2 days Ago By The Independent
Take your pick. Across the globe, from Indonesia to India, to Israel, to Serbia, to Turkey , to the United States, press freedom is under sustained threat. Those are just examples.
In truth, virtually wherever you look, the ability of journalists to work freely faces attack. The latest example, in Spain , sees the country’s leading newspaper, El País , coming under fire from the prime minister, Pedro Sánchez . He’s attempting to dislodge the title’s majority owner, Joseph Oughourlian, and replace him with someone more to his taste.
El País is digging in, making Oughourlian its president. The fight has added symbolism. Not only is El País widely regarded as Spain’s paper of record, but it was the torchlight in the country’s shift to democracy after the death of General Franco in 1975.
The scars from those events and the horrors that preceded them are still raw, and Sánchez’s move is deeply troubling. Sadly, and almost unbelievably, a quarter of the way through the 21st century, after two world wars that still see annual commemorations faithfully held and the repetition of the promise “Never again”, reporters are increasingly stifled and, worse, severely punished. All for going about their business, for trying to describe and explain what they are witnessing.
We are hurtling towards a dark, unsighted abyss. One by one, the lights are going out. It was happening before the election of Donald Trump , of course.
There is no doubt, though, that his choice as “leader of the free world” has emboldened those who would censor, shut and persecute. His executive order closing the US government funded broadcasting services, Radio Free Asia, Voice of America , Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty and others is denying tens of millions in closed countries their link with the outside world. Even repeating those very names and then realising they effectively no longer exist brings home what is occurring.
Those people in North Korea who risk certain execution if caught can no longer seek an alternative view from Radio Free Asia. Same with parts of the Middle East and elsewhere: that beacon of hope has been extinguished. Scrapping those stations is only one weapon in the armoury of a US president who daily lambasts the media , or rather those who do not dance to his tune.
When it was revealed last month that The Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg had been bizarrely and mistakenly invited to join a WhatsApp group of Trump confidantes as they merrily discussed the bombing of Yemen, the White House response was not directed at those responsible for the security lapse or indeed, for the playground, gung ho attitudes they were expressing, but at the journalist and his magazine. He was the subject of belittling and denunciation , not them. The bullying is shocking and unnerving.
A new study from the V-Dem Institute, the global democracy research project run by the University of Gothenburg in Sweden and considered to be the exemplar in this field, warns that democratic “backsliding” must be reversed urgently, because after 10 years, recovery would be “close to impossible”. The first line of attack in that relentless downward slide, is a free press. Its Democracy Report 2025 estimates the world now has 91 autocracies, three more than democracies.
Within that, the 29 liberal democracies – “the least common regime type in the world” – represent a threatened, dwindling minority. Since 2005, no less than 27 nations have switched from democracy to autocracy. According to the report: “If autocratisation starts in a democracy, the probability of surviving is very low.
The favourite weapon of autocratisation is media censorship.” In America, some hitherto fearsome media beasts have fallen into line, rather than suffer Trump’s wrath. The Washington Post and ABC News have succumbed and chosen obedience over defiance.
Some are holding out. Associated Press is denied White House access because it refuses to rebrand the Gulf of Mexico , CBS News is defending Trump’s claim that a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris was editorially skewed to favour her. On, they and others go.
But for how long? While democratic leaders dance to Trump’s tune in other areas, fretting about their economies and tariffs, they are not shouting loud enough. They must. They are all we have.
As Martin Niemöller said: “First, they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out – because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me – and there was no one left to speak for me.” It’s well-worn, but that does not make it inappropriate. Time is running out.
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