{"id":32900,"date":"2021-10-12T08:04:17","date_gmt":"2021-10-12T04:04:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/?p=32900"},"modified":"2021-10-12T08:04:17","modified_gmt":"2021-10-12T04:04:17","slug":"nobel-peace-prize-for-journalists-serves-as-reminder-that-freedom-of-the-press-is-under-threat-from-strongmen-and-social-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/nobel-peace-prize-for-journalists-serves-as-reminder-that-freedom-of-the-press-is-under-threat-from-strongmen-and-social-media\/","title":{"rendered":"Nobel Peace Prize for journalists serves as reminder that freedom of the press is under threat from strongmen and social media"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to two courageous journalists who have faced repression and death by doing their work<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/h4>\n

\"\"When the reporter becomes the story.\u00a0AP Photo\/Bullit Marquez<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Thirty-two years ago next month, I was in Germany reporting on the fall of the Berlin Wall, an event then heralded as a triumph of Western democratic liberalism and even \u201cthe end of history.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

But democracy isn\u2019t doing so well across the globe now. Nothing underscores how far we have come from that moment of irrational exuberance than the powerful warning the Nobel Prize Committee felt compelled to issue on Oct. 8, 2021 in awarding its coveted Peace Prize to two reporters.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThey are representative for all journalists,\u201d Berit Reiss-Andersen, the chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, said in announcing the award to Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov, \u201cin a world in which democracy and freedom of the press face increasingly adverse conditions.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The honor for Muratov, the co-founder of Russia\u2019s Novaya Gazeta, and Ressa, the CEO of the Philippine news site Rappler, is enormously important. In part that\u2019s because of the protection that global attention may afford two journalists under imminent and relentless threat from the strongmen who run their respective countries. \u201cThe world is watching,\u201d Reiss-Andersen pointedly noted in an interview after making the announcement.<\/span><\/p>\n

Equally important is the larger message the committee wanted to deliver. \u201cWithout media, you cannot have a strong democracy,\u201d Reiss-Andersen said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Global political threats<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

The two laureates\u2019 cases highlight an emergency for civil society: Muratov, editor of what the Nobel Prize Committee described as \u201cthe most independent paper in Russia today,\u201d has seen six of his colleagu Ressa, a former CNN reporter, is under a de facto travel ban because the government of Rodrigo Duterte, in an obvious attempt to bankrupt Rappler, has filed so many legal cases against the website that Ressa must go from judge to judge to ask permission any time she wants to leave the country.<\/span><\/p>\n

Inevitably, Ressa told me recently, one of them says \u201cno.\u201d Maybe that will change now that she has a date in Oslo. But Ressa probably knows better than to hold her breath.<\/span><\/p>\n

Last year, when I \u2013 a long-time journalist turned professor of journalism \u2013 helped organize a group of fellow Princeton alumni to sign a letter of support for Ressa, more than 400 responded. They included members of Congress and state legislatures and former diplomats who served presidents of both parties. One of them was former Secretary of State George P. Shultz, who died several months later, making a show of solidarity with Maria Ressa one of his last public acts. This show of support is a sign of what\u2019s at stake.<\/span><\/p>\n

Three decades after the downfall of totalitarian regimes in Eastern Europe, forces of darkness and intolerance are on the march. Journalists are the canaries down the noxious mine shaft. Attacks on them are becoming more brazen: whether it is the grisly dismemberment of Saudi dissident and writer Jamal Khashoggi, the grounding of a commercial airplane to snatch a Belarusian journalist or the infamous graffiti \u201cMurder the Media\u201d scrawled onto a door of the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6 insurrection.<\/span><\/p>\n

This irrational hatred of purveyors of facts knows no ideology. Former U.S. President Donald Trump\u2019s disdain for the press is at least equaled by that of leftist Nicaraguan leader Daniel Ortega, whose response to his critics in the media has been to, well, lock \u2018em up.<\/span><\/p>\n

Digital menace<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

What makes today\u2019s threats to free expression especially insidious is that they don\u2019t come just from the usual suspects \u2013 thuggish government censors.<\/span><\/p>\n

They are amplified and weaponized by social media networks that claim the privilege of free speech protection while they allow themselves to be hijacked by slanderers and propagandists.<\/span><\/p>\n

No one has done more to expose the complicity of these platforms in the attack on democracy than Ressa, a tech enthusiast who built her publication\u2019s website to interface with Facebook and now accuses the company of endangering her own freedom with its laissez-faire approach to the slander being propagated on its site.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"Dmitry Muratov celebrates his Nobel Prize win.<\/span>\u00a0AP Photo\/Alexander Zemlianichenko<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cFreedom of expression is full of paradoxes,\u201d the Nobel Committee\u2019s Reiss-Andersen observed, in an interview after awarding the Peace Prize. She made it clear that the award to Ressa and Muratov was intended to tackle those paradoxes too.<\/span><\/p>\n

Asked why the Peace Prize went to two individual journalists \u2013 rather than to one of the press freedom organizations, such as the Committee to Protect Journalists, that have represented Ressa, Muratov and so many of their endangered colleagues \u2013 Reiss-Anderson said the Nobel Committee deliberately chose working reporters.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ressa and Muratov represent \u201ca golden standard,\u201d she said, of \u201cjournalism of high quality.\u201d In other words, they are fact-finders and truth-seekers, not purveyors of clickbait.<\/span><\/p>\n

That golden standard is increasingly endangered, in large part because of the digital revolution that shattered the business model for public service journalism.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cFree, independent and fact-based journalism serves to protect against abuse of power,\u201d Reiss-Andersen said in the prize announcement. But it is increasingly being undermined and supplanted by what\u2019s called \u201ccontent,\u201d served up algorithmically from sources that are not transparent in ways that are designed to addict and that drive partisanship, tribalism and division.<\/span><\/p>\n

This poses a challenge for public policymakers and the democracies they represent. How to regulate digital media and still protect free speech? How to support the labor-intensive work of journalism and still protect its independence?<\/span><\/p>\n

Answering those questions won\u2019t be easy. But democracy may be at a tipping point. With its recognition of two investigative journalists and the crucial \u2013 and dangerous \u2013 work they do to support democracy, the Nobel Committee has invited us to begin the debate.<\/span>
\nes slain for their work criticizing Russian leader Vladimir Putin.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

* Published in print edition on 12 October 2021<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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