Rana Ayyub

The stereotype of the “brave journalist”, or the “courageous journalist” has been troubling me for a while. To label us “brave” is to fight your battles from our shoulders. The burden of bearing witness and speaking truth to power comes at great personal risk for journalists in many countries around the world. They live a relentless struggle, slapped with lawsuits and criminal cases for sedition, defamation, tax evasion and more. Their lives, and too often the lives of their families, are made miserable. This World Press Freedom Day, consider the toll it takes on them not only to be journalists, but also to be “brave”.

When a journalist is killed or incarcerated or assassinated, obituaries scream bravado, editorials claim courage. Have such plaudits normalized the persecution of journalists? Why does a journalist have to be brave to report facts as they are? Why does she need to be persecuted for her story to reach the world? Consider Gauri Lankesh, Daphne Caruana Galizia and Jamal Khashoggi—all journalists with a profile, all brazenly killed in broad daylight. Their murders dominated the front pages of international publications. But their killers, men in power, remain unquestioned not just by the authorities but often by publishers and editors who develop a comfortable amnesia when meeting those in power. They do not want to lose access to them.

The very world leaders who ignore the persecution of journalists in the largest democracies are often seen lighting candles in honor of the persecuted—the slain journalists in whose memory prizes will be awarded. The vicious cycle will continue with no course correction.

Journalists are the new enemy of the state; we are going through one of the toughest phases in the history of the profession. We document the truth at a time marked both by a voracious demand for news and by the persecution of minorities, genocide and war crimes. We witness savage attacks on minorities in India, Myanmar, China, Palestine or Ukraine even as bumbling editors still frame arguments and narratives through the prism of “‘both sides”. For example attacks on Palestinians, even during Ramadan, are often referred to as “clashes”. Despite one side having grenades thrown at them, and pelting stones in defense, the lens of the mainstream media remains firmly aligned with the oppressor. In India attacks on Muslims by Hindu nationalists often are reported as “riots” or “clashes”, too. The distinction between oppressor and oppressed can be blurred as convenient.

I have myself received awards for bravery and courage. I have even delivered speeches with titles such as “Courage under fire”. Over the past year I have been inflicted with death by a thousand cuts. I have not been physically harmed (small mercies). But since I wrote a cover story for Time magazine in May 2021—in which I held India’s Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, accountable for millions of deaths through a devastating second wave of covid-19—my life has been made miserable. My bank accounts have been frozen, apparently because they contain the “‘proceeds of crime”. Cases are proceeding against me for a social-media post about a hate crime against a Muslim man. Another case has been registered for a statement I made about Hindu nationalists on a BBC program. And last month, as I tried to board a plane to the United States to receive the Overseas Press Club of America Award, a missive from India’s home ministry asked me for information about an alleged violation relating to my receiving foreign currency.

This all comes after a campaign to discredit my character. I’ve been attacked on national television by journalists and editors and seen a pornographic video with my image morphed on it spread across social media. As somebody who has been relentlessly subjected to the worst kind of offline and online harassment for over a decade, the past year has been a living, breathing nightmare. I did not sign up for this kind of treatment when I decided to be a journalist.

Maria Ressa, the Nobel peace-prize laureate, has been fighting state-enabled persecution in the Philippines for years. She has to take court orders to fly out of the country. Both Ms. Ressa and I have access to great lawyers. We have a public profile, a huge social-media presence, helpful editors and privilege which many unsung journalists in the world are not accorded. The unsung are murdered and incarcerated with impunity and in anonymity. Take my colleague, Siddique Kappan. He has been incarcerated for the past two years by the Uttar Pradesh police. He was stopped while he was on the way to report the gang rape of a lower-caste girl. He was arrested before he’d even had a chance to report and write.

How do journalists fight this battle? They want to report with integrity without paying a price for their dedication. Prejudice towards journalists from poor communities, towards journalists of color and towards women in the profession is obvious. Their stories of the persecuted demand empathy and not neutrality. Media outlets need to hire more women journalists, we need to see more Muslims, dalits and people of color on our screens and in our bylines, a diversity that is missing from the media culture. We need to protect our journalists by giving them the best legal support. They also need to be provided with the best mental-health care and therapy. I am speaking from experience. Had I not received the kind of support I did from my editors at the Washington Post, from various media-protection organizations, advocates of free speech and a dedicated therapist, I would have crumbled long ago.

Journalism was never a nine-to-five profession. We knew it was an unconventional calling, and one where we might not leave the office for days, or where our families might have no communication from us as we report on crucial investigations, wars and undercover operations. Journalism schools taught us the ethics of our profession, but they did not warn us about nervous breakdowns, or about spending more time in courtrooms than newsrooms. We owe it to the next generation of journalists to create a safer environment in which to work. They should fear only the distortion of truth, never reporting the truth itself.

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Rana Ayyub is an Indian journalist.

(The article received through email. It was originally published in The Economist)  

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Karachi: Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan is among the list of 37 heads of state and governments prepared by the Paris-based organization Reporters Without Borders (RSF) dubbing them as ‘Predators of Press Freedom’ for cracking down massively on press freedom.

The RSF has published the gallery of portraits of those 37 heads of states or governments on its website, and the portrait of Pakistan Premier Imran Khan is among them on page 2.

The RSF says that some of these “predators of press freedom” have been operating for more than two decades while others have just joined the blacklist, which for the first time includes two women and a European predator.

Nearly half (17) of the predators are making their first appearance on the 2021 list, which RSF is publishing five years after the last one, from 2016. All are heads of state or government who trample on press freedom by creating a censorship apparatus, jailing journalists arbitrarily or inciting violence against them, when they don’t have blood on their hands because they have directly or indirectly pushed for journalists to be murdered.

Nineteen of these predators rule countries that are colored red on the RSF’s press freedom map, meaning their situation is classified as “bad” for journalism, and 16 rule countries colored black, meaning the situation is “very bad.” The average age of the predators is 66. More than a third (13) of these tyrants come from the Asia-Pacific region.

“There are now 37 leaders from around the world in RSF’s predators of press freedom gallery and no one could say this list is exhaustive,” RSF secretary-general Christophe Deloire said. “Each of these predators has their own style. Some impose a reign of terror by issuing irrational and paranoid orders. Others adopt a carefully constructed strategy based on draconian laws. A major challenge now is for these predators to pay the highest possible price for their oppressive behavior. We must not let their methods become the new normal.”

NEW ENTRANTS

The most notable of the list’s new entrants is undoubtedly Saudi Arabia’s 35-year-old crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, who is the center of all power in his hands and heads a monarchy that tolerates no press freedom. His repressive methods include spying and threats that have sometimes led to abduction, torture and other unthinkable acts. Jamal Khashoggi’s horrific murder exposed a predatory method that is simply barbaric.

The new entrants also include predators of a very different nature such as Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, whose aggressive and crude rhetoric about the media has reached new heights since the start of the pandemic, and a European prime minister, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, the self-proclaimed champion of “illiberal democracy” who has steadily and effectively undermined media pluralism and independence since being returned to power in 2010.

WOMEN PREDATORS

The first two women predators are both from Asia. One is Carrie Lam, who heads a government that was still democratic when she took over. The chief executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region since 2017, Lam has proved to be the puppet of Chinese President Xi Jinping, and now openly supports his predatory policies towards the media. They led to the closure of Hong Kong’s leading independent newspaper, Apple Daily, on 24 June and the jailing of its founder, Jimmy Lai, a 2020 RSF Press Freedom laureate.

The other woman predator is Sheikh Hasina, Bangladesh’s prime minister since 2009 and the daughter of the country’s independence hero. Her predatory exploits include the adoption of a digital security law in 2018 that has led to more than 70 journalists and bloggers being prosecuted.

HISTORIC PREDATORS

Some of the predators have been on this list since RSF began compiling it 20 years ago. Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad and Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran’s Islamic Revolution, were on the very first list, as were two leaders from the Eastern Europe and Central Asia region, Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Belarus’s Alexander Lukashenko, whose recent predatory inventiveness has won him even more notoriety. In all, seven of the 37 leaders on the latest list have retained their places since the first list RSF published in 2001.

Three of the historic predators are from Africa, the region where they reign longest. Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, 79, has been Equatorial Guinea’s president since 1979, while Isaias Afwerki, whose country is ranked last in the 2021 World Press Freedom Index, has been Eritrea’s president since 1993. Paul Kagame, who was appointed Rwanda’s vice-president in 1994 before taking over as president in 2000, will be able to continue ruling until 2034.

For each of the predators, RSF has compiled a file identifying their “predatory method,” how they censor and persecute journalists, and their “favorite targets” – the kinds of journalists and media outlets they go after. The file also includes quotations from speeches or interviews in which they “justify” their predatory behavior, and their country’s ranking in the World Press Freedom Index.

RSF published a list of Digital Press Freedom Predators in 2020 and plans to publish a list of non-state predators before the end of 2021.

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Courtesy: Reporters Without Borders

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