World Press Freedom Day: The Global Free Speech Recession Continues

Ian V ásquezToday is the 30th anniversary of World Press Freedom Day and,as theWashington Post points out, “there seems little to celebrate.” Indeed, press freedom has been on a years‐​long decline around the world and the situation is getting worse. The number of journalists imprisoned hit a record last yearaccording to the Committee to Protect Journalists and in their annual survey of press freedom,Reporters Without Borders finds that “the environment for journalism is ‘bad’ in seven out of ten countries, and satisfactory in only three out of ten.”Our findingsin theHuman Freedom Index also document the long ‐​term decline of global freedom of expression.It is the category of freedom that saw the largest decline in the past two decades, besides freedom of movement, which was suddenly and dramatically affected by the COVID pandemic. The fall in free expression is part of what free speech scholars such asJacob Mchangama have called a  global free speech recession. That recession includes rich and poor countries, democracies and non‐​democracies, and every region of the world.The greatest violations have come from autocracies, but free speech is also coming under threat in liberal democracies. That includes, significantly, the threat to the culture of free speech that is harmful in itself and is inevitably upstream from the law asMchangama andGreg Lukianoff have pointed out. Relatively free societies should be especially on guard against that kind of...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs