From Rome
This Friday, in World Day of Press Freedomproclaimed by the United Nations in 1993, the international organization Reporters Without Borders (RSF) published its 2024 world report highlighting that “press freedom is threatened by the same people who should be its guarantors: the political authorities” Of each country. And of the five indicators that the study titled World Press Freedom Index analyzes to draw its conclusions each year (political context, legal framework, economic context, sociocultural context and security) “the political indicator is the one that decreases the most in 2024, with a drop of 7.6 points,” said the report. It must be clarified that for each of these indicators a result is calculated between 0 and 100 that speaks of the situation of each country. The more points you get, the more freedom of the press that country has.
And to arrive at these figures, a series of surveys are carried out among specialists in press freedom such as journalists, researchers, university professors and human rights defenders among them. It is a questionnaire prepared in 24 languages and to which experts in 180 countries are submitted. The results are presented by continent and by country and may change before the report is published if the country suffers a coup d’état, goes through a war or professionals suffer an attack, RSF said. Originally born in Paris, RSF today has 134 correspondents around the world and offices on several continents.
What does freedom of the press mean?
It is good to start with Reporters Without Borders’ definition of press freedom. “Freedom of the press is the effective possibility for journalists, as individuals and as a collective, to select, produce and disseminate information, in the general interest, regardless of political, economic, legal and social interference, and without prejudice to their safety. physical and mental”.
“A growing number of governments and political authorities fail in their role of guaranteeing an exemplary framework for the exercise of journalism and for the right of citizens to reliable, independent and plural information,” the report highlighted, also observing “a worrying deterioration of support and respect for the autonomy of the media, as well as an increase in the pressures exerted by States or other political actors on them.” And these results become even more worrying when more than half of the world’s population is called to vote in 2024.
And to this we must add the growing insecurity for journalists since many countries do not apply resolution 2222 of the UN Security Council, which speaks precisely about the protection of journalists. In the war in Gaza, according to RSF, since October 2023 when the conflict began, more than 100 Palestinian reporters have been killed. QThat’s why Palestine is one of the ten worst countries in the world in terms of press security.
Milei
The report also mentions the “crucial scenarios” that are being experienced in Latin America “where self-proclaimed predators of press freedom and media plurality came to power, such as Javier Milei in Argentina, who, in a symbolic and worrying act, closed the country’s largest news agency”says the text.
“Many governments exercise increasingly tight control over social networks and the Internet: they restrict access, block accounts and delete messages with informative content (…) Some political groups fuel hatred and distrust towards journalists, insulting them, discrediting them or threatening them. . Others orchestrate control maneuvers of the media ecosystem, either by taking possession of public media or co-opting private ones through their acquisition by like-minded businessmen,” the study added. And after this phrase The report mentioned the Italian government of right-wing Giorgia Meloni as a deputy from her party is trying to take over the country’s second largest press agency.
The situation in the Americas
“In the region of the Americas, the inability of journalists to cover stories related to organized crime, corruption or the environment, for fear of reprisals, It is a problem of the first magnitude“, specified the text. And he also added that on that continent, “political pressures increasingly threaten the independence and safety of journalists” and “more and more political leaders are stigmatizing journalists and the media in their speeches. Added to this are disinformation campaigns, abusive judicial actions and state propaganda, which foster distrust of the press and favor polarization” in Central and South America.
But the report also said that USA prepares for the 2024 elections in a climate of “growing distrust of the media, fueled by the open hostility of political leaders.” And he did not fail to remember some events where US security forces occupied and searched the editorial offices of some media outlets and detained journalists “in an abusive manner.”
On the scale of countries according to their freedom of the press, The first Latin Americans to appear are Costa Rica at number 26, followed by Uruguay at 51 and Chile at 52. Argentina moves to number 66, Brazil to 82, Paraguay to 115, Colombia to 119, Mexico to 121, Bolivia to 124, Peru to 125, Venezuela to 156, Nicaragua to 163 and Cuba to 168.
The report again mentioned Argentina which has, it said, “a particularly worrying situation after the arrival to power of President Javier Milei, whose aggressive stance towards journalism affects pluralism.” The situation has also deteriorated in Peru, according to RSF, El Salvador, Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Guatemala, Ecuador, Haiti and Mexico, “the country without war with the highest number of journalists murdered in the last decade” (72).
The good news comes from Chile thanks to “the government’s will to strengthen press freedom to create a safer environment” and from Brazil since it is Lula as a president who “has made progress in normalizing relations with the press,” unlike Jair Bolsonaro.
The rest of the world
Countries where press freedom is in good health are mainly concentrated in the European Union (EU). The top eight countries in the world for their respect for press freedom are Norway, Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands, Finland, Estonia, Portugal and Ireland. Germany ranks 10th, France 21st, United Kingdom 23rd, Spain 30th, Italy 46th.
In Eastern Europe and Central Asia, “media censorship has intensified, astonishingly mimicking Russian acts of repression, whether in Belarus, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan or Azerbaijan. Russia’s influence extends to Serbia, where pro-government media outlets spread Russian propaganda and authorities threaten Russian journalists in exile. “Russia, where Vladimir Putin continues to wage a war in Ukraine that significantly impacts the media ecosystem and the safety of journalists,” the report stated.
Many other countries where there is violence against journalists are mentioned in the Classification, such as the African countries Nigeria, Madagascar, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sahel, Niger, Burkina Faso and Mali. In other states such as Senegal, Togo, Zimbabwe, there has been “an instrumentalization of media regulatory bodies (…) to be able to suspend media without any judicial decision.”
In the region “Asia-Pacific, five countries are among the ten most dangerous on the planet for the profession: Burma, China, North Korea, Vietnam and Afghanistan”. Finally, in the Near East and North Africa, “almost one in two countries is in a “very serious” situation.” Among them the United Arab Emirates, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Bahrain, Syria and Egypt in addition to the already mentioned Palestine.
The last five countries on the list of 180 investigated states, that is, they are in The worst situation in terms of press freedom and security for the press are Iran (176), North Korea (177), Afghanistan (178), Syria (179) and Eritrea (180).
