Press Freedom Day
May 3 2025 Unesco’s World Press Freedom Day
I am not a journalist, never been one, and probably never will be, I just write a blog. But I know that in a world filled with misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation, the work journalists do all over the world is invaluable.
Today is World Press Freedom Day, but as it says in an opinion piece in The Guardian “There is a war on journalists raging across the world.”
Here is the link to the piece, and below a few quotes. There is a war on journalists raging around the world: let their voices be heard
Last year, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) recorded the highest number of media workers killed since it began collecting data three decades ago.
According to that data, at least 124 journalists and media workers were killed in 2024 – nearly two-thirds of them Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in Gaza and the West Bank.
Journalists were also killed while doing their jobs in Sudan, Pakistan, Mexico, Syria, Myanmar, Iraq and Haiti. Hundreds more were detained and imprisoned elsewhere, while others were harassed, assaulted and faced relentless threats and abuse online, as well as in their communities and places of work.
Attacks on press freedom and independent news outlets by governments and authoritarian regimes from Russia to Turkey to Belarus are also rising, along with the tsunami of misinformation that is being disseminated on social media and the internet.
In the US, Donald Trump labelled journalists the “enemies of the people” in his first term, and is now waging lawsuits against leading news organisations and ordering federal investigations against others.
*****
The Guardian and its partners launched the Viktoriia project this week. “The Viktoriia project was formed to investigate the disappearance of Viktoriia Roshchyna, a 27-year-old Ukrainian journalist, and expose how Russia is systematically detaining and torturing an estimated 16,000 Ukrainian civilians.”
The following pieces from the project are not easy to read, but they should be read widely.
April 29 2025
‘Numerous signs of torture’: a Ukrainian journalist’s detention and death in Russian prison
April 30 2025
Inside Taganrog: beatings, electrocution and starvation at prison where Ukrainians were tortured
May 1 2025
Release of Ukrainian prisoners in Russia key to any peace deal, rights groups say
