The media has been hit hard by COVID-19 over the past few y ears. Advertising revenues fell and weakened the already struggling industry. However, people started exhibiting a stronger search for accurate and reliable news. High-quality and independent productions on digital platforms helped the journalists who continue their activities outside their countries pull through the pandemic period successfully. Journalists who were forced into exile displayed the best example of solidarity with each other during this rather diffucult period.
When journalists leave their home country, they lose their Professional capacity in two dimensions. They lose their news sources and can’t perform in their mother tongue. The scarcity of news sources in foreign languages pushes them to seek new careers in different professions like most refugees from other sectors. Some exiled journalists, humbly including myself, continue their profession in different countries despite everything that goes against them.
In this issue, you will read on this subject through five journalists from different countries who had to leave their countries and see how they cling to life over and again. There is also a huge staff who write under pseudonyms out of the concern that their family members could sustain harm in the home countries. These people, quite understandably, refused to give interviews.
The number of people who lost their lives in the first three months of the year, according to the data of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), has reached 15 as Taliban regained control of Afghanistan, Russia invaded Ukraine and journalists were targeted in Mexico and Haiti.
The hybrid war which plays an important role in the disinformation campaigns of the pro-Russian media continues. Journalists are struggling with the threat of organized crime and the aggressive and polarizing rhetoric of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador in Mexico which is known as one of the most dangerous countries for journalists. Their colleagues are also being targeted by gangs in Haiti.
Public debate is influenced by the troubled relations between government and the press. This tension changes the ranking in the annual press freedom index. Unfortunately, governments do not seem to spend any spe- cial effort to rise higher in the index.
“The press must have the freedom to say anything so that certain people do not have the freedom to do anything.” This statement belongs to the French statesman, diplomat and literary scholar Alain Peyrefitte. Without exception, the authoritarian governments aim to silence critical voices. If you free the media, they become an indispensable protector of democracies.
As the world’s first and only multilingual magazine that defends freedom of press and expression, we demand the uncondi- tional release of our colleagues in different geographies and the abolition of the laws that criminalize freedom of thought. Happy May 3 World Press Freedom Day!