Press freedom is your freedom and that’s why it must be kept
The news industry was in trouble long before Covid-19, but now good journalism has never been more needed, writes Jon Williams
WHEN Lyra McKee was shot dead on the streets of Derry last year, Northern Ireland joined the likes of Syria, Mexico and Pakistan as one of the world’s most dangerous places to be a journalist.
Lyra was one of 25 reporters killed because of their work in 2019 — the lowest number for 17 years. Last week, Lyra’s murder resulted in Reporters Without Borders relegating the UK two places to 35th in its annual Press Freedom Index.
It surveys the state of the media in 180 countries and territories. By contrast, Ireland rose two places to 13th.
Overall, the picture it paints is grim: just a quarter of the planet enjoys real press freedom. Even in Europe, the situation is deteriorating.
Lyra was the third journalist to be murdered in the EU in three years, after Daphne Caruana Galizia in Malta and Jan Kuciak in Slovakia.
But as challenging as the security situation is for journalists, today — on World Press Freedom Day — arguably the gravest threat to press freedom is financial. Even before the coronavirus pandemic, the business of journalism was in crisis.
Falling sales, a collapse in advertising revenue and the increase in production and distribution costs had forced news organisations to restructure and lay off journalists.
In the United States, numbers working in American newsrooms have halved in a decade — 35,000 journalists have lost their jobs.
For a journalism industry already struggling, the impact of Covid-19 has been profound.
The terrible irony is that, whether newspapers, radio, TV or online, local or national, people are reading, watching and listening in record numbers — but the industry is earning less money than ever before.
With so many businesses shut down and not trading, advertising has collapsed. That had led to some local newspapers suspending production and laying off staff, while other news organisations have implemented pay cuts as they struggle to survive. Just as journalism — facts and rigorous analysis — matters now more than ever.
As the Covid-19 pandemic spreads, it has also given rise to a second pandemic of misinformation, from harmful health advice to wild conspiracy theories.
In the words of UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres: “The press provides the antidote: verified, scientific, fact-based news and analysis.”
Press freedom is your freedom. When newsrooms shed jobs, it isn’t just harmful to journalists, it’s dangerous for local communities and democracy.
Journalism matters. Good journalism holds those in authority to account and helps us understand what is going on around us, connecting communities. And few places on earth match quality of Irish journalism across print, broadcast and online media.
Fewer still match Ireland’s interest in news — and levels of trust from the audience. In 2019, the Reuters Digital News Report found that the numbers overall who trust media in Ireland was one of the highest in the EU — double that of France, and ahead of Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK.
When it established World Press Freedom Day in 1993, the United Nations pledged that “the maintenance and fostering of an independent, pluralistic and free press is essential to the development and maintenance of democracy... and economic development”.
Twenty-seven years later, as journalists report on a pandemic that is turning our world upside down, that pledge has never been more relevant.
This World Press Freedom Day, we have important work to do. It is vital that journalism continues.
‘Few match Ireland’s interest in news and trust from the audience’