Many governments worldwide failing to protect press freedom

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Since its United Nations declaration in 1993, every May 3, World Press Freedom Day, “acts as a reminder to governments of the need to respect their commitment to press freedom.” Unfortunately, many of those same governments are restricting, not respecting, the right to a free press.

In fact, according to Reporters Without Borders, which the same day issued its annual World Press Freedom Index, “Press freedom around the world is being threatened by the very people who should be its guarantors — political authorities.” As evidence, it reported that of the five indicators it uses to compile its ranking, the political indicator had fallen the most.

“States and other political forces are playing a decreasing role in protecting press freedom,” Anne Bocandé, the organization’s editorial director, stated in the report. “This disempowerment sometimes goes hand in hand with more hostile actions that undermine the role of journalists, or even instrumentalize the media through campaigns of harassment or disinformation.”

The report is replete with examples from multiple regions, all of which have resonance anytime, but particularly in an election year — or, more precisely, this year of elections, when a record number of people worldwide will vote. And if 2023′s plebiscites presage this year, there’s trouble ahead: Several elections in Latin America, according to the report, “were won by self-proclaimed predators of press freedom and media plurality, like Javier Milei in Argentina, who shut down the country’s biggest news agency in a worrisome symbolic act.” Accordingly, Argentina tumbled 26 places to 66th out of 180 nations ranked.

Elections in several African countries were “often accompanied by violence against journalists” in places like Nigeria (112th) and the Democratic Republic of Congo (123rd). In the increasing number of countries governed by military juntas like Niger (down 19 to 80th), Burkina Faso (down 28 to 86th) and Mali (down one to 114th), authorities “continue to tighten their grip on the media and obstruct journalists’ work.”

It’s not just the Global South going south on press freedom. The scourge is seen in places like China (172nd), which along with others “have stepped up their control over social media and the internet, restricting access, blocking accounts, and suppressing messages carrying news and information.” China, the world’s worst jailer of journalists, “continues to exercise strict control over information channels, implementing censorship and surveillance policies to regulate online content and restrict the spread of information deemed to be sensitive or contrary to the party line.”

And it goes beyond Beijing: Moscow, Tehran, Pyongyang and other Orwellian, authoritarian capitals cap most press freedoms as well. Worse yet, many repressive regimes are learning from one another, as revealed in “Annals of Autocracy,” an extraordinary Washington Post package that won a well-deserved Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing on Monday for “a compelling and well-researched series on new technologies and the tactics authoritarian regimes use to repress dissent in the digital age, and how they can be fought.”

Another Post opinion contributor, Vladimir Kara-Murza, knows the personal cost of resisting repression: The Russian opposition leader has been poisoned, allegedly by the Kremlin, and more recently sentenced to 25 years for speaking out against the war in Ukraine. His mind isn’t imprisoned, however, as evidenced by his winning the Pulitzer in the commentary category “for passionate columns written under great personal risk from his prison cell, warning of the consequences of dissent in Vladimir Putin’s Russia and insisting on a democratic future for his country.”

International issues — increasingly determining domestic politics in America — were reflected in rewards for other news organizations, including the New York Times in the investigative reporting category “for a deeply reported series of stories revealing the stunning reach of migrant child labor across the United States — and the corporate and governmental failures that perpetuate it.” The Times also won in international reporting “for its wide-ranging and revelatory coverage of Hamas’ lethal attack in southern Israel on October 7, Israel’s intelligence failures and the Israeli military’s sweeping, deadly response in Gaza.”

That war was also the subject of the Breaking News Photography prize, awarded to Reuters, and a special citation was given to journalists and media workers covering the war. According to Reporters Without Borders, “More than 100 Palestinian reporters have been killed by the Israel Defense Forces, including at least 22 in their line of work.”

The World Press Freedom Index warns that “in the absence of regulation, the use of generative AI in the arsenal of disinformation for political purposes is a concern.” Even without such high-tech tools, disinformation operations were key to discredit Kyiv and Washington in Russians’ eyes, as the Post’s “Annals of Autocracy” series showed. Yet Moscow isn’t the only offender: In 138 nations, the index indicated, “political actors in their countries were often involved in propaganda or disinformation campaigns.”

Ominously, the U.S. isn’t immune from these political actors, according to Barbara McQuade, author of “Attack from Within: How Disinformation is Sabotaging America.”

McQuade’s comments came on Wednesday at an evening event titled “Countering Chaos: Navigating Election Disinformation” organized by the Minnesota Peace Initiative and the Committee on Foreign Relations Minnesota. It was held at Norway House, which was fitting, since Norway was once again the top-ranked country in the World Press Freedom Index, followed by neighboring nations Denmark and Sweden.

A former U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan and current University of Michigan professor of law who teaches a course in national security, McQuade authoritatively said that “during the years I’ve been involved in national security, I’ve seen the greatest threats to our national security evolve, from first Al-Qaeda, and then it was ISIS, and then it was China and Russia and cyber intrusions. And now I think the greatest threat to our national security is disinformation — but coming from within our own country.”

A “confluence of two events” are “really elevating the problem,” McQuade said, naming social media and “our incredibly polarized electorate.”

The consequence of this confluence is the “idea that people care more of [their] tribe than they care about the truth — I think that is very dangerous to democracy,” McQuade said, later adding: “Since World War II, it’s been the foreign policy of the United States to lift up democracies around the world because we believe that democracies around the world make us safer. When other countries have democratic forms of government there are fewer wars, there are fewer refugee crises, and we have more and better trade partners. And so, when democracies are failing and backsliding, as we are seeing around the world, that is a threat to our own national security.”

A “reminder to governments of the need to respect their commitment to press freedom” — the United Nations’ stated purpose of World Press Freedom Day — is designed to bolster democracies, which in turn should deliver the benefits McQuade describes. But as Reporters Without Borders documents, states are failing. So the Fourth Estate must not.