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Press freedom faces growing threats globally. Despite efforts to highlight its importance, press freedom is declining globally. Below are ten figures from this year’s World Press Freedom Day, what they show, and, sometimes, what they don’t.
Decreasing press freedom sometimes forces journalists to flee their home countries to be able to report on them safely. But operating news outlets in exile is another beast on its own, and exiled journalists are met with financial, logistical, and editorial challenges at every step.
Threats from the state have led many journalists across the world to flee their home countries to report from elsewhere. But for many the intimidation did not stop when they left.
In the central Sahel, journalists and reporters have seen their working conditions deteriorate ever since they were taken over by military juntas, international organisations have found.
Exiled journalists are fighting to maintain independent reporting from and in their countries of origin. On this years’ International Press Freedom Day, the JX Fund provides an insight into the exiled media scenes from Afghanistan, Belarus and Russia.
Guatemala’s new government has made press freedom a priority. But journalists are skeptical. The “pact of the corrupt” still has too much influence. And those who report critically on it are therefore staying abroad for the time being.
Today, Human Rights Watch and its partners announced the recipients of the 2024 Human Rights Press Awards for outstanding reporting on human rights issues across Asia. For the first time, this year’s awards included the category of “newsrooms in exile.”
The number of BBC World Service journalists working in exile is estimated to have nearly doubled, to 310, since 2020. The figures, released for the first time ahead of World Press Freedom Day, reflect press crackdowns in Russia, Afghanistan, and Ethiopia.
Ahead of World Press Freedom Day on Friday 3 May, the BBC is announcing for the first time that over 300 World Service journalists – around 15% – are working in exile. Recent crackdowns on press freedom in Russia, Afghanistan and Ethiopia have pushed more BBC teams to relocate for their own safety, many leaving family and friends behind.
Held under house arrest in China before fleeing to Europe, the journalist Su Yutong is still targeted for her coverage of human rights and politics. From smear campaigns and people sharing her address on an underground sex website, to false bomb threats made in her name, the harassment has left a deep mark.
In 2020, Nicaragua contended not just with the COVID-19 pandemic, but also intensified repression from the administration of Daniel Ortega in response to a 2018 social uprising against corruption and human rights abuses. Against this backdrop, a team of four journalists with a hunger for in-depth journalism took steps to hold power to account and tell stories in innovative ways.
Today, 71 percent of people live in countries that are considered autocratic. That’s up from 48 percent just a decade ago. In the most oppressive autocracies, freedom of expression, freedom of association, free and fair elections and other democratic values are absent. In others, they may be present in part but insufficient.
Pouria Zeraati, journalist and reporter for Iran International, was stabbed outside his London home. A Guardian report says that the attack was believed to be another example of Iran hiring proxies to assault its critics in the west.
For decades, Iran’s brutal repression of independent journalism at home has been accompanied by the systematic targeting of journalists reporting on Iran from abroad, in an effort to silence them. This new report from Reporters Without Borders (RSF) shows that the level of transnational threat to Iranian journalists is unprecedented and comes at enormous professional and personal cost.
Defenses of independent journalists against authoritarian or malign regimes remain weak across the world. Russia and Turkey – united in not just the increasingly authoritarian way they are ruled but also in their “in-betweenness” have been no exception in this regard.
From Vladimir Putin in Russia to the theocrats in Iran, authoritarian leaders are increasingly shutting down independent media and locking up reporters, with hundreds of journalists now in jail around the globe.
Journalism has never been a safe profession, but the last couple of years have felt particularly grim. For vox.com Caroline Houck took a closer look on the dangers faced by journalists globally and reveals a disturbing trend of attacks on journalism worldwide.
The precarious situation of journalists forced to flee Guatemala, despite recent political changes, exposes the broader struggle for press freedom in Latin America, revealing systemic issues that continue to undermine democratic principles and silence critical voices.