The past few years have presented unprecedented challenges for journalists and others working in media. Citizens and media workers alike across the world, including in Ethiopia, India, Syria, Ukraine, and Turkey, have faced years of attacks on their freedom of expression as they were increasingly targeted for repression, arrested, silenced, threatened, and more.
With the arrival of COVID-19 in March 2020, journalists became an even more crucial source of health information and news while simultaneously navigating a pandemic that has killed millions. As citizens were focused on the largest health crisis of the last 100 years, many governments took the opportunity to implement authoritarian policies or consolidate power in harmful ways.
This is the context in which we celebrate World Press Freedom Day (WPFD) on May 3, 2022. WFPD’s theme this year is “digital siege,” one we at Global Voices find particularly fitting, as our team of journalists, editors, and activists have been a strong, consistent voice in documenting the rise of digital authoritarianism over the past decade. One of our newest projects, the Unfreedom Monitor, launched in March 2022, analyzes and documents how digital communications technologies are being used to advance authoritarian governance around the world. In our Civic Media Observatory work, we have highlighted the importance of an independent press by exploring how Russia has coopted domestic media to wage a propaganda campaign to build support for its war against Ukraine.
But there’s good news as well. In April we witnessed the vindication of a journalist by the European Human Rights Court after being falsely accused of defamation in North Macedonia. In Tbilisi, Georgia, the courts charged 20 far-right citizens with attacking journalists after violence broke out at a Pride March in June 2021. And in Afghanistan, even as we witnessed the effective collapse of the free press under the Taliban rule in August 2021, countless brave women journalists have persevered and spoken out against oppressive and misogynistic policies they enacted.
Freedom of expression is one of Global Voices’ most treasured values, and in observing World Press Freedom Day, we emphasize stories that are often neglected in mainstream media coverage, highlighting the perspectives of regular citizens, marginalized communities, and the work of local journalists.
To read a selection of our work on press freedom, see the stories below:
Stories about World Press Freedom Day 2022 from April, 2022
In Turkey a journalist is arrested for covering an alleged hacking of a government database
The arrest comes after Haskoloğlu reported on an alleged hacking of a government database.
Hong Kong’s Foreign Correspondents’ Club cancels Human Rights Awards for fear of legal risks
Launched in 1995, the Awards is one of the most important platforms to celebrate and honour human rights journalism from around Asia.
The censorship of Shanghai citizens in lockdown sparks an uproar on Chinese social media
A six-minute video on the lockdown in Shanghai had gone viral and sparked large-scale online protests after the Chinese censor handed down a comprehensive content removal order on April 22, 2022.
Despite what we think, the press does not live in a free paradise in Ecuador
It is necessary to question the notion that the media have full and free space to act, without threats, in Ecuador.
European Court of Human Rights vindicates Macedonian journalists convicted of defamation
In 2014 and 2015, Focus journalists had to pay more than EUR 9,000 as damages to the former director of the Administration for Security and Counterintelligence (ASC) Sašo Mijalkov for defamation and insult.
Twenty far-right activists convicted over July 5 attack on journalists
Tbilisi City Court has convicted 20 far-right activists for the attacks on at least 53 media workers and others during the aborted Pride March in Tbilisi on 5 July 2021.
Mexico in crisis with eight journalists murdered so far this year
So far in 2022, eight journalists have been murdered in Mexico, raising alarm among media workers as well as national and international organizations.