A piece appeared in The Guardian on Saturday, Unesco’s World Press Freedom Day, highlighting the dangers faced by reporters working in some of the most dangerous places on earth.
According to data from the Committee to Protect Journalists, 2024 witnessed the highest number of media workers killed since it began collecting data three decades ago. At least 124 journalists and media workers were killed, nearly two-thirds of whom were 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, while hundreds more were imprisoned, harassed, assaulted and faced relentless threats and abuse online.
At the same time, 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”. The article makes particular mention of the attitude of Donald Trump in the US, who labelled journalists the “enemies of the people” in his first term and is now seeking revenge – through lawsuits and federal investigations – in his second, for what he believes to have been unfair treatment by the press.
“Where once a blue press vest offered protection, now many journalists in war zones say it puts a target on their backs”, says the author, Annie Kelly, editor of the Guardian’s Rights and Freedom series.
Read the article here.
Why does this matter? It matters because our life of faith is a life that cares about people who are in danger, wherever it is in the world, and we need good and trustworthy sources of information if our caring and our praying are to be meaningful. Not only is the abuse of people trying to do their job an offence against a God who gives us the ability and the drive to go out and work for our living, but it is also an offence against truth which is central to our faith. Unfortunately we live in a world today where truth is sometimes not valued, and indeed the notion of truth is abused by some people with significant power.