State of fear

Today is the 31st annual World Press Freedom Day and this year’s theme is ‘A Press for the Planet: Journalism in the face of the environmental crisis’. The theme seeks to draw special attention to journalism and freedom of expression in the context of the global environmental crisis, noting the difficulty many journalists have in obtaining and disseminating accurate information about contemporary climate issues and the harm done by environmental disinformation. The latter is arguably an unfortunate consequence of the new-found freedom that social media gives anyone with internet access to air their opinions. There is, simultaneously, better and more pertinent information and also more junk out there for public consumption than ever before. In this context, access to accurate information is crucial.

However, journalism is about more than just ensuring the facts are right. It is about being able to dissent from any given consensus or official opinion. Nor should the potential for abuse of online speech via misinformation and fake news become an excuse for digital tyranny. The latter is exactly what appears to have happened in some of the countries most vulnerable to climate change, including Pakistan. Under the guise of cracking down on malicious, untrue, and inflammatory speech the state appears to have appropriated vast powers to police the entire digital sphere. The annual Pakistan Freedom of Expression and Media Report 2024, issued by the civil liberties group Freedom Network, shows that the digital realm has undergone a worrying transformation over the past year or so. Shutting down of mobile networks during elections, the random suspension of social media platforms, disruptions to mobile networks, and some good old-fashioned harassment against bloggers and journalists have become far too common.

The latter is a hand-me-down from the analog era while the other tactics point to an expanding repertoire of digital tools in the censorious state’s arsenal. Then there is the weaponization of the law to go after people who say the wrong thing, with over 200 journalists, bloggers and other online information practitioners being slapped with over 70 legal notices, some being arrested. These are the relatively lucky ones. The report also highlights the murder of at least four journalists. In total, the report documents 104 cases of violations against journalists and other media practitioners over the past 12 months. So how does any of this pertain to this specific theme for World Press Freedom Day? For one, climate change’s most severe impacts are being felt in the Global South and Pakistan is on the front lines of global warming. With media, bloggers and the people in general constantly looking over their backs for their state as opposed to it being the other way around, any sort of accountability to the people becomes difficult.

The elected representatives who ought to be doing something about this overreach have actually served as an enabling force, overall. The 12 months covered by the report saw three different governments: two elected with a caretaker in between. But all three were indistinguishable when it came to their lack of tolerance for dissent. The Freedom Network report points to the renewed government attempts to legislate the E-Safety Bill and Personal Data Protection Bill in the coming weeks. Both bills are couched in the language of safety, the lingo of all good authoritarians ever eager to remind the people that their freedom is being taken away for their own good, and are authoritarian in the extreme. Add to that the rumours of some ‘digital authority’ the government plans to introduce and we may as well be back in the 80s.