The global war on information has caught journalists in its crosshairs. All over the world, reporters are being killed, intimidated, harassed, and imprisoned. According to the U.N. 55 journalists were killed in 2021. So far this year, eight journalists have been killed in Mexico along. Access to the internet and social media is curtailed or reduced in many countries and disinformation and propaganda campaigns fill the platforms worldwide. In addition, public opinion about media and journalism are at an all-time low.
Speakers convened by Ethnic Media Services gave an overview of the freedom of information worldwide and how to protect journalists in this dangerous situation.
Carlos Martinez de la Serna, Program Director, Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ):
“We’re seeing record numbers of journalists being in prison and killed around the world. This creates an effect in that country, that we can not only value in terms of the personal tragedy that exists and the human values at stake, but also the impact it has on the global community of journalists.”
“Investigating corruption and political corruption specifically, are the ones usually most targeted because of their work, but they’re also kind of new trends and standards. For example, we documented several cases of at least 47 jailed journalists on fake news charges in 2021.”
“Social media allows us to connect with readers and the audience in different ways, but also make us the subject of attacks and harassment in a systematic way. There’s a continuation in some cases between those attacks online and the physical safety of journalists.”
“We should engage directly with the communities we are aiming to serve. We cannot be officers or in a world that is not fully immersed in the problems we are trying to report on and help. So journalists need to be part of the community.”
Ricardo Trotti, Executive Director, Inter American Press Association (SIP in Spanish)
“In the first quarter of 2022, 8 journalists were killed in Mexico, three in Haiti, one in Guatemala and the other one in Honduras. The context of widespread violence, organized crime, drug trafficking in cooperation with the corruption of government officials, police and paramilitaries in some countries are the leading causes of this problem. In addition to impunity, which rises to 90% of the cases, prevention almost does not exist.”
“In Nicaragua, Ortega closed media outlets such as La Prensa, 100% noticias, expelled more than 150 journalists now in exile”.
“In Cuba, independent journalists, artists, intellectuals have suffered since July 2021, one of the most challenging periods of repression in the last 25 years, similar to the ones that I experienced, with a black spring before the end of the century.”
“Venezuela, another police state, has been suffocating the media with economic measures and direct censorship. In recent years, Maduro closed, confiscated and stole the assets of more than 150 media outlets, among them El National, the major newspaper in that country.”
Ruslan Gurzhiy, Editor-in-Chief, SlavicSac, Russian News in California:
“Not everybody knows that war did not start months ago in Ukraine. It’s been for a while, and actually in 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2019 I went to the war zone in eastern Ukraine and I I took a lot of footage and pictures of what’s going on there: sniper bullets around your ears and bombs blasting over your head.”
“Since 2014, we have done several investigations about Russian-Ukrainian-American corruption…I got personal threats saying that “Next time if you’re going to go to Ukraine, you’re going to get killed. Then your parents are not gonna find you, they’re gonna find you in the forest… When I went to law enforcement (in California), I was told, “we don’t really care about that, unless we see your body, especially if you’re outside of the country.”
“My base audience is local people from the Sacramento Bay Area, San Francisco, LA, Portland, New York, Miami. All these people are eating our news, because they don’t want to listen to Russian propaganda or disinformation… I wrote several stories about Russian paramilitary troops in Sacramento, in Portland, the west coast and the east coast as well. I got footage and pictures and documents of Kremlin based nonprofits that took over some churches as campgrounds and they trained local kids, Russian-speaking Americans, they train them with Russian rifles.”
Jeremy Goldkorn 金玉米, Editor-in-Chief, SupChina
“The Chinese government has expelled most of the bureaus of The Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and foreign journalists get harassed all the time on reporting missions, prevented from interviewing people and there is a growing feelings of nationalism that have got worse over the COVID 19 pandemic amongst Chinese people online.”
“If you are seen as anti-China, your media can get boycotted by businesses and people who are associated with the PRC, or who want to do business there. And you can get harassed online and if you have family or personal ties to China, this harassment can be very frightening because you don’t know what’s going to happen back in China.”
“If you are seen as Pro China, you may also be subject to attacks in the Anglophone and dissident media and social media…you may be the subject of investigation by the United States government, under something called the China initiative, a Trump era government program to investigate scholars and scientists with a background connected to China.”
