Last month, the Reporters Without Borders 2015 World Press Freedom Index highlighted the worldwide deterioration in freedom of information in last year. Beset by wars, the growing threat from non-state operatives, violence during demonstrations and the economic crisis, media freedom, according to the survey, is in retreat on all five continents. The report stated that there was an eight percent increase in violations of freedom of information in 180 countries polled countries and regions in 2014 in comparison to the same period last in 2013.
From the jailing of Al Jazeera journalists by Egypt, the horrendous murders of some by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, and long-ranging censorship of media instruments in China, journalists haven’t had it easy. These findings are a pointer to the contribution of armed conflict in the Middle East and Ukraine, where “a fearsome information war” is being waged, as being directly targeted at journalists, who have been killed, captured or pressured to relay propaganda”.
The report cites the actions of ISIS, Boko Haram in Nigeria and Cameroon, and criminal organisations in Italy and Latin America – which used “fear and reprisals to silence journalists and bloggers who dare to investigate or refuse to act as their mouthpieces” as some of the contributors to the decline.
Some, however, are taking the report with a pinch of salt. A lecturer as the United States International University, who prefers to remain anonymous, thinks people are reading more into the freedom index than is necessarily true or important. “A keen look at the report shows that there are evident fluctuations in individual country indicators – the US, for instance, vacillates between 17 per cent and 53 in a span of twelve years. The implication here is that the rankings being thrown about have little to do with a country’s policies, and more to do with perceptions about its leadership and general history. Various categories ought to be understood differently so that the eventual picture is not distorted,” he offers.
“A so-called analysis of government’s reaction to the Wiki Leaks report, for instance, is no way to gauge a political leadership’s orientation towards press freedom. Any government would have acted in similar fashion, which is not to say it is intolerant to sharing of information.”
The debate was no less intriguing online, where a reader had this to say:
“It is important that rankings like this be taken with a grain of salt. One problem with the Reporters without Borders methodology is that its results are largely based off of surveys/questionnaires handed out to a small number of pre-selected journalists, NGOs and activists around the world, gauging their specific individual perceptions of their countries and others’ press freedoms.
As a result, nations like the US and France bounce wildly in the rankings every year despite no real changes in the law or policy.”
The debate regarding the veracity of the poll notwithstanding, we can all agree that journalists have not had the easiest of times lately, and that states and governments need to do more to make the operational environment more hospitable for media practitioners.
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