Journalists at risk Light blue text = a clickable link. To highlight pictures please click themIn support of World Press Freedom Day, today. Friday 3 May 2024, I've received an email from Jonathan Watts, global environment writer at The Guardian. Here are two of his paragraphs: 'The number of environmental journalists being attacked or killed is rising and it continues to be one of the most dangerous fields of journalism after war reporting. Though the trend is accelerating, prosecutions remain dismally low, with very few cases of murdered environmental reporters leading to convictions. 'Instead, the law appears to be increasingly used against journalists. One of the most disturbing trends in recent years has been the arrests or police harassment of journalists covering environmental protests. This has stirred outrage in the UK, the Netherlands, France, Spain, Canada, Australia, Azerbaijan, the United States and China which is consistently the biggest jailer of reporters.' No Freedom without Free PressPlease listen to Volker Turk, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. He speaks some truths worth hearing. Forced to work in secretIn a a series of stories The Guardian is publishing to cover World Press Freedom Day, writer Annie Kelly wrote on May 2, a story about Zahara Joya, a young female Afghani journalist who narrowly escaped from the Taliban, to Britain, in 2021. Here's an extract: 'When she wakes in her small flat in London, where she, three of her sisters and her teenage brother have been living as refugees since their escape from the Taliban in August 2021, Afghanistan is also the first thing she thinks of. Within a few hours of getting up she will be back at her laptop, her waking hours spent reporting on what is happening to the women and girls she left behind. 'In the three and a half years since she managed to board one of the last evacuation flights to leave Afghanistan after the seizure of power by Taliban militants, Rukhshana Media – the news agency Joya launched in 2020 to tell the stories of Afghan women and girls – has published hundreds of stories documenting the brutal assault on women’s rights under Taliban rule. 'Joya’s small team of reporters, all forced to work in secret, have written stories on the collapse of the healthcare system; girls being banned from the classroom; attacks on female artists, judges, police officers and activists; and increasing food shortages.' To read some of those stories please click the blue text Rukhshana Media link above. Media freedom is under siegeAntonio Guterres, Secretary General of the United Nations, speaking on World Press Freedom Day, said: 'Media freedom is under siege.' And turning to this year's theme for the Day (A Press for the Planet: Journalism in the Face of the environmental crisis) he continued: 'and environmental journalism is an increasingly dangerous profession. Dozens of journalists covering illegal mining, logging, poaching, and other environmental issues have been killed in recent decades. In the vast majority of cases, no one has been held to account. UNESCO reports that in the past fifteen years, there have been some 750 attacks on journalists and news outlets reporting on environmental issues. And the frequency of such attacks is rising. Legal processes are also misused to censor, silence, detain, and harass environmental reporters, while a new era of climate disinformation focuses on undermining proven solutions, including renewable energy. Welcome defenceI'm very glad to hear a solid defence of the need for press and media freedom from Volka Turk and Antonio Guterres because I hear in casual conversation a lot of media blame. Remarks such as "It's all the media's fault" are common in my hearing. And given a a scene such as Taliban Afghanistan, clearly the work of Zahara Joya and her secret colleagues is essential just to convey some reality. □ John McInnes Friday 3 May 2024 ##########
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