Something those of us who value news and the proper reporting of it.........less press freedom. Why? The New Yorker set out to find out in "Why the Press Is Less Free Today."
"In the worldwide movement away from democracy, perhaps the most vulnerable institution is the free press, and the most disposable people are journalists. If they’re doing their job right, they can have few friends in powerful places. Journalists become reliably useful to governments, corporations, or armed groups only when they betray their calling. They seldom even have a base of support within the general public. In some places, it’s impossible to report the truth without making oneself an object of hatred and a target of violence for one sector of society or another.
In recent years, reporting the news has become an ever more dangerous activity. Between 2002 and 2012, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (C.P.J.), five hundred and six journalists were killed worldwide, as opposed to three hundred and ninety in the previous decade. Even in the most violent war zones, such as Iraq and Syria, the cause of death is most often simple murder, rather than being killed while covering combat. One major shift in the years since September 11, 2001, has been the erosion of a commonly accepted idea of press neutrality. Journalists are now seen by many combatants, especially jihadis, as legitimate targets and valuable propaganda tools, alive or dead. The best-known cases involve Western reporters, from Daniel Pearl to James Foley, but the most endangered journalists are ones you’ve probably never heard of—the newspaper reporter in Tijuana, the cameraman in Karachi, the blogger in Tehran.
Joel Simon, the executive director of C.P.J, has just published a book called “The New Censorship: Inside the Global Battle for Media Freedom.” It seems strange to speak of growing censorship in an era when elections are common around the world, private freedoms have expanded even in repressive countries like China, the Internet and social media swamp our brains with indiscriminate information every nanosecond, and anyone with a Twitter account or a Facebook page can be a journalist. But Simon makes a persuasive case that the global trend is toward less, not greater, freedom of the press. “Deluged with data, we are blind to the larger reality,” he writes. “Around the world new systems of control are taking hold. They are stifling the global conversation and impeding the development of policies and solutions based on an informed understanding of the local realities. Repression and violence against journalists is at record levels, and press freedom is in decline.”
“The New Censorship” outlines four main reasons why this is so. The first is the rise of elected leaders, such as Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and the leftist Presidents of Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia, who use their power to intimidate independent journalists and make it nearly impossible for them to function. They exploit their democratic mandates to govern as dictators—“democratators,” as Simon calls them. They do this not only by manipulating, denouncing, and jailing critical reporters but by creating an atmosphere in which a free press is considered a kind of fifth column in the body politic, an import from the West that at best serves as a propaganda tool for outside interests—introducing alien values and stoking chaos—and at worst actively undermines national security and pride."
"In the worldwide movement away from democracy, perhaps the most vulnerable institution is the free press, and the most disposable people are journalists. If they’re doing their job right, they can have few friends in powerful places. Journalists become reliably useful to governments, corporations, or armed groups only when they betray their calling. They seldom even have a base of support within the general public. In some places, it’s impossible to report the truth without making oneself an object of hatred and a target of violence for one sector of society or another.
In recent years, reporting the news has become an ever more dangerous activity. Between 2002 and 2012, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (C.P.J.), five hundred and six journalists were killed worldwide, as opposed to three hundred and ninety in the previous decade. Even in the most violent war zones, such as Iraq and Syria, the cause of death is most often simple murder, rather than being killed while covering combat. One major shift in the years since September 11, 2001, has been the erosion of a commonly accepted idea of press neutrality. Journalists are now seen by many combatants, especially jihadis, as legitimate targets and valuable propaganda tools, alive or dead. The best-known cases involve Western reporters, from Daniel Pearl to James Foley, but the most endangered journalists are ones you’ve probably never heard of—the newspaper reporter in Tijuana, the cameraman in Karachi, the blogger in Tehran.
Joel Simon, the executive director of C.P.J, has just published a book called “The New Censorship: Inside the Global Battle for Media Freedom.” It seems strange to speak of growing censorship in an era when elections are common around the world, private freedoms have expanded even in repressive countries like China, the Internet and social media swamp our brains with indiscriminate information every nanosecond, and anyone with a Twitter account or a Facebook page can be a journalist. But Simon makes a persuasive case that the global trend is toward less, not greater, freedom of the press. “Deluged with data, we are blind to the larger reality,” he writes. “Around the world new systems of control are taking hold. They are stifling the global conversation and impeding the development of policies and solutions based on an informed understanding of the local realities. Repression and violence against journalists is at record levels, and press freedom is in decline.”
“The New Censorship” outlines four main reasons why this is so. The first is the rise of elected leaders, such as Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and the leftist Presidents of Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia, who use their power to intimidate independent journalists and make it nearly impossible for them to function. They exploit their democratic mandates to govern as dictators—“democratators,” as Simon calls them. They do this not only by manipulating, denouncing, and jailing critical reporters but by creating an atmosphere in which a free press is considered a kind of fifth column in the body politic, an import from the West that at best serves as a propaganda tool for outside interests—introducing alien values and stoking chaos—and at worst actively undermines national security and pride."
Comments