May 3 is officially World Press Freedom Day. The UNESCO-led initiative, set up in 1993 to reward press freedom and highlight threats to media pluralism and independence, is celebrated across the global on an annual basis.
Ahead of the event, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) published the 2017 rankings for the World Press Freedom Index – a system for rating the freedom of the media and journalists across the world.
It reveals that "media freedom is proving increasingly fragile", due to "poisonous rhetoric", "inadequate" protection for journalists and their sources.
While this may seem a reserve of war-torn countries with activist and citizen journalists, the UK is also falling short of the mark. This year, Britain dropped two places to number 40 out of 180, far behind countries such as Jamaica, Germany, Spain and Iceland. The United States is in 48. Earlier this week, blogger and startup co-founder Yameen Rasheed was stabbed to death in the Maldives in what is believed to have been a politically-motivated attack in a country that is facing mounting claims of corruption. On the World Press Freedom Index, the Maldives sits in 117.
- Norway
- Sweden
- Finland
- Denmark
- Netherlands
- Costa Rica
- Switzerland
- Jamaica
- Belgium
- Iceland
In a statement from Reporters without Borders, the organisation says a "heavy-handed approach towards the press – often in the name of National Security – resulted in the UK slipping down the World Press Freedom Index."
RSF directly reference the Investigatory Powers Act, "the most extreme surveillance legislation in UK history" as resulting in insufficient protection for journalists. Passed in 2016, the act legalised a wide range of tools for "snooping and hacking" by security services. When it was passed, Edward Snowden tweeted that “The UK has just legalised the most extreme surveillance in the history of western democracy. It goes further than many autocracies.”
Executive Director of Open Rights group, Jim Killock told WIRED: "The Government failed to protect journalists when it passed the Investigatory Powers Act. Now, the Law Commission has proposed to send them to prison if they so much as handle official data. This comes at a time when we must be able to hold the Government to account over its vast surveillance powers.”
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The concerns over the Investigatory Powers Act are growing again amidst the Law Commission's Proposed 'Espionage Act'. The Act would make it easier to prosecute news organisations which obtain classified material. The proposed act suggests journalists could be imprisoned for up to 14 years for publishing information that is "capable of benefiting a foreign power." This would leave those who communicate and obtain leaked information at risk – both journalists and whistleblowers.
“Extensive surveillance powers are threatening investigative journalism and freedom of expression in the UK. In just four years, the UK has fallen ten places in the World Press Freedom Index, a deeply worrying trend that needs to be addressed," Killock continued. When responding to the recent legal changes in the UK, he added, “mass surveillance chills freedom of expression and undermines democracy.”
RSF has plotted the World Press Freedom Index data on a colour-coded map to let you see, at a glance, how the countries compare; pale yellow countries have the highest scores while black countries have the lowest. The map additionally lets you see previous years' rankings. To learn more about why a country has been given a score, click in the list in the right-hand side and select "Find out more". In the case of the Maldives (with a score of 39.8), RSF explains: "Five years after the February 2012 coup d’état, the government continues to persecute the independent media. Many Maldivian journalists say they have been the targets of death threats."
According to a report by the Maldives Broadcasting Corporation (MBC), political parties are the leading source of these threats to journalists, followed by criminal gangs and religious extremists. "This poisonous climate reinforces self-censorship," continues RSF. "Refusal by the authorities to investigate journalist Ahmed Rilwan’s disappearance in 2014 speaks to the climate of violence and impunity in which journalists operate."
Elsewhere, the Mapping Media Freedom site is continually charting threats to the media throughout the European Union and neighbouring countries. It's a joint initiative from the Index on Censorship, the European Federation of Journalists and RSF. This interactive map shows clusters in locations where there are crowdsourced reports of threats, violations or limitations faced by journalists, newspapers or other media. In London it shows a total of 31 reports.
While Europe continues to have some of the lowest indicators in the World Press Freedom Index (showing a high level of press freedom), this has worsened across the board by 17.5 per cent in just five years. The country leading the chart is Norway. The RSF considers the country's standards of press freedom to be "faultless". Article 100 in Norway's 1814 constitution ensures media outlets and journalists across the country are not subject to censorship or political pressure. Earlier this year, a new media coalition launched #ETTMINUTT, a project aimed at reminding the public of the importance of independence and reliability within the media.
Unsurprisingly, North Korea scores the lowest on the index followed by Eritrea and Turkmenistan.
RSF secretary general Christophe Deloire said of the report: “The democracies that have traditionally regarded media freedom as one of the foundations on which they are built must continue to be a model for the rest of the world, and not the opposite... By eroding this fundamental freedom on the grounds of protecting their citizens, the democracies are in danger of losing their souls.”
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
