Independent journalism holds the unaccountable to account and shines light on the darkest corners of our world. It seeks to inform, to ignite, to inspire and to spark debate. Yet in one of the traditional bastions of a free media – the United States – that is under threat.

US journalists faced challenges before last year’s change in administration, but the inauguration of President Trump marked a sea change. So ubiquitous were the “fake news” accusations bandied about by Trump and his advisers that the phrase became word of the year in 2017. Journalists who dare to challenge the Trump narrative are frequently attacked as “enemies of the American people” and repeatedly mocked on social media.

However, the denigration of independent media is not limited to presidential Twitter trolling. If it were, we might not be visiting the US this week on an unprecedented joint international press freedom mission.

The fabric of press freedom in the US has been frayed and weakened by political stigmatisation of journalists and cries of “fake news”, but it risks much greater, and more permanent, damage from other forces, including harassment, detention and criminalisation.

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Journalists are facing an unprecedented and unrelenting crackdown on their work that appears to come more from the playbook of dictatorial demagogues than constitutional caretakers. This crackdown is at its most visible when it intersects with protest.

Protest is free speech’s bedfellow in the first amendment. The protection of freedom of the press sits alongside “the right of the people to peacefully assemble, and to petition the Government for redress of grievances”.

Yet journalists covering protests related to the Black Lives Matter movement, the Dakota Access pipeline, and the presidential inauguration have found themselves kettled, detained and charged with offences ranging from misdemeanours to felonies.

Photojournalist Tracie Williams was documenting activists at Standing Rock, North Dakota, when police arrived with automatic weapons. Williams was arrested despite explaining to officers that she was a journalist and her equipment confiscated. Williams was only able to retrieve her belongings after involving two lawyers, a local senator, and advocacy groups. She still faces charges.

Targeted harassment, stigmatisation, and detention of journalists fosters an environment of fear that shuts down debate

Journalists also consistently report being stopped at borders and having devices seized and passwords demanded. Canadian photojournalist Ed Ou was detained for six hours and border agents searched his phone, made copies of his notebook and refused his entry; editor and photojournalist Terry J Allen was forced to delete photos she had taken at the US-Canada border and questioned when she refused to hand over her mobile phone; and British-Iranian BBC journalist Ali Hamedani was detained and interrogated on arrival to Chicago O’Hare airport in February. Hamedani said his interrogation, and the search of his phone and computer by US border agents, reminded him of when he last visited Iran and was arrested in 2009, saying that it “felt the same”.

Targeted harassment, stigmatisation, and detention of journalists fosters an environment of fear that shuts down debate. All these factors feed and fuel each other. Stigmatisation by public officials and politicians gives police and other authorities the impetus and invitation to make life more difficult for journalists, and so the harassment and detention escalate, preventing independent journalists from being able to do their job, which is often by definition a cause of frustration for those in power. It’s a check and balance that is vital to democracy.

As international freedom of expression organisations, we’re well versed in talking about these conditions in countries where dictators have held court for decades, but it becomes a global threat when we are having to raise the alarm about tactics employed by an established and influential democracy like the USA. Attacks to media freedom in the USA do not just stop at the borders, whether walled or porous.

The Venezuelan leader, Nicolás Maduro, turned to Trump’s “fake news” defence to brush aside criticism of his efforts at constitutional changes amid an ongoing crisis, and Syria’s Bashar al-Assad dismissed an Amnesty International report on the torture and execution of thousands of detainees as “forged” in the “fake news era”.

Aung San Suu Kyi’s government in Myanmar has sought to deflect accusations of ethnic cleansing and reporting of human rights violations against Rohingya people with the ever more popular claim of “fake news”, while conducting a broader crackdown on press freedom, while China’s state news agency dismissed the reported torture of a lawyer at the hands of the state with the same words.

What happens in the US within and outside of its borders affects all of us. Our freedom to know, to criticize and to question those who hold power over us is reliant of the free flow of pluralistic and independent information. In our ever-smaller global world, some domestic policy can be felt as keenly abroad as at home.

The Trump trend of anger at the press is not just fodder for TV satire. It must be checked. We must all advocate for a flourishing plural and independent media landscape for the US and the world.

Thomas Hughes is executive director of Article 19, a global organisation working to ensure people everywhere have the right to freedom of expression and information, and are free to actively engage in public life without fear of discrimination.

Jodie Ginsberg is CEO of Index on Censorship, an organisation that campaigns for and defends free expression worldwide.



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