No matter what tactics are used to muzzle, restrict, limit, or censor information, trustworthy information that serves the public good can still find its way to those who matter most: the citizens.
Threats, censorship and a climate of self-censorship are commonplace for journalists in the Pacific region.
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South African opposition party leader, Mmusi Maimane, addressing the media. A viable media helps promote political accountability.
EPA-EFE/Brenton Geach
The sustainability of the news media is a precondition for good journalism in the public interest. Thus, economic questions should form part of discussions of press freedom.
Cartoonist Godfrey Mwampembwa was fired from a leading Kenyan daily newspaper for his political views.
Andi Weiland/Flickr
South African investigative journalists and civil society played a crucial role in bringing a country in the clutches of patronage networks back from the brink.
Press freedom is being undermined by the global trend towards mass surveillance and data retention.
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While some African countries have shown an improvement in press freedom and freedom of expression ratings, others, including South Africa, are seeing worrying trends and a drop in rankings.
Ethiopians reading newspapers in the capital Addis Ababa. The country’s media is among the most repressed on the continent.
Reuters/Tiksa Negeri
Press freedom has changed little in the past decade. If the African Union is to commit to the principles of democracy, it needs to do more to uphold freedom of expression and protects its journalists.
Workers arrange copies of the ‘Business Daily’, produced by Kenya’s Nation Media Group, the biggest newspaper publisher in East Africa.
Reuters/Thomas Mukoya
Namibia’s rise in the World Press Freedom rankings is stunning. The media environment in Africa, too, has improved. But media closures and the harassment of journalists are not yet things of the past.
Global Director of Research, International Center for Journalists (ICFJ) and Research Associate, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (RISJ), University of Oxford