Independent journalists are under siege in a growing list of supposedly freer countries such as Brazil, Turkey, India and Mexico

'You can get killed': journalists living in fear as states crack down

'You can get killed': journalists living in fear as states crack down

Some languish in hiding, exile – or jail. Others self-censor, use pseudonyms or seek pre-approval from officials before they go to press.

Some are trapped in a paradox: hoping that their work is not too popular, not too well read, so it does not create too many problems.

Such is life as a journalist in the growing number of countries condemned for shutting down, stifling or squeezing the financial life out of independent media.

The big concern now is that the problem is no longer limited to the two dozen or so totalitarian regimes that have dismantled free media. Independent journalists are under siege in a growing cohort of supposedly freer countries such as Brazil, Turkey, Mexico, Kenya, Poland, Hungary and Cambodia.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Aydın Engin. Photograph: Murad Sezer/Reuters

“Turkish media is under immense pressure from the government, more than at any point in history,” said Aydın Engin, a veteran correspondent for Cumhuriyet who is facing trial on alleged terrorism charges. “The government is still claiming insistently that there is no single journalist in jail but as we know it the number is already over 160 today.”

Another journalist, who worked for the independent Cambodia Daily paper until it was shut down in September, said: “Authorities always sue journalists who they accuse of publishing untrue information.

“Then they are arrested and put in jail. The government uses courts to take action to stop journalists from writing on the real situation in Cambodia because they don’t want their secrets to reach the international community.”

Jodie DeJonge (@jdejonge) It's a wrap. Final front page of @cambodiadaily pic.twitter.com/rxbt59kX4D



According to Reporters Without Borders, Turkey is now less free than Belarus and Mexico is worse than South Sudan.

Journalists report a frightening array of tools used against them. It is not just the threat of violence, but the risk of dismissal, prosecution, jail and public humiliation. Increasingly, there is a financial dimension too, particularly in eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.

Yevgenia Albats made her name as a Soviet journalist, and knows all about restrictions on freedom of expression.



'A dangerous time to be a journalist': press freedom at lowest level for a decade Read more

“I am lacking financial resources to run the paper, and to hire enough reporters capable of digging in,” she said. “My biggest obstacle is a fear on the part of businesses, ads agencies, newsmakers to deal with a publication that is considered as anti-Putin.”

Russia remains a dangerous place for investigative journalists. This year a number of reporters have chosen to leave the country rather than stay and face the risks. In September, the columnist Yulia Latynina fled after offline threats turned real: her car was set on fire and she was sprayed with faeces in the street.

Elena Milashina, the Novaya Gazeta reporter who first broke the story about the purge of gay men in Chechnya, was forced to spend several months outside Russia for her safety.

“It is a fact of life that you can get killed or harmed if you cover politics in my country – as it happened to two dozen reporters in the Moscow region alone in the last decade,” said Albats, the editor-in-chief of the New Times weekly.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Yevgenia Albats at an anti-Putin protest in Moscow in 2012. Photograph: Sasha Mordovets/Getty Images

The situation is similar in India. It may be the world’s largest democracy, but journalists say the room for critical coverage and dissent is shrinking.

As in Russia, ownership structures inhibit media freedom: many news outlets are owned or funded by the very politicians they cover, or by corporate houses who depend on government advertising and contracts.

In September, the editor-in-chief of the Hindustan Times, Bobby Ghosh, abruptly resigned from the newspaper reportedly days after a meeting between its owner and prime minister, Narendra Modi.

The government and the Hindustan Times have denied any connection between the meeting and Ghosh’s departure.

Editors are terrified of biting the hand that feeds or running exclusives that might bounce back on them. Sandhya Ravishankar, a Tamil Nadu-based investigative journalist, said editors were particularly wary of an exclusive she produced about illegal beach sand mining.

Sandhya Ravishankar

“Newspapers that I had contacted loved the story but were afraid of lawsuits from the illegal miners and also did not wish to wade into a politically charged story of enormous corruption which implicated every government – centre and state – for the past two and a half decades. This is purely self-censorship.”

In many countries, journalists increasingly report the use of criminal law as a tool to silence them.

Erik Silva, an investigative journalist in Brazil, was charged with criminal defamation for exposing exorbitant payments made to certain public servants.

“So far, I have won in the courts, but it has been a time-consuming and expensive legal battle,” he says. “The legal process has been used to try to silence the press and undermine the credibility of the information I release. Even though I was spreading the truth, I was accused of slander and defamation.”

In Kazakhstan, the environmental activist Vadim Ni said: “The hardest thing is that you never know for what you can be prosecuted. Now many journalists prefer to be too cautious and not publish information prior to getting an opinion from officials and in many cases it is very difficult to reach officials for their opinion.”

In Sudan, the threat is even more existential. “The government won’t hesitate to hurt whoever stands in their way or even hurt their families,” said one journalist, speaking anonymously for security reasons. “You can be kidnapped, tortured and even killed, they can put you in jail and keep you there for as long as they want and this happened with a lot of activists and journalists before.

“If you want to write real articles about the situation in Sudan you have to do it from another country. As long as you are in Sudan, you have to follow the government’s instructions to stay alive and keep your job.”