Day: May 3, 2022

WASHINGTON — Led by the Kremlin’s example, a global rise in disinformation and propaganda is having a disastrous effect on independent news around the world, a new report finds.

In its 2022 World Press Freedom Index released Tuesday, the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has contributed vastly to the spread of fake news and propaganda.

The journalism watchdog group said its findings are worrying, as they show deep divisions among media within countries and between countries at the international level.

“In 2022, it’s really undeniable that media polarization and information chaos are really fueling social divisions in ways that are pretty new,” said Clayton Weimers, deputy director of RSF for the United States, told VOA. He said the prevalence of partisan news around the world has come at the expense of authentic journalism.

The group’s annual report ranks 180 countries based on the environment for independent journalism. This year, however, RSF said it used a new method that blends each country’s political, legal, economic, sociocultural and security conditions.

Now, the index classifies a record 28 countries as “having very bad media freedom.” That group includes China, which is exporting censorship beyond its borders while also amplifying the Kremlin’s propaganda on Russia’s devastating war against Ukraine.

Russia, China among worst

Since its invasion of Ukraine on February 24, Russia has sought total control over news coverage, passing a new law that carries 15-year prison terms for reporting “false news” on the military, and even forbids calling the conflict a “war.”

That has forced most remaining independent news outlets, including the renowned Novaya Gazeta newspaper, Ekho Moskvy radio and Dozhd TV, to shut down or move outside Russia to continue operating.

With independent voices absent, experts say, the Russian government has been able to flood state-run airwaves with propaganda that downplays the war and spreads false or misleading justifications for the Kremlin’s invasion.

Russia’s media repression stands at 155 out of 180 countries included in RSF’s index, where one is the most free and 180 the least.

“It’s safe to say at this point that the free press is a thing of the past in Russia,” Clayton said.

Throughout Russian President Vladimir Putin’s 22 years in power, Moscow has been targeting journalists and the independent press, he said.

“But since the invasion of Ukraine, it seems that Putin has really finished off the independent media once and for all in Russia,” Clayton said. “At this point, it is impossible to accurately report on the war in Ukraine.”

China ranked 175th in the new report. And now that it is firmly under Beijing’s influence, Hong Kong also registered a dramatic decline, ranking 148th out of 180 following a lengthy series of raids and arrests that shuttered pro-democracy news sites.

RSF’s country file on China says it is the world’s biggest jailer of journalists, with 120 in detention. The regime uses coercion, harassment, intimidation and surveillance to keep independent and foreign journalists from reporting on issues deemed “sensitive.”

“President Xi Jinping, in power since 2013, has restored a media culture worthy of the Maoist era, in which freely accessing information has become a crime and to provide information an even greater crime,” RSF’s country file states.

Rising authoritarianism

North Korea remains the worst country in the rankings at 180th. Elsewhere in the Asia-Pacific region, political turmoil, conflict and rising authoritarianism have wiped out years of progress.

The 2021 coup in Myanmar marked a 10-year setback for media rights, with journalists detained, media licenses revoked, and many news outlets returning to exile. Under the military junta, Myanmar, ranking 176th, is one of the world’s biggest jailers of journalists.

In Afghanistan, the Taliban insurgents pledged to uphold press freedom when they took power in August 2021. Instead, RSF said the “Taliban’s seizure of power has further worsened conditions for reporters and news organizations, who are the targets of all forms of intimidation and violence.” Afghanistan ranked 154th.

Across Africa, laws criminalizing online journalism have dealt a new blow to the right to information, RSF said, while the spread of rumors, propaganda, and disinformation has contributed to undermine access to quality information.

In Ethiopia, the war in the Tigray region, with its communication blackouts and restricted access, were the main factors that placed the country 114 on the index. Neighboring Eritrea and Djibouti are far worse, ranking near the bottom at 179 and 164, respectively.

African media continue to struggle economically, RSF said it its accompanying analysis.

“Despite a wave of liberalization in the 1990s, there are still, too often, cases of arbitrary censorship, especially on the internet, with occasional network shutdowns in some countries, arrests of journalists and violent attacks,” the group said.

Clayton said the rising authoritarianism feeds on itself.

“When we allow a culture of impunity to exist where authoritarians are allowed to go after journalists, harass them, arrest them, beat them in the streets and kill them, it has a knock-on effect,” he said. “It emboldens that same authoritarian to do it again next time, and it emboldens other authoritarians who are watching to do the same.”

US not perfect

After a period of seeing its media attacked as “fake news” by former President Donald Trump, the United States retained a relatively high ranking of 42 in RSF’s index. That is largely thanks to the return of regular White House and federal agency press briefings.

But RSF said problems persist, including “the disappearance of local newspapers, the systematic polarization of the media, and the erosion of journalism by digital platforms amid a climate of animosity and aggression toward journalists, among others.”

Barriers exist, for instance, when it comes to covering state governments and protests.

“We typically find that this is either due to just a blatant disregard for the laws governing open records or meetings, or they’re simply misinterpreting them. An individual is misinterpreting whether a journalist can be present at a particular event,” said Beth Francesco, senior director of the National Press Club Journalism Institute.

A few bright spots

Despite an overall trend of decline, Clayton said there are positives.

Some governments provide funding for news media without interfering in their operations, to ensure independence from political influence.

“If you look at the top of our list, some of the things that stand out are these are countries that have robust public funding for media,” he said, noting that “it’s always important to separate state funding for media and state-controlled media.”

Three Scandinavian countries — Norway, Denmark and Sweden — respectively come at the top of RSF’s index. Estonia, a former Soviet Union republic, ranked 4th.

RSF said the free exercise of journalism plays a major role in emerging democracies such as East Timor, ranked 17, Bhutan, ranked 33, and Mongolia, ranked 90.

East Timor was one country whose ranking skyrocketed, rising 54 places. But RSF cautioned that because of its change in methodology this year, “care should be taken when comparing the 2022 rankings and scores with those from 2021.”

Source: Voice of America

WASHINGTON — Across Africa, laws and customs respecting the media vary considerably. As the world marks World Press Freedom Day on Tuesday, here’s a look at the brightest and darkest situations for the continent’s news media.

On the positive side is the southwest African nation of Namibia, ranked the continent’s most free country and 24th worldwide in an annual index by the Paris-based organization Reporters Without Borders (RSF). At the very bottom is Eritrea, considered the least free not only in Africa but also among all 180 countries in the ranking.

Namibia’s judiciary is “very protective” of media freedoms, something that is “quite rare” elsewhere in Africa, said Arnaud Froger, head of RSF’s Africa desk. He added, “Generally, it is quite safe to be a journalist in Namibia.”

Namibia’s stance on media freedom can be attributed to the country’s “very violent history,” said Zoe Titus, director of the Namibia Media Trust, which publishes The Namibian newspaper and also promotes free speech and information access within and beyond the country’s borders.

Namibia gained its independence from South Africa in 1990 following years of bloodshed in the apartheid era. Earlier, Namibia had been a colony of Germany, which last year officially acknowledged it committed genocide against ethnic Herero and Nama early in the 20th century.

”Colonialism and apartheid denied us the right to freedom of expression for so long, and so now that we have that right, we guard it very diligently,” Titus said. She noted, “Occasionally, you’ll find that some strained ministers or other public officials will threaten something like social media regulation or talk about hate speech online or regulating media freedoms, but that is nipped in the bud very quickly.”

Acceptance of questioning

A bill promoting “the public’s free access to information held by public entities” was reintroduced last fall to Namibia’s National Assembly, but COVID-19 lockdowns impeded parliamentary debate, The Namibian reported. It said the information minister resubmitted the bill with the intent of improving public access and government accountability. The measure would better enable journalists to probe government records and actions.

”The Access to Information Act has still not been approved,” said Angela Quintal, the Committee to Protect Journalists’ Africa director. Speaking from Durban, South Africa, she told VOA, “Media freedom is about the public’s right to know – and we have seen delays with [the bill] in Namibia, and that’s problematical.”

Still, Quintal said, Namibia has been supportive of journalists.

“We’re not seeing the weaponization of technology against journalists – the sort of online harassment and violence against female journalists – nor are we getting a sense of the emergence of anti-social media laws,” she said.

Titus said the southwestern nation of 2.6 million seems to understand that the relationship between the media and the state is one of questioning. “There must be a push and pull all the time,” she said. “If we were too comfortable, that means the media is not doing its job.”

Resistance to scrutiny

In Eritrea, the state robustly suppresses media questioning.

Froger, of the RSF’s Africa desk, said Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki has waged one of the world’s worst assaults upon media freedom. While global attention was focused on terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001, that year Isaias shut down the independent press. The Horn of Africa country now has roughly 3.7 million people, according to the United Nations Population Fund, with extremely limited outside news access.

“If a foreign journalist wants to report in Eritrea, you’re not allowed to do so. And if you are, you’ll be followed and the people you’ll interview will be closely monitored by the regime,” Froger said. “There’s absolutely no freedom of information and no access to information because journalists have been banned from doing their jobs.”

He added, “There are no private media and all journalists have either fled the country or have been jailed while others face torture.”

Dawit Isaak, a Swedish-Eritrean journalist, was arrested and detained without trial in 2001. RSF said he was briefly released in 2005, but just two days later ”snatched” from his family. Isaak has been held incommunicado by the regime.

According to a group of U.N. experts, citing credible sources, the journalist was alive as of September 2020.

The watchdog groups Reporters Without Borders and the Committee to Protect Journalists reiterate their calls for the release of jailed journalists, who are labeled as ”prisoners of opinion/conscience” in this East African nation.

CPJ “would like to see all those journalists get away from the ‘surveillance state’ that exists,” Quintal told VOA.

Froger offered an Eritrean example that ties into the World Press Freedom Day’s 2022 theme, “Journalism Under Digital Siege.” Eritrea, incidentally, has one of the world’s lowest internet usage rates – for good reason.

“To visit internet cafes, people must submit their ID cards,” Froger said. “And everything you do on the internet must be monitored by the authorities.”

Source: Voice of America