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It highlights that the conditions for the exercise of the journalist are adverse in seven out of ten countries of the world
3 May. (EUROPE PRESS) –
The non-governmental organization Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has warned this Wednesday of the “great volatility” that press freedom is going through worldwide and has stressed that part of this situation is due to the impact of what it has described as “the deception industry.
During the presentation of the organization’s annual report, RSF Secretary General Christophe Deloire highlighted that “the World Press Freedom Index shows great volatility, with significant ups and downs and unprecedented changes, such as the rise of 18 places for Brazil and the drop of 31 for Senegal”.
“This instability is the product of a worsening of the aggressiveness of power in many countries and the growing animosity towards journalists on social networks and in the non-virtual world. The volatility is also due to the rise of the deception industry, which shapes and distributes misinformation, while providing tools to manufacture it,” he said.
Thus, the classification -which evaluates the conditions in which journalism is practiced in 180 countries and territories- reflects that the situation is “very serious” in 31 countries, “difficult” in 42 and “problematic” in 55, with a “good” or “fairly good” situation in 52 others.
In this way, the conditions for the exercise of the journalist are adverse in seven out of ten countries, with Vietnam, China and North Korea closing a classification that Norway, Ireland, and Denmark lead.
RSF has highlighted that this year’s classification “highlights the dramatic effects on press freedom of ‘the deception industry’ in the digital ecosystem”, given that in two thirds of the countries evaluated “the majority of experts (… .) review the involvement of political actors from their countries in massive disinformation or propaganda campaigns, on a regular or systematic basis”.
“The difference between the true and the false, the real and the artificial, the facts and the artifacts is blurred, endangering the right to information. Unprecedented manipulation capabilities are used to weaken those who embody quality journalism, while weakening journalism itself,” the organization noted.
In this sense, he has emphasized that “the impressive development of generative artificial intelligence is shaking the already fragile media universe” and added that the owner of Twitter, Elon Musk, “is taking arbitrary logic to the extreme and census, demonstrating that digital platforms are real quicksand for journalism”.
For this reason, he has asserted that “the ground is fertile for the expansion of Russia’s propaganda”, which appears in position 164 after suffering a new fall of nine positions. “While Moscow has created in record time a new media arsenal to propagate the Kremlin’s speech in the occupied territories of southern Ukraine, a bloc of silence has descended on the last independent Russian media, which have been banned, blocked and/or declared ‘foreign agents'”, he lamented.
In addition, the United States loses three places and falls to 45, a situation derived in part from the murder of two journalists in 2022, while Brazil rises 18 places “due to the departure of Jair Bolsonaro, whose mandate was marked by strong hostility against the journalists, and the return to power of Lula da Silva, who has promised to improve the situation”.
EUROPE AND AMERICA
The European continent continues to be “the region of the world where the conditions for practicing journalism are more favourable, especially within the European Union,” according to RSF, which has indicated that “however, the situation on the continent is uneven.” .
In this sense, he has reiterated that the war in Ukraine has allowed the Kremlin to “undertake its final operation to ‘clean up’ the Russian media landscape”, marked by “systemic censorship and the forced exodus of independent Russian media and, later, of foreigners”, which “has opened space for the dissemination of coordinated propaganda by the pro-government media”.
“In Ukraine (79), the Kremlin’s propaganda apparatus deploys at a forced march with each new conquest of territory by Russian forces: television networks suffer interference, Ukrainian media are replaced and local journalists persecuted” , the organization has reported.
“In the non-invaded areas, despite the disorganization of the newsrooms and the difficulties inherent in covering a country at war, and beyond the obstacles imposed on information, generally proportional to the situation, journalists enjoy more freedom”, he specified.
In addition, it has denounced that several European countries “have limited the work of journalists under the pretext of national security”, with Greece (107) in last place in the EU after the scandal of listening to journalists by the secret services .
Regarding the situation in America, RSF defends that “the political alternation has mainly benefited journalists from two countries”, referring to Brazil and the United States, where the Joe Biden Administration “shows a much more favorable attitude towards the press”. than that of former President Donald Trump.
“The polarization and institutional instability that affect several countries in the region foster hostility and mistrust towards the media,” he stressed, before pointing out that “in countries where the political landscape is less unstable, the situation has also worsened “. “The use of disinformation and propaganda, almost always linked to violence in the networks against journalists and the media, is normalizing and is already a full-fledged element of the strategy of political leaders, who thus reinforce their control over the public discourse,” he said.
MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA
Regarding the situation in the Middle East, he pointed out that information “continues to be subjected” to “suffocation by authoritarian regimes” and “censorship by militias.” “Iran (177) has intensified its repression and detained more than 70 journalists” after the death of Mahsa Amini, he said, while Saudi Arabia (170) is also at the bottom of the ranking.
On the other hand, he stressed that “disinformation continues to grow in sub-Saharan Africa” and stated that “the defense and promotion of the pro-Russian story contributes to an explosion of disinformation and the development of a propaganda ecosystem throughout the continent”.
In the case of Asia, “one-party regimes are the ones that most repress the exercise of journalism”, with the cases of North Korea (180), China (179) –described as “the largest prison in the world for media professionals and press freedom advocates–Vietnam (178) and Burma (173) as examples.
In addition, it has pointed out the case of India (161) as “a hybrid regime” in which “all the highest-rated press is in the hands of industrialists close to the prime minister, Narendra Modi”, who also has “an army of defenders who go after any information deemed critical on the internet and launch vicious harassment campaigns.”
In this part of the world there is also a “regional specialty” such as prohibited or taboo topics, including the “erasing of the media panmorama” of female journalists in Afghanistan by the Taliban and situations such as those in Brunei, Thailand and Bhutan, where “the media of communication know that they are risking it if they attack the sovereign”.
