The New Media Are Under Attack Again

Press freedom is under assault

Journalists are struggling

confronting the worst conditions

since the cold state of war

May 3rd 2022  | Budapest, Hong Kong, Mumbai and St Petersburg

O lga Rudenko has a litany of worries as editor of the Kyiv Contained, an online paper in Ukraine. Since the Russian regular army invaded in February, more than twenty journalists have been killed. Throwing aside international conventions, the Russians are targeting reporters. Insurance for local correspondents is prohibitively expensive, and the newspaper is struggling to become concur of helmets, satellite phones and impenetrable vests. "We are being invaded by people who hate journalists," she says.

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Information technology's a triumph that Ms Rudenko and her squad are working at all. Concluding yr they were worrying almost a threat less dramatic than Russian bombs, merely nevertheless insidious: a reorganisation of the paper which they believed would undermine their editorial independence. The Kyiv Contained was born subsequently the staff of the Kyiv Post, Ukraine'southward largest English-language newspaper, suspected that the wealthy owner was seeking to influence coverage under pressure from the authorities, an accusation he denied. When they protested, he fired the whole staff in early November. Around 30 journalists, led by Ms Rudenko, decided to launch an independently funded news outlet. The Kyiv Independent has far exceeded their expectations. Since Russian missiles began hailing downwards on Ukraine, readers across the world take been counting on it. Equally the war began and interest peaked, some 630,000 visitors a 24-hour interval were reading the Kyiv Independent. It has raised almost $2m in crowdfunding.

Globally, press freedom is in retreat. Effectually 85% of people live in countries where it has declined over the past five years, co-ordinate to analysis by UNESCO of data on freedom of expression from the Varieties of Democracy (Five-DEM) Constitute. Five-DEM gives each country a score from 0 (to the lowest degree gratis) to 1 (most free). The global boilerplate weighted by population peaked at 0.65 in the early 2000s, and and then again in 2011, before falling to 0.49 in 2021. This is the worst score since 1984, when the cold war was raging and the two sides were propping up dictators on every continent.

The sharpest decline has come in the past decade, and has included several of the virtually populous countries. Mainland china declined from very bad (0.26) in 2011 to atrocious (0.08) in 2021. Republic of india fell from 0.85 to 0.55; Turkey from 0.54 to 0.xv; Egypt from 0.58 to 0.14; Indonesia from 0.83 to 0.68 and Brazil from 0.94 to 0.57. Russia plunged from 0.51 to 0.31 even before the war prompted President Vladimir Putin to crevice downwards more harshly. Ethiopia opened up subsequently 2018, merely a civil war ways its score for 2022 will exist woeful.

Press-freedom index

Reporters Without Borders, 2022

• No data
• Good
• Satisfactory
• Problematic
• Hard
• Very serious

Several states nonetheless deploy onetime-fashioned brute force against journalists. In 2021, 488 were behind bars, co-ordinate to Reporters Without Borders, a non-profit grouping. Many more than were bailiwick to intimidation. "Government agents raided my house and threatened to kill me," says Lucy Kassa, an Ethiopian announcer reporting on atrocities in Tigray. Ms Kassa fled Federal democratic republic of ethiopia, and, like Ms Rudenko and others, she had no choice simply to endeavour new means of doing journalism. She is continuing to report on Tigray from exile. "I have a strong belief that the truth will find ways to reveal itself, volition fight for itself," Ms Kassa says. "And I consider myself as an instrument of that."

Even as press freedom has declined over the past decade, the number of journalists killed on the job has too fallen, from 76 in 2011 to 46 in 2021. That may be because authoritarian leaders are finding they tin control the news in less grisly means. To directly the flow of information, many use land funding and laws purportedly meant to baby-sit state security or even to protect the truth. They often pretend to let a costless printing, and tolerate some contained voices to reinforce this claim. Simply they use all the ability of the country, including new powers granted past advancing applied science, to ensure that these voices are barely audible, while pro-regime media are lavishly favoured and funded.

For such leaders, the covid-xix pandemic has been handy. New rules in countries such every bit Republic of bolivia, Russia and the Philippines punish the spread of "false information" about the virus with jail time. Brazil has restricted access to government data. And reporters working from home, frequently on unprotected personal devices, are more vulnerable to cyber-attack. A written report covering 144 countries suggests that pandemic policies have been used to justify curbs on printing liberty in 96 of them.

Fiscal pressure level on independent media can be constructive not least because the news manufacture has been in decline since the 1980s. Advertising has followed readers online, where the duopoly of Google and Meta laps up half of all revenues. PwC, a consultancy, predicts that global paper advertizing, in print and online, will fall by about 20% between 2019 and 2024.

Against that backdrop, governments tin cripple critical outlets by withholding advertising and leaning on private firms to do besides. Meanwhile, they subsidise more servile competitors. In Mexico President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has squeezed local media by slashing the regime advertising upkeep. The money the state does spend is concentrated with friendly outlets: more than half of its advertising goes to ten media groups, according to one analysis of the 2020 budget. In Republic of india advertisers are often frightened to back outlets critical of the ruling political party.

Some other common trick is for regimes to nudge friendly plutocrats, who often depend on official patronage for their fortunes, to buy upward independent media and neuter them. This has happened in Russia, Turkey and Hungary, among other countries. Since Viktor Orban, Hungary'due south prime minister, took part in 2010, his cronies have snapped up private media groups and turned them into ruling-political party mouthpieces. Some have donated their media holdings to a pro-regime arrangement run by former lawmakers for Mr Orban'due south Fidesz party. Called the Fundamental European Press and Media Foundation (KESMA), this conglomerate now controls over 500 outlets. Mr Orban won a fourth term in office terminal month, thanks in no small part to his grip on the public'south understanding of reality. The opposition got about no airtime, except to exist denounced as stooges of a Jewish billionaire supposedly conspiring against the Hungarian manner of life.

Hungary'south journalists have not given up. Telex, a news site, has a like origin story to the Kyiv Independent. It was founded in Budapest two years ago when more than 80 staff jumped ship from a media group run by an Orban ally. "Nosotros knew that nosotros cannot rely on advertising revenue, because of the political influence of the advert market," says Veronika Munk, co-founder of Telex. "Then we decided, 'OK, allow's plough to our readers.'"

Telex appealed for donations via YouTube, and to build trust with its audition it began sharing detailed information on revenues and spending online. In the run-up to the recent ballot, Telex reporting stood in stark contrast to that past government-led groups. Mr Orban's team didn't share details about his campaign events with independent media. It painted the prime minister as a man of the people, posting videos of him pushing his way through crowds of fans, glad-handing. Telex reporters asked readers who learned of coming entrada events to tip them off, then lingered outside. They captured images of Mr Orban driving through empty streets, closely guarded by security, to speak at tiny invitation-only gatherings.

Hungary shows how press liberty can exist curtailed in a country that is still, more or less, a democracy—critical voices such as Telex achieve far fewer people than state-backed propaganda outlets. In truly authoritarian regimes such as Cathay the muzzle is far tighter. Applied science has allowed the Communist Party to snoop and conscience on a scale and with a precision that would accept been extremely hard to achieve without more than animal strength even a few years agone. It is non just criticism of officials that is off limits. Topics similar racism and feminism tin be as well. Members of the public can be terrified to speak to reporters. And when reporters and their sources put themselves at risk to produce investigative journalism, sharing those stories can exist virtually impossible. In the midst of a covid lockdown in Shanghai in April, Caixin, a Chinese media grouping, posted an article exposing hidden deaths at the city's largest elderly-care infirmary. It lasted online for just an hr, then vanished.

This climate of fear is now enveloping Hong Kong, which until recently allowed relatively free spoken communication. A "national security" law introduced in June 2020 threatens severe penalties, including life sentences, for vaguely defined crimes, such as subversion, that journalists might consider just doing their job. "To simply continue at the moment feels like a revolutionary act," says Tom Grundy, editor of the Hong Kong Complimentary Press, the terminal independent English-language news outlet there. The effect, he says, can exist insidious. "You become intrusive thoughts when it comes to, y'all know, cocky-censorship," he says. "You tin can't help it. Just cringing when yous printing publish."

The Hong Kong government' campaign to shut down Apple Daily, a pro-democracy tabloid, and silence its billionaire possessor, Jimmy Lai, has provided a template for repressive regimes everywhere. The set on was financial, legal and technological.

Mark Simon, an aide to Mr Lai, says the harassment began more twenty years ago. The regime pressed local businessmen to stop advertising with Apple Daily. Other contained news outlets were gradually bought out by pro-Beijing tycoons. Executives' emails were repeatedly hacked. Simply the existent crackdown came with the national security law. Mr Lai was charged with "foreign collusion" and arrested. Police flooded the Apple Daily newsroom, seizing laptops and hard drives. The decease knell came in June, when the grouping's bank accounts were frozen. "Information technology wasn't expiry past a g cuts," Mr Simon says. "It was ten whacks."

The reporters at Apple Daily found creative ways to resist, though only for a while. When the Hong Kong police swooped into the newsroom and demanded staff tell them where the servers were, they were infuriated past the response: "in the cloud". The IT squad weren't joking. Apple tree Daily had switched to a secure cloud-based publishing organization managed by the Washington Post. Meanwhile, female person staff took advantage of the fact that the cops were all men, rushing to the restroom and sending the mean solar day'southward stories to editors in Taiwan via Facebook. But then the depository financial institution accounts were frozen, and Apple Daily folded. When the last issue was printed, Hong Kongers queued at the newsstands and bought a meg copies, more than than ten times the usual sales.

Another threat to press liberty is common even in places where journalists are generally respected, such as western Europe. Rich and powerful folk with things to hide have found that overstrict libel laws and vaguely drafted privacy rules tin be used to deter nosy journalists. "Strategic lawsuits against public participation", or SLAPPdue south, are claims that aim to frazzle publications' time and resources. Those unable to see legal costs are forced to take down content and often cease reporting on the individuals suing them.

"This was just designed for one affair: to intimidate my family into shutting up"

Daphne Caruana Galizia, a Maltese investigative announcer known equally a "one-woman WikiLeaks" for her coverage of corruption and money-laundering, spent near every day of the last year of her life in court. Fifty-fifty the car-bombing that assassinated her in 2017 did not stop the harassment. Her son, Matthew Caruana Galizia, who with the rest of the family inherited the cases, recalls a hearing only a few days after Ms Galizia died, when the court was filled by tiptop officials; some of them had brought cases against his female parent for her reporting. "This was simply designed for one affair: to intimidate my family unit into shutting up," Mr Galizia says.

In a push to finish such misuse of the legal system, the European Commission sketched out new rules in April that would allow reporters to appeal to the courts to accept artificial cases thrown out. In European countries, which lag behind places like Canada, Australia and some American states in the development of anti-SLAPP legislation, a group of non-profit groups identified around 570 such potential cases filed between 2010 and 2021. The list is not exhaustive but it does bespeak to a trend: those bringing the cases are often politicians or public servants, and they oftentimes target independent journalists.

Like the law, free speech itself, augmented by technology, has been turned against journalists. Social media provide a platform for hate campaigns that can wear downwards the most hard-nosed contributor. Women take information technology particularly bad. A survey last twelvemonth plant about three-quarters of female journalists have experienced some form of online abuse, including surveillance and threats of sexual violence.

Rana Ayyub, an Indian commentator who loudly admonishes Prime Minister Narendra Modi for stoking anti-Muslim violence, has endured a campaign of intimidation by his supporters. Hindu nationalist trolls have superimposed her face onto pornographic videos, called for her murder, and shared her home address online. Fearfulness of set on has confined Ms Ayyub to her home for long spells. Unable to swallow from the anxiety, she has spent days on end in bed and been fed through an intravenous drip. "It'south a living, breathing nightmare for me and my family unit," she says.

As journalism has moved online, governments have found new ways to censor information technology. China's "groovy firewall" lets the Communist Party block nearly any content it dislikes. Other regimes sometimes use cruder methods. A study in mid-2021 by Freedom House, a watchdog, found that 20 out of lxx countries had shut down the net in the previous year to go along their citizens in the nighttime, typically during periods of unrest. States are increasingly using digital means to snoop on reporters, too. An investigation last yr revealed that almost 200 journalists had been targeted by Pegasus spyware, which is sold by an Israeli company to governments across the globe.

Journalists are fighting technology with engineering. They conduct interviews on encrypted messaging apps, like Betoken or Telegram. To protect whistleblowers with access to of import information, they rely on new sharing tools that erase files as soon every bit a transfer is complete. Ms Kassa, the announcer forced to flee Ethiopia, continues to study on Tigray via the internet. From her new base of operations, which she asked to keep confidential, Ms Kassa conducts interviews with victims and witnesses of atrocities over the phone. She asks a network of locals she has developed, people who are non on the Ethiopian government's radar, to become hold of photographs, videos and health records as testify. In regions where there is a communications coma, these and so-chosen fixers go to NGO offices, which are sometimes the simply buildings with Wi-Fi connections, to share documents with Ms Kassa via messaging apps. She compares each story against satellite imagery, and she has hired experts to help her spot doctored images. An article that would have taken her one week to report on the basis now takes a month. But, Ms Kassa insists, "there are always ways."

"Don't believe the propaganda. They are lying to you here"

Reporters can be annoying. When they bang on about freedom of the printing, they might sound self-serving. But as Timothy Garton Ash, a professor at Oxford University and author of "Gratis Oral communication", puts it, "you need these pesky, hard people." Research shows that where there is freedom of the press there is less abuse. When autocrats distort the news, they force their publics to live in a fantasy world.

Consider Russia. Fifty-fifty as Mr Putin is failing in his war on Ukraine, he is succeeding in mythmaking at abode. His propaganda machine is spewing lies, including that state of war crimes committed past his forces are hoaxes staged by actors, and he has criminalised objective reporting. Victoria Arefyeva, a photojournalist for Sota.Vision, an independent news outlet, faces constant harassment while trying to report on protests: "You begin to realise you lot can no longer film every bit before." Those determined to challenge the state narrative must take extreme steps, like Marina Ovsyannikova, a television producer who interrupted a live broadcast on state-owned Channel One property a sign: "Don't believe the propaganda. They are lying to you lot here."

Elena Kostyuchenko, an investigative reporter, has been browbeaten past thugs and has seen four colleagues murdered in her 17 years at Novaya Gazeta, a Russian paper. She says the new censorship laws are succeeding. Publications like hers have been forced to stop printing and to take downward online manufactures. Even tech-savvy Russians are struggling to achieve blocked content now that many Russian depository financial institution cards have been disabled, making it tricky to pay for VPN services. " I love my land," Ms Kostyuchenko says, when asked why she would take a chance jail past reporting there. "It may sound foreign, but it's notwithstanding true."

Perchance Ms Kassa is right when she says that the truth tin can fight for itself. But the omens are non good. As government control grows more than sophisticated, even the bravest and nearly innovative journalists are finding information technology harder to exercise their jobs. If the steady erosion of press liberty is non reversed, governments will get away with more than abuses and everyone volition detect information technology harder to understand the world equally it is. ■

"Press liberty: what's at stake", a documentary film by The Economist, records our investigation into the decline of press liberty. It is bachelor to sentry here.

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Source: https://www.economist.com/interactive/briefing/2022/05/03/press-freedom

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