April 28, 2016
Press freedom suffered throughout the world in 2015, declining to its weakest level in 12 years because of attacks and intimidation by political, criminal and militant forces that sought to mute or control the news media, a prominent democracy advocacy group said in an annual report published Wednesday.
The report by the group, Freedom House, supports statistical and anecdotal evidence showing that assaults on members of the news media are spreading beyond chronically dangerous areas for journalists like parts of the Middle East, North Africa, South Asia and Latin America.
“Media freedom declined not just in repressive societies, but also in Europe,” Jennifer Dunham, the director of research for the group’s Freedom of the Press report, said in announcing the release on the group’s website.
“Journalists in much of Europe had to contend with new threats from terrorists as well as new surveillance and security laws that could hamper their work,” Ms. Dunham said. “Political leaders in Poland, Serbia and other countries sought greater control over national media.”
In China, she said, where the news media is already heavily restricted, censorship increased over information about the financial system and pollution. The press intimidation extended to Hong Kong, a former British colony that was guaranteed a continuation of its freewheeling system for 50 years after its transfer to China in 1997.
“Professional journalists from established news outlets — as well as Hong Kong-based booksellers — were detained, imprisoned and forced to give televised confessions, representing a disturbing new pattern of repression,” Ms. Dunham said.
While democracy is widespread in Latin America, news organizations there faced increased threats both from criminal gangs and the authorities. In Mexico, Ms. Dunham said, journalists who sought to cover organized crime and corruption faced “extreme levels of violence, and the government has proven completely unable, or unwilling, to address the problem.”
Freedom House, which has offices in Washington and New York, has been measuring press freedom around the world since 1980, based on a complex scoring system derived from research about the ability of print, broadcast and digital media organizations to operate freely and without threat of repercussion.
Numerical scores from 0 to 100 are given to 199 countries and territories. The lower the score, the freer the news media.
The global average score for 2015 was 48.9, the worst since 2003, when the average was 45.53.
The countries that suffered the largest declines in press freedom included Bangladesh, Turkey, Burundi, France, Serbia, Yemen, Egypt, Macedonia and Zimbabwe. The countries or territories ranked as the worst included Belarus, Crimea, Cuba, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Syria, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.
Repression was deadliest in the Middle East and North Africa, where journalists were under increased pressure to display fealty to political leaders and risked violent attacks by extremist groups like the Islamic State.
The Freedom House report coincided with the release of an annual appraisal of news media freedom by another press-advocacy organization, the Committee to Protect Journalists, which focused on sexualized violence and gender-based discrimination against journalists.
The appraisal, a collection of essays about abuse and harassment experienced mainly by female, gay and transgender journalists, did not include statistical data on trends. But Joel Simon, the executive director of the organization, said in the introduction that more victims were speaking out. “By doing so, they are helping reduce the stigma,” he said, and will make the organization “better able to document the violations.”
