In Belarus, the federal government imprisons journalists for protecting opposition politicians. In Mexico, greater than 100 journalists have been murdered since 2000; almost all these instances stay unsolved. In the USA, a British reporter is unnerved by encounters with hostile Donald Trump supporters.
Considered one of these items just isn’t just like the others. Within the HBO documentary Endangered, administrators Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady nonetheless current all of them as proof of the hazards that reporters and photographers face at the moment, even in “democratic nations the place freedom of the press has traditionally been thought of a ‘given.'”
A few of the incidents in the USA are worse than harsh criticism. However the important thing query is what occurs subsequent.
The CNN staff who had been arrested whereas protecting a 2020 protest towards police brutality in Minneapolis, for instance, had been launched an hour later with apologies from the governor. The MAGA males who assaulted reporters or broken their gear throughout the January 6 Capitol riot had been prosecuted for these crimes. That is a far cry from the state of affairs within the “autocratic states” that Ewing and Grady recommend the U.S. is starting to resemble.
Joel Simon, former government director of the Committee to Defend Journalists, doesn’t assist make clear issues. He describes a “profound disaster” that features the “collapse of native media” and a “lack of public confidence in journalism,” phenomena that he lumps in with government-backed violence. The interview encapsulates the best way that Endangered muddies essential distinctions in service of a provocative however doubtful thesis.
