-related violence against media personnel.

Fact-based and serious journalism is not merely a demand, but an existential antidote against narcissistic nationalism, nihilism and resentment. 

Media freedom in Venezuela is very limited, as
Nicolas Maduro does his best to silence local independent media and is fond of
expelling foreign journalists. But in Bolivia too journalists have
been targeted and threatened for expressing criticism of the government, which seems
to have had problems digesting its defeat at the referendum which would have
allowed President Evo Morales to run for yet another term in 2019.

As for Argentina, legislation enacted
by President Macri encourages greater concentration
of media ownership, which is already enormous, thus endangering
pluralism and ultimately determining the disappearance of local media. Cuba, meanwhile,
remains Latin America’s worst media freedom
violator, and Costa Rica is, again, the
exception in a region plagued by corruption and violence.

Defending democracy

Walter Cronkite famously said that
“freedom of the press is not just important for democracy, it is democracy”. In as far as he was right,
we are today, slowly but steadily, moving towards a system of government that
may look like democracy, but is not.

The question we should ask ourselves is not if we can weather this storm, but what would happen to our societies if we were to fail in doing so.

Autocrats and
dictators are not alone anymore in trying to find ways to curtail media freedom
by discrediting the messengers, undermining newspapers through economic coups, and passing laws against journalists and their sources –
modern democracies do it too.

The question we should ask ourselves is
not if we can weather this storm, but what would happen to our societies if we were
to fail in doing so. Journalists should be aware that in today´s world, they
are the last defence against manipulation and misinformation. Fact-based and
serious journalism is not merely a demand, but an existential antidote against narcissistic
nationalism, nihilism and resentment. Freedom of the
press is not something you can give up one day, and reclaim the next. It is the
means by which journalists hold power accountable. The day we stop using it, our
democracies will become hollow concepts, devoid of any true
substance.

Defending media freedom has never been so
important. Governments and non-state actors are becoming subtler in attempting to
hide the truth. Journalists must become subtler too in
uncovering it. For there can be no democracy with a mute press.