#readwise # Press Freedom Is Under Attack  ## Metadata - Author: [[economist.com]] - Full Title: Press Freedom Is Under Attack - URL: https://www.economist.com/interactive/briefing/2022/05/03/press-freedom/ - This is a piece that was accompanied by this leader: [[Press Freedom Is Under Attack. It Needs Defenders]] ## Highlights - **Globally, press freedom is in retreat**. Around 85% of people live in countries where it has declined over the past five years, according to analysis by UNESCO of data on freedom of expression from the Varieties of Democracy (V-DEM) Institute. V-DEM gives each country a score from 0 (least free) to 1 (most free). The global average weighted by population peaked at 0.65 in the early 2000s, and then again in 2011, before falling to 0.49 in 2021. This is the worst score since 1984, when the cold war was raging and the two sides were propping up dictators on every continent. - Even as press freedom has declined over the past decade, the number of journalists killed on the job has also fallen, from 76 in 2011 to 46 in 2021. That may be because **authoritarian leaders are finding they can control the news in less grisly ways. ==To direct the flow of information, many use state funding== and laws purportedly meant to guard state security or even to protect the truth. They often pretend to allow a free press, and tolerate some independent voices to reinforce this claim. But they use all the power of the state, including new powers granted by advancing technology, to ensure that these voices are barely audible, while ==pro-regime media are lavishly favoured and funded==.** - **governments can cripple critical outlets by withholding advertising and leaning on private firms to do likewise. Meanwhile, they subsidise more servile competitors.** - common trick is for regimes to nudge friendly plutocrats, who often depend on official patronage for their fortunes, to buy up independent media and neuter them. This has happened in Russia, Turkey and Hungary, among other countries. - Hungary shows how press freedom can be curtailed in a country that is still, more or less, a democracy—critical voices such as Telex reach far fewer people than state-backed propaganda outlets. In truly authoritarian regimes such as China the muzzle is far tighter. Technology has allowed the Communist Party to snoop and censor on a scale and with a precision that would have been extremely hard to achieve without more brute force even a few years ago. - **Another threat to press freedom is common even in places where journalists are generally respected, such as western Europe. Rich and powerful folk with things to hide have found that ==overstrict libel laws and vaguely drafted privacy rules can be used to deter nosy journalists==.** “Strategic lawsuits against public participation”, or SLAPPs, are claims that aim to exhaust publications’ time and resources. Those unable to meet legal costs are forced to take down content and often stop reporting on the individuals suing them. ... In a push to stop such misuse of the legal system, the European Commission sketched out new rules in April that would allow reporters to appeal to the courts to have bogus cases thrown out. In European countries, which lag behind places like Canada, Australia and some American states in the development of anti-SLAPP legislation, a group of non-profit groups identified around 570 such potential cases filed between 2010 and 2021. The list is not exhaustive but it does point to a trend: **those bringing the cases are often politicians or public servants, and they often target independent journalists.**