Think of Evan Gershkovich and Austin Tice on World Press Freedom Day

In Washington, the press is no longer derided as “the enemy of the people,” as it had been during the Donald Trump years. And yet on this, the 30th anniversary of World Press Freedom Day, Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich remains in a Russian prison — one of more than 360 journalists believed to be behind bars today around the world for the crime of doing their jobs.

Gershkovich and freelance journalist Austin Tice, who was kidnapped in Syria 11 years ago, were both honored at the White House Correspondents dinner Saturday as President Biden vowed to continue to work to bring home all Americans wrongfully detained.

“Free press is a pillar, maybe the pillar, of a free society — not the enemy,” Biden said, drawing a distinction with the past administration.

But around the world, and, yes, even here in a nation that operates under the sheltering umbrella of First Amendment rights, all is not well. In the past year, dozens of US journalists have been targeted while on the job — shot at, assaulted, their equipment destroyed. And the landmark legal precedent that has provided journalists with protection against frivolous or politically motivated lawsuits from the public officials they cover is itself under threat — if this current Supreme Court gets a crack at it.

Thirty years ago, when the UN General Assembly first proclaimed Press Freedom Day on the recommendation of UNESCO’s General Conference, the Soviet Union had only recently disintegrated and genuinely independent news outlets were blooming in Russia. That year the Committee to Protect Journalists found that none were imprisoned in Russian jails.

Today, little exists of independent media in Russia and CPJ listed 19 journalists imprisoned at the end of last year. Many more journalists have fled in the wake of a crackdown on honest reporting about the war in Ukraine.

At the end of last year — a record year, according to CPJ, for the jailing of journalists — the five countries with the most behind bars were Iran, China, Myanmar, Turkey, and Belarus.

And even those who remain free are working under increasingly perilous conditions, including “the rising use of criminal defamation laws to silence criticism, curtail public discussion, and protect the interests of powerful political and economic elites,” according to Volker Türk, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

“New laws in many countries lend themselves to even more abusive restrictions on freedom of speech for the press, including vaguely worded or broadly defined ‘fake news,’ cybercrime or public health laws in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic,” Türk said in a speech last week.

Yes, declaring anything a nation’s leader doesn’t like “fake news” has come to haunt journalists around the world.

Closer to home, among those vying to out-Trump Trump among Republicans eyeing a possible White House bid is Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who has been promoting two bills in the GOP-dominated Legislature aimed at reducing the protections enshrined in the landmark New York Times v. Sullivan decision rendered by the US Supreme Court in 1964.

That decision has shielded journalists from suits by public officials unless they can prove an error was made with willful or reckless disregard for the truth. But the bills in question would narrow the definition of who is a public figure, lower the standard for “actual malice,” and establish the presumption that any statement by an anonymous source is automatically deemed false.

The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press raised the specter of “litigation tourism” if either bill passed, adding that “these proposals might also make Florida a destination for defamation plaintiffs looking for a friendly forum.”

The legislation appears to have stalled (the session ends May 5) after a number of conservative media outlets also expressed alarm about its implications.

But the ultimate game afoot by those who do truly consider the press the “enemy of the people” is to get something — anything — to this particular US Supreme Court where Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch have already indicated their eagerness to revisit New York Times v. Sullivan. When Dominion Voting Systems reached a settlement of its defamation claim against Fox News, that possibility was at least postponed.

But the local enemies of the press will surely be looking for the next opportunity. It’s hard to jail reporters in the United States (although it has happened). But for the economically fragile among the news media, the reality — or even the threat — of a lawsuit can have a chilling effect on reporting.

So 30 years after the first World Press Freedom Day, there seems little to cheer — except, of course, the enduring courage of those journalists and publications that continue to labor day after day to defend democracy by bringing the news to millions of readers and viewers. Their struggle is our struggle too.