World Press Freedom Day: Fighting for the facts

Posted on May 03, 2021

As the world is facing a severe pandemic in the form of the COVOID-19, another threat, which is potentially as dangerous, is lurking in the shadows. According to Reporters Without Borders (RSF), the COVID-19 pandemic has led to a sharp rise in abuses and infringements of press freedom on the continent. Although it is widely acknowledged that journalism is the best medicine against disinformation, press freedom is still constrained in 73% of the world’s countries. This year’s World Press Freedom Day theme, ‘Information as a Public Good’, reaffirms the importance of information as a tool to further advance democracy, transparency and accountability while leaving no one behind.

World Press Freedom Day was proclaimed by the UN General Assembly in December 1993 to remind governments to respect their commitment to press freedom. The press, recognised as the Fourth Estate, holds those in positions of authority to account and strengthens a democratic society. A free press is the vehicle through which news, information, ideas and opinions circulate.

Despite its crucial importance to a free and open society, press freedom is declining across the world. In several countries, emergency regulations introduced to curtail the spread of COVID-19 have been used to target critical reporting. As noted by Christian Mihr, the Executive Director of RSF Germany, ‘The coronavirus pandemic has reinforced and consolidated repressive tendencies worldwide. Although many governments have used the crisis to tighten their grip on media content, journalists have succeeded in playing a vital role in challenging the dangerous misinformation spread by political leaders such as President Jair Bolsonaro and President Donald Trump.

The emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic has aggravated the issue of fake news, disinformation and misinformation. In the context of the unprecedented public health crisis caused by the virus, access to accurate information can be a matter of life and death. Many governments have introduced ‘gag laws’ under the pretext of controlling fake news and misinformation. Yet, as UN Secretary General António Guterres stated: The antidote to this pandemic of misinformation is fact-based news and analysis. It depends on media freedom and independent reporting.’ Journalists are indeed on the frontline of the battle against the infodemic!

Truth, accountability and informed voting constitute the bedrock of the democratic process. An environment in which the press can freely report on all matters of public interest is a sine qua non condition for citizen rule, free and fair elections and the protection of individual rights. The freer the press, the better informed citizens can be. Likewise, a free press is essential to exposing abuses of power, particularly in the case of corruption and human rights violations.

South Africa is ranked 32nd of the 180 countries included in the 2021 World Press Freedom Index, which is one place down since 2020. The South African Constitution (1996) protects press freedom, but legislation reminiscent of the apartheid era is still used to restrict the coverage of government institutions when the ‘national interest’ is at stake. Last year also saw some journalists attacked by law enforcement agencies. News24 journalist Azarrah Karrim was shot at with rubber bullets by police while covering lockdown restrictions in Johannesburg. The same fate befell two female journalists, Nondumiso Lehutso and Aphelele Buqwana, while covering protests against the financial exclusion of students at Wits University. Perhaps more worrying, journalist and editor Paul Nthoba fled to Lesotho after allegedly being beaten by the police for photographing them while they were enforcing the COVID-19 lockdown regulations. When Nthoba went to the Ficksburg police station to file a complaint, the officers initially refused to provide him with the requisite form and he was beaten again. This marked the first instance of a South African journalist fleeing the country since the end of apartheid.

While press freedom in South Africa is still relatively well defended thanks to its vibrant civil society, repeated attacks launched against journalist by politicians and law enforcement pose serious threats to an open and free society. Recently one of the opposition parties, the Economic Freedom Fighters, was accused and found guilty of repeated attacks and online bullying of journalists. As hatred and incitement towards journalists seem to become the norm rather than the exception, civil society is obligated to stand up against intimidation and disinformation.

Press freedom is essential as it plays a vital role in monitoring the actions of authority at all levels and keeping the government accountable. Likewise, democracy cannot exist in any meaningful way without the right to freedom of expression, and more specifically without the right to share information and express a range of ideas and opinions. Citizens need to be sufficiently well informed to make meaningful and appropriate political choices.

In advocating the notion of ‘information as a public good’, World Press Freedom Day 2021 seeks to reassert the special role of journalism in producing news as verified information, while furthering the UN Sustainable Development aspiration to advance ‘public access to information and fundamental freedoms’.

- Author Francois Gilles de Pelichy

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