“In Mexico, ‘It’s Easy to Kill a Journalist’” — The New York Times

“Police illegally obtained journalist’s phone records under new metadata retention regime” — The Sydney Morning Herald

“Donald Trump attacks US media at 100-day Pennsylvania rally” — The BBC

Each week brings more evidence of how freedom of the press is being eroded in all parts of the world. It is, therefore, no surprise to read that this year’s surveys of press freedom paint a dark picture of the global situation. “Media freedom is under threat now more than ever,” according to Reporters Without Borders’ 2017 World Press Freedom Index. Freedom House’s Freedom of the Press 2017 report declared:

Global press freedom declined to its lowest point in 13 years in 2016 amid unprecedented threats to journalists and media outlets in major democracies and new moves by authoritarian states to control the media, including beyond their borders.

Evidence for the threats to press freedom commonly includes the number of journalists killed, imprisoned and exiled. Since 1992, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has recorded 1,236 confirmed deaths. These are cases where CPJ is “reasonably certain that a journalist was murdered in direct reprisal for his or her work; was killed in crossfire during combat situations; or was killed while carrying out a dangerous assignment such as coverage of a street protest.” In 2016, the CPJ reported 259 journalists were jailed worldwide and 452 journalists had been forced into exile in the last six years. The geography of danger for journalists includes war zones like Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, as well as countries suffering internal violence like Mexico, the Philippines, Colombia and Russia.