The news about the news is grim. In Turkey, notorious for cracking down on the media long before July’s attempted coup, authorities have closed more than 130 outlets and issued warrants for 89 reporters and other media workers since the coup a month ago; 17 journalists have been charged with membership of a terror group. The journalist Can Dündar, facing six years in prison for reporting allegations of arms sales to Syrian rebel forces, is a recipient of one of this year’s International Press Freedom awards from the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, together with journalists from Egypt, El Salvador and India.

In China, where the Communist party has always determined which news is fit to print, authorities have ordered internet portals to abandon original reporting on political or social topics because of its “extremely vile effect”. There are growing concerns, too, about the editorial independence of papers in Hong Kong, which has historically enjoyed far more freedom than the mainland. Its chief executive has just appointed his dentist, a man who described editorial independence as “mythologised”, to chair the public broadcaster’s board of advisers.

Journalists are not only curbed but killed. Unesco, which tallies deaths of media workers, lists more than 50 already this year. They include Pavel Sheremet, killed by a car bomb in Kiev in July. Colleagues believe the pioneering journalist, an outspoken critic of leaders in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine, was murdered in retribution for his work. In Burundi, where government attacks on independent media appear relentless, relatives of reporter Jean Bigirimana, arrested in late July, fear he is dead.

At other times pressure is directed at friends and families; police in Bangkok recently detained the Thai wife of British journalist Andrew MacGregor Marshall, apparently in response to a Facebook post he made from outside the country. In western democracies, too, there are challenges, including the detention of reporters covering Black Lives Matter protests and the intimidation or barring of media from campaign events in the US presidential race. The varying nature of these cases underlines the array of threats – legal, physical, even psychological – that the media face, and their various origins. The danger may come from religious, financial or even criminal sources as well as from political authorities.

Clearly, some instances are more alarming than others. The common theme is that the media face pressure when they encroach upon powerful interests. The worst excesses of journalists – carelessness, callousness, sensationalism, bias – have given the trade a poor reputation. But around the world there are others working tirelessly and selflessly to inform their communities, with no prospect of wealth or glory but at considerable risk of intimidation or punishment.

Journalists do not deserve protection because they constitute a privileged group; they need it because they can show the world as it really is and allow the unheard to find a voice. There is a reason why people so often want to shut them up. Halting print runs, closing down websites, silencing radio stations and blacking out TV screens are all ways of concealing misdeeds, preventing scrutiny or simply blocking alternative viewpoints. But such actions also serve to remind us all why press freedom matters.

• This article was amended on 15 August 2016. An earlier version said the Turkish journalist Can Dündar was serving six years in prison for reporting allegations of arms sales to Syrian rebel forces. Dündar is at liberty pending an appeal.