Defend­ing Press Free­dom in the Time of Coronavirus

The coro­n­avirus cri­sis has pro­vid­ed a wel­come pre­text for soft author­i­tar­i­an regimes the world over to strength­en their hold on pow­er, with their declared states of excep­tion poten­tial­ly becom­ing the new nor­mal. Curb­ing press free­dom was among illib­er­al rule’s casu­al­ties even pri­or to the pan­dem­ic; attacks against inde­pen­dent news­pa­pers and TV chan­nels have not been lim­it­ed to the Trump Pres­i­den­cy, which is noto­ri­ous for its charge of “fake news” against crit­i­cal reporters. But neu­tral­i­ty of the press can be a risky prin­ci­ple in the face of “alter­na­tive facts” such as Trump’s recent home reme­dies for the coronavirus.

The USA was ranked 45th out of 180 coun­tries for its hos­til­i­ty towards news media in Reporters with­out Bor­ders’ recent­ly pub­lished World Press Free­dom Index, with Chi­na (ranked 117th), Iraq and Iran among the coun­tries men­tioned for cen­sor­ing cov­er­age of the COVID-19 out­break. Instead of sup­press­ing the spread of COVID-19, plac­ing lim­its on press free­dom could back­fire, not only by reduc­ing pub­lic aware­ness about the grave risks of the virus, but also pre­vent­ing pub­lic debate about steps need­ed to mit­i­gate the risks. More­over, this gag on press free­dom com­pounds an unprece­dent­ed lock­down in which par­lia­ments – even in lib­er­al democ­ra­cies – are hard­ly func­tion­ing, courts are not in reg­u­lar ses­sion, street protests are impos­si­ble due to restric­tions on the right to assem­bly, elec­tions have been can­celled (for the most part), and uni­ver­si­ties are closed.

Under these cir­cum­stances, a free press is the only insti­tu­tion of coun­ter­vail­ing pow­er that could hold a gov­ern­ment to account. A wide­spread anti-press sen­ti­ment along with the deten­tion, intim­i­da­tion and jail­ing of activists and jour­nal­ists, has become the order of the day in Turkey and India, to name but a few of the coun­tries wit­ness­ing sys­tem­at­ic assaults on press free­dom in recent years, assaults that have esca­lat­ed under the con­di­tions cre­at­ed by the cur­tail­ment of civ­il lib­er­ties due to the threat of coronavirus.

Hun­gary sus­pend­ed its par­lia­ment and fur­ther curbed free­dom of expres­sion, giv­ing Prime Min­is­ter Orban unfet­tered emer­gency pow­ers to rule by decree. Chi­na expelled Amer­i­can jour­nal­ists for report­ing on the dan­gers of the virus, while Iraq tem­porar­i­ly with­drew Reuter’s license after it pub­lished a sto­ry on the government’s under­re­port­ing of COVID-19 cas­es. On 10 April 2020, The New York Times report­ed that 28,000 work­ers at news com­pa­nies in the USA had lost their jobs since the start of the pan­dem­ic. It is unlike­ly that the news indus­try will receive the fed­er­al aid that it is plead­ing for to pre­vent fur­ther job loss­es and closures.

Lib­er­al democ­ra­cies need strong civ­il soci­ety organ­i­sa­tions that can mobilise pub­lic opin­ion and fos­ter pub­lic debate, mon­i­tor the func­tion­ing of insti­tu­tions, and hold politi­cians and pub­lic offi­cials responsible.

What Buz­zfeed has called “media extinc­tion” comes in the wake of decades of lay­offs and the shut­ting down of small local and region­al news­pa­pers, but also of large, pro­gres­sive news sites, such as ThinkProgress in 2019. Fox News, how­ev­er, con­tin­ues to gath­er strength, post­ing record rat­ings in the first quar­ter of this year. The com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion of the pub­lic sphere, along with the enor­mous con­cen­tra­tion of pow­er in the hands of very few media com­pa­nies, which are close­ly linked to politi­cians in many a lib­er­al democ­ra­cy, spells dan­ger for press free­dom, as does repres­sion by author­i­tar­i­an gov­ern­ments. Both trends result in a near monop­oly over information.

The WHO’s Direc­tor-Gen­er­al alert­ed us recent­ly that the pan­dem­ic is also an “info­dem­ic”, one that has giv­en a fil­lip to spu­ri­ous con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries cir­cu­lat­ing wide­ly in var­i­ous social media: “fake news” spread not only by ill-informed pri­vate indi­vid­u­als or ill-inten­tioned groups but also by gov­ern­ments. But it has drawn atten­tion once again to the dan­gers of “dead” or “buried” news sup­pressed by those in author­i­ty along with the deploy­ment of all kinds of strate­gies to con­trol infor­ma­tion and mute pub­lic debate.

The rhetoric of the pan­dem­ic as “war” against an invis­i­ble ene­my employed in France, as much as in Chi­na and the US, serves the same func­tion. Lib­er­al democ­ra­cies need strong civ­il soci­ety organ­i­sa­tions that can mobilise pub­lic opin­ion and fos­ter pub­lic debate, mon­i­tor the func­tion­ing of insti­tu­tions, and hold politi­cians and pub­lic offi­cials respon­si­ble. In the absence of the free­dom of the press, nei­ther protest nor dis­sent can be voiced. The COVID-19 cri­sis may have accel­er­at­ed the speed of the move­ment towards the slip­pery slope of dis­man­tling democ­ra­cy and human rights in many parts of the world.

This commentary has been written for IWM’s blog Coronavirus: How Will It Affect Our Lives?, and the Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy’s series of commentaries on the effects of the novel coronavirus on democratic experiences around the globe.