Trump leads chilling global trend of leaders attacking the free press
THESE are difficult days for journalists. The rise of ‘fake news’ – used as a tool by authoritarian governments and others wishing to sow confusion – has been accompanied by a growing hostility towards the media. And it’s not just in regions like the Middle East, long burdened by the twin evils of misinformation and disinformation.
Animosity towards journalists is increasing in Europe too, as is the spread of “fake news” as seen in the run-up to the Brexit referendum and several elections across the continent where the far-right have made gains, often by using social media to exploit anxieties over immigration and other issues.
This year’s World Press Freedom Index, an annual survey across 180 countries compiled by Reporters Without Borders (RSF), makes for grim reading in capturing those realities. “Hostility towards the media, openly encouraged by political leaders, and the efforts of authoritarian regimes to export their vision of journalism pose a threat to democracies,” it warns, pointing out that the problem is no longer limited to authoritarian states like Turkey – which jails more journalists than any other country – and Egypt, where Sisi’s military regime hounds reporters considered insufficiently deferential. Closer to home – in Europe and the US – a disturbing number of democratically elected leaders see the media not as a key element of a functioning democracy – the fourth estate – but as an adversary that should be muzzled.
RSF homes in on Donald Trump’s America, noting that the US has fallen two places in the Index since last year. “A media-bashing enthusiast, Trump has referred to reporters as ‘enemies of the people’, the term once used by Joseph Stalin,” it notes. The organisation also details how poisonous rhetoric and threats can often tip into violence. In the Philippines, controversial president Rodrigo Duterte has chillingly warned journalists that they “are not exempted from assassination”.
In India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s supporters ratchet up verbal attacks against journalists on social media. In both countries, at least four journalists have been killed over the past year.
While Europe is the region judged to respect press freedom most, there are worrying signs that is changing in some quarters. RSF recounts how Czech President Milos Zeman appeared at a press conference with a fake Kalashnikov emblazoned with the words “for journalists”. In Slovakia, Prime Minister Robert Fico denounced reporters as “filthy anti-Slovak prostitutes” and “idiotic hyenas”. RSF notes that two journalists were killed in Europe over the past year – earlier this year Slovak reporter Ján Kuciak was gunned down at his home just four months after investigative reporter Daphne Caruana Galizia was targeted in a car-bombing in her home country of Malta.
During my own career as a journalist – which began in post-conflict Northern Ireland and later led me across the Middle East, Africa and Asia – I have seen friends and colleagues murdered, tortured, sentenced on trumped-up charges in countries choked by military rule, driven from their homes and homelands or intimidated and threatened into silence or career change. Friends in the Hungarian media report how the recently re-elected Viktor Orbán has steadily hollowed out independent media there. Turkish journalist colleagues lament the risks of reporting there.
“The unleashing of hatred towards journalists is one of the worst threats to democracies,” argued RSF secretary-general Christophe Deloire. “Political leaders who fuel loathing for reporters bear heavy responsibility because they undermine the concept of public debate based on facts instead of propaganda. To dispute the legitimacy of journalism today is to play with extremely dangerous political fire.”
RSF’s Index – which puts Norway first and North Korea in last place – is threaded with examples of how the new authoritarians are using and abusing media.
The organisation notes that Vladimir Putin’s Russia – after smothering independent voices at home – is now “extending its propaganda network by means of media outlets such as RT and Sputnik”.
China is also exporting its model of tightly controlled information. “Their relentless suppression of criticism and dissent provides support to other countries near the bottom of the Index such as Vietnam, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan,” according to RSF.
The RSF Index is accompanied by a multi-coloured map illustrating levels of press freedom across the globe. Those relegated to the lowest reaches of the Index are marked in black. “There have never been so many countries that are coloured black on the press freedom map,” RSF notes. Of all regions, it is the Middle East and North Africa that has registered the steepest decline in press freedom this year.
Ongoing wars and conflict in Syria, Yemen, Iraq and Libya plus the repressive environment in Egypt – where journalists are often accused of terrorism – Saudi Arabia and Bahrain “continue to make this the most difficult and dangerous region for journalists to operate,” according to RSF.
Dark days indeed.
‘There have never been so many countries that are coloured black on the press freedom map’