Media freedom: it must be defended (Republished from The Guardian

Media freedom: it must be defended (Republished from The Guardian – International Edition)

Feb 15, 2019 Editorial

The arrest in the Philippines of the courageous journalist Maria Ressa, founder and head of the news organisation Rappler, is a disgrace. It is also one she foresaw.
Rodrigo Duterte and his supporters have shown little tolerance for anyone attempting to hold him to account, as Rappler has done, in particular over the “war on drugs” which has killed thousands.
Ressa is accused of cyber-libel under a law introduced months after the alleged offence. She previously had to post bail over tax fraud charges which she said were trumped up to harass and intimidate Rappler. Its licence has been revoked and its political correspondent barred from presidential palace briefings.
Ressa has called the campaign against Rappler a kind of back-handed compliment: it shows that the president sees it as a threat.
Powerful interests at all levels, and those who bolster them, have reason to bully critics into silence. The Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi was one of 80 journalists killed last year, while hundreds more were locked up. A Ghanaian journalist who exposed football corruption was shot dead in January. Two Afghan journalists were murdered in their radio station last week. Many more are silenced by violence, threats, harassment or jail. In Myanmar, Reuters journalists Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo have lost their appeal against seven-year sentences for reporting on a military-led massacre of Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine state.
This week, a BBC cameraman was violently shoved and abused at a Donald Trump rally. While a White House statement subsequently condemned violence, the US president recently praised Congressman Greg Gianforte for his assault on a Guardian reporter. His attacks on “fake news” are echoed by authoritarians including Mr Duterte.
As the executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists has warned, Mr Trump’s hostility to and undermining of journalists has global as well as domestic repercussions, normalising press freedom abuses. The Czech president, Miloš Zeman, said last year that: “It hasn’t yet been possible to wipe out Czech journalists.” The Council of Europe called 2018 the worst year for press freedom since the end of the cold war.
The work of reputable journalists is all the more vital in an age when lies can spread so rapidly across social media, and when powerful players weaponise such platforms to attack critics, as Ressa has noted. The increasing pressure on journalists, and the need for accurate sources of news, has spurred a Foreign Office campaign in support of media freedom this year – launched, notably, by the British ambassador to the Philippines. The government will host an international conference on protecting journalists in July and has pledged to “increase the costs” of impinging on media freedoms.
The campaign and promise are very welcome: rhetoric matters. But so does consistency. It is admirable that the UK foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, raised Khashoggi’s death while in Riyadh last year; less so that, as he did so, lower-level British officials continued to talk trade. Receiving another award last year, Ressa said of Rappler’s fortitude: “You don’t really know who you are until you’re forced to fight to defend it … We will hold the line.” Those who profess to care about media freedom must do likewise.