Amid COVID-19, the prognosis for press freedom is dim. Here are 10 symptoms to track

Journalists in protective gear

Journalists wearing protective gear wait near a hostel where residents are quarantined because of COVID-19 disease in Kiev, Ukraine, on April 28, 2020. (Reuters/Gleb Garanich)

By Katherine Jacobsen

The COVID-19 pandemic has sent public health officials scrambling, the global economy into shock, and governments everywhere into crisis. It has also reshaped the way journalists work, not least because many authorities in many countries have cited the contagion as a reason to crack down on the news media.

Certain dangers will subside with time: a vaccine for COVID-19 should ultimately protect people, including journalists, from spreading or contracting the virus. But some of the measures put into place that restrict press freedom – whether intended or not — could continue well into the future, experts say.

Click to explore a map of the data

It is possible that responses to the coronavirus could shift the long-term paradigm for journalism in unforeseen ways, in the same way the attacks of September 11, 2001, fueled the global expansion of anti-terrorism laws – and in turn, ushered in an uptick in the jailing of journalists that continues today.

Global press freedom violations that CPJ has documented in relation to the pandemic can roughly be divided into 10 categories to monitor (with examples cited):

1. Laws against “fake news”

The pandemic has provided governments with a new excuse to wield laws criminalizing the spread of “fake news,” “misinformation,” or “false information” — and offered a reason to implement new ones. Over the past seven years, the number of journalists imprisoned on charges of “fake news” or “false news” has climbed, according to CPJ research.

Carlos Gaio, a U.K.-based senior legal officer with the Media Legal Defence Initiative, told CPJ that “fake news” laws will continue to spread as governments try to control messaging about the virus, affecting journalists and fact-checkers alike. “It’s a very complicated subject to outlaw something like that [and it] is very, very dangerous,” Gaio said.

Disinformation is a real problem, but these legal measures give governments latitude to decide what they consider to be false, sending a chilling message to critical journalists. In the U.S., President Donald Trump frequently disparages the media’s COVID-19 coverage and uses the term “fake news” when he disagrees with reporting, a strategy that CPJ has found effectively discredits the media and erodes public trust. It serves as a green light for authoritarians to deride and prosecute their own press.

2. Jailing journalists

Arresting journalists has long been a tactic of authoritarian governments looking to silence critical reporting; at least 250 journalists were jailed worldwide at CPJ’s last annual count in December. With COVID-19 in circulation, imprisonment could be deadly; journalists are held in unsanitary conditions and forced into close proximity with others who could be infected. CPJ and more than 190 partner organizations have called on authorities worldwide to release all journalists jailed because of their work.

Nonetheless, arrests continue.

3. Suspending free speech

Some governments’ emergency measures have revoked or suspended the right to free speech for the duration of the emergency.

4. Blunt censorship, online and off

Authorities in several countries suspended newspaper distribution and printing in what they called an effort to curb the spread of COVID-19. Elsewhere, media regulators have blocked websites or removed articles with critical coverage.

5. Threatening and harassing journalists, online and off

Government officials and private citizens alike have responded to critical reporting on the pandemic response with violence and threats. In places where the reporting environment was already hazardous, the situation has grown more fraught.

6. Accreditation requirements and restricted freedom of movement

Authorities have restricted journalists’ ability to move about freely, such as if they want to report during curfews, or enter hospitals to get a first-hand account of health care. Sometimes the press is granted special access, but requiring members of the media to have government-issued press credentials allows leaders to decide who gets counted as a journalist.

CPJ research shows that this leaves open the possibility that they will exclude those not affiliated with major outlets or those who report critically on the authorities.

7. Restricted access to information

Laws on freedom of information that allow journalists to request government data and records have been suspended. Government proceedings that journalists usually attend have moved online, with varying degrees of access for the press. In the U.S., Trump’s antagonism to journalists sets a poor example for U.S. state and local officials.

Gaio told CPJ that these trends are likely to persist. “[Governments] will make it more difficult for officials to provide information. Access to information will take longer, and it will make it more complicated for journalists to access public spaces because of infection risks,” he said.

8. Expulsions and visa restrictions

In order to control the narrative of how the government is responding to COVID-19, some states are being inhospitable to foreign media, which in some places has traditionally enjoyed greater latitude than locals to report critically.

9. Surveillance and contact tracing

Governments around the world are monitoring mobile phone location data and testing or rolling out new tracking apps to follow the spread of COVID-19, according to news reports. the surveillance could imperil source confidentiality. The systems are introduced with limited oversight, and could endure long after the pandemic.

“There’s always a concern that emergency situations create new baseline expectations for what kind of surveillance the government is authorized to conduct. We certainly saw this through 9-11, but I think the same issue is presented here,” said Carrie DeCell, a staff attorney with the Knight First Amendment Institute in New York. “Actions that might be justified in that particular context certainly would not be justified once governments get a handle on this pandemic and once the crisis subsides somewhere in the near future.”

David Maass, a senior investigative researcher at the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation, agreed that once law enforcement is given a new technology, it’s difficult to take it back. “We’ve seen that today they’re using it for this very dangerous virus, but we don’t know what will happen later.”

10. Emergency Measures

Authoritarian rulers can take an opportunistic approach to emergency measures that criminalize or restrict newsgathering activities, as CPJ has documented previously. 

With many countries still under states of emergency that grant authorities power to rule by decree — and the virus only beginning to take hold in some developing countries – even more restrictions could be on the way.

Katherine Jacobsen is CPJ’s U.S. research associate. Before joining CPJ as a news editor in 2017, Jacobsen worked for The Associated Press in Moscow and as a freelancer in Ukraine, where her writing appeared in outlets including Businessweek, U.S. News and World Report, Foreign Policy, and Al-Jazeera.

Exit mobile version