We ignore the tribulations of journalists at our own peril
The news of three men being charged in the case of the assault on British journalist Owen Jones serves to remind us in the United Kingdom and globally the perils which challenge the profession.
Just this week, on October 7th, we marked the anniversary of the assassination of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya — an event The Guardian described as “the murder that killed free media in Russia”. Politkovskaya’s death marked the culmination of a career in which time she had been subjected to a mock execution by military forces in Chechnya; had been poisoned; and had been repeatedly threatened by numerous individuals, including the then-Prime Minister of the Chechen Republic Ramzan Kadyrov, who said to Politkovskaya “you’re an enemy. To be shot.”
That event occurred in 2006, but the challenges which faced Politkovskaya and the environment in which she worked which contributed to her murder are the grim reality of many journalists worldwide today. The assault on Owen Jones served to remind us that even in countries where the laws surrounding freedom of speech are liberal, the intimidation of those who work in the news media and violence against them still takes place.
Even in the United States, where freedom of speech is enshrined into the Constitution, the incumbent head of state and heads of state of the past across party lines have demeaned the press in inflammatory terms. President Donald Trump infamously has termed the press “the enemy of the people”, echoing President Richard Nixon. Criticism of the press has been articulated by presidents from Thomas Jefferson to Harry S. Truman to Trump today — and while accountability of the press is as vital to a healthy democracy as their liberty to operate, the language used is key.
The end-results of when inflammatory rhetoric is used by political figure can be observed in violence towards journalists such as the attack on Jones. Examples are evident. Amidst the mailing of packages containing bombs to critics of Trump, one was sent to the world headquarters of CNN. In the United States in 2018, then-congressional candidate Greg Gianforte assaulted reporter Ben Jacobs, an offence to which he pled guilty. Gianforte, for his trouble, won the congressional election and was praised by President Trump, who said “any guy who can do a body slam” — how the reporter in question described the assault — “is my guy.”
The period in which the Gianforte episode occurred was at the time of the assassination of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who disappeared inside the Saudi consulate in Turkey and whose death was acknowledged several days later by the Kingdom as an act of premeditated murder. The Central Intelligence Agency held the Kingdom accountable for the murder — a conclusion Trump, despite Khashoggi being an American resident — equivocated upon and, at times, even denied outright.
How the press is treated in a country matters. No sane individual would argue that journalists are perfect. For every Spotlight there is a News International phone hacking scandal; for every Walter Cronkite, there is a Stephen Glass. But to hold journalists accountable in no way should incorporate threats of violence, and acts of violence.
Time magazine named journalists who faced persecution, including Khashoggi, their ‘person of the year’ the same year the writer was murdered. More than a year since Khashoggi’s murder, and more than thirteen years after that of Politkovskaya, what I write here is nothing new. However, it is something often ignored..
Incidents such as the murders of Khashoggi and Politkovskaya are opportunities to reflect on the life and body of work of the individual in question. It also serves as an opportunity to reflect that, across the world, it is becoming more dangerous to be a journalist.
Since 1992, approximately 1,354 journalists have been murdered at the time of writing according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. This includes sixteen murdered in 2019 alone whilst 64 are missing. More than 250 journalists were imprisoned as of last year.
“If you want to go on working as a journalist, it’s total servility to Putin,” wrote Politkovskaya. “Otherwise, it can be death, the bullet, poison, or trial.”
At a time when authoritarianism is on the rise, when leaders of democracies promulgate slurs and threats against the media, it is important that journalism be acknowledged and celebrated as a centric tenet of democratic society. Journalists must be held to account. They must exhibit transparency to the same level. There are numerous instances where this has not been the case.
Yet it should be patently obvious that the manner of holding journalists to account is not with a jail cell or a bullet or bomb. It is with rigorous fact-checking, with vigilance, and with the ability to seek out the facts we need — the exact utensils an absence of the fourth estate would make impossible to access.
