Angolan ruling MPLA party chairman Jose Eduardo dos Santos (left) holds
hands with President Joao Lourenco in Luanda. FILE | NATION MEDIA GROUP
The departure of "predatory presidents" from Gambia, Zimbabwe
and Angola has led to their improved media freedom ranking, a watchdog
said Wednesday.
President Adama Barrow last year took
over power in Gambia from Yahya Jammeh after 22 years, while Robert
Mugabe was replaced in Zimbabwe by Emerson Mnangagwa after 37 years.
Jose Eduardo dos Santos was replaced in Angola by Joao Lourenco after 38 years.
Reporters Without Borders (RSF), however, warned that press freedom around the world was under threat.
A growing wave
It singled out US President Donald Trump, Russia and China as major contributors to the worrying trend.
A
"climate of hatred and animosity" towards journalists combined with
growing attempts to control the media pose a "threat to democracies",
RSF said in its annual report.
Reporters, it pointed
out, were the target of a growing wave of authoritarianism with leaders
whipping up hostility against them.
The world's three
superpowers — the US, China and Russia — are accused of leading the
charge against press freedom, with President Trump regularly launching
personal attacks on reporters and Beijing exporting its "media control
model" to strangle dissent elsewhere in Asia.
The
RSF report ranks North Korea as the most repressive country on earth,
closely followed by Eritrea, Turkmenistan, Syria and then China.
Saudi
Arabia, Bahrain, Vietnam, Sudan and Cuba also remain among the worst
offenders, according to the RSF ranking of 180 countries.
As
usual, Scandinavian countries topped the list with Norway deemed as
having the world's freest press for the second year in a row.
The
slide towards "strongman" and populist politics in Europe, stoked by
Moscow, was threatening freedoms in the region where they were once
safest, it added, with Hungary, Slovakia and Poland setting off alarm
bells.
Czech President Milos Zeman turned up at a press
conference with a fake Kalashnikov inscribed with the words "for
journalists" while Slovakia's former leader Robert Fico called
journalists "filthy anti-Slovak prostitutes" and "idiotic hyenas".
Public debate
"The unleashing of hatred towards journalists is dangerous and a threat to democracy," RSF chief Christophe Deloire told AFP.
"Political
leaders who fuel loathing for reporters... undermine the concept of
public debate based on facts instead of propaganda. To dispute the
legitimacy of journalism today is to play with extremely dangerous
political fire," he added.
RSF said that hostility
towards the media is "no longer confined to authoritarian countries such
as Turkey and Egypt", but was poisoning the political atmosphere in
some of the great democracies.
"More and more
democratically elected leaders no longer see the media as part of
democracy's essential underpinning, but as an adversary to which they
openly display their aversion," the report said, picking out President
Trump, India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Philippine leader
Rodrigo Duterte for particular criticism.
The US president had referred to reporters as "enemies of the people", a term once used by Stalin, it said.
RSF
accused Vladimir Putin's Russia of "stifling independent voices at
home... and extending its propaganda network by means of media outlets
such as RT (Russian Today) and Sputnik."
It
had even harsher words for Beijing, saying President "Xi Jinping's
China is getting closer and closer to a contemporary version of
totalitarianism.
"Censorship and surveillance reached
unprecedented levels thanks to the massive use of new technology" in his
first term in office, the report said.
Now the Chinese
government "is trying to establish a 'new world media order' under its
influence, by exporting its oppressive methods, information censorship
system and Internet surveillance tools," it added.
"Its
unabashed desire to crush all pockets of public resistance
unfortunately has imitators in Asia," the RSF said, condemning Cambodian
Prime Minister Hun Sen's "ruthless offensive" against the media.
It said Beijing's influence and tactics were also being felt in Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore.
Jailer of journalists
Turkey — the world's biggest jailer of journalists — has fallen into the most repressive 25 countries in the world.
The
watchdog said that "media-phobia" there is now so pronounced that
journalists are routinely accused of terrorism and "those who don't
offer loyalty are arbitrarily imprisoned."
Malta tumbled 18 places to 65 after the assassination of investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia.
Ecuador,
on the other hand, jumped 13 places after tensions eased between the
government and privately-owned media, while Justin Trudeau's Canada
entered the European-dominated top 20.
Jamaica climbed
to eighth overall, above Belgium and New Zealand, and Gambia jumped 21
places — the biggest rise in Africa — just ahead of Angola and Zimbabwe.
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