This article first appeared in The Edge Malaysia Weekly, on April 25 - May 1, 2016.

The media has never really been free in Malaysia and last year, it came under some serious pressure. So, at first blush, it seems surprising that Malaysia’s position in the 2016 World Press Freedom Index has improved by one rank to No 146 out of 180 countries, although its score has dropped a significant 3.28 points from 43.29 to 46.57. The worst possible score is 100.

What is behind this apparent contradiction?

The bad news is that there has been “a deep and disturbing decline” in respect of media freedom at both the global and regional levels, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said in a statement before the release of the index.

Announcing the 2016 edition last week, RSF expressed concern that most of the movement in the World Press Freedom Index is “indicative of a climate of fear and tension combined with increasing control over newsrooms by governments and private-sector interests”.

Using a point system to rank countries according to the freedom enjoyed by journalists and the level of media freedom violations in each region, the index shows that Europe (with 19.8 points) still has the freest media, followed distantly by Africa (36.9). This is the first time Africa has overtaken the Americas (37.1), where violence against journalists is on the rise. Asia (43.8) and Eastern Europe/Central Asia (48.4) follow, while North Africa/Middle East (50.8) is still where journalists are most subjected to constraints of every kind, said RSF.

The watchdog group cites several reasons for this decline in freedom of information, including the increasingly authoritarian tendencies of governments, tighter government control of state-owned media and security situations that have become more and more fraught, or that are completely disastrous.

“It is unfortunately clear that many of the world’s leaders are developing a form of paranoia about legitimate journalism,” RSF secretary-general Christophe Deloire tellingly said.

RSF warns that independent news coverage is becoming increasingly precarious in both the state and privately owned media because of the threat from ideologies that are hostile to media freedom and from large-scale propaganda machines. Throughout the world, oligarchs are buying up media outlets and exercising pressure that compounds the controls exerted by governments.

“The climate of fear results in a growing aversion to debate and pluralism, a clampdown on the media by ever more authoritarian and oppressive governments, and reporting in the privately owned media that is increasingly shaped by personal interests,” Deloire charged.

Disturbingly, leading nations are among those that are guilty of suppressing their much-vaunted press freedom.

RSF notes that although the US has improved its ranking from 49th place in 2015 to No 41 currently, the improvement is relative and hides overall negative trends.

The main cause for concern for RSF continues to be the current US administration’s obsessive control of information, which manifests itself through the war on whistleblowers and journalists’ sources as well as the lack of government transparency, which reporters have continually criticised. The Obama administration has prosecuted more whistleblowers under the Espionage Act than all previous administrations combined.

The US presidential election has also been a cause for concern. Since the primaries began last summer, journalists have seen their access to campaign events regularly restricted by candidates from both political parties and have been insulted and even bullied on social media.

Japan is another case in point. A report in the Los Angeles Times sums up how the world’s third largest economy has fallen 11 places since last year to 72nd spot, and is now worse than Tanzania in the press freedom index.

The 2011 meltdown at the Fukushima

nuclear power plant set the stage for the erosion of press freedoms, the news report said. It began with the incomplete coverage of the Fukushima meltdowns amid efforts by the government and power company to downplay the accident. The Japanese media went along because those that do not toe the line find themselves marginalised by the powers that be. Since Fukushima, Japan’s culture wars over history, constitutional revision and security doctrine have been fought on the media battlefield, it said, quoting a historian.

When Prime Minister Shinzo Abe returned for a second term in 2012, his administration began cracking down on perceived bias in the nation’s media. Two years ago, the Abe administration pushed through a state secrets bill that allows for journalists and bloggers to be jailed for up to five years for asking about something that is a state secret, even if they are not aware it is one.

“The Abe administration’s threats to media independence, the turnover in media personnel in recent months and the increase in self-censorship within leading media outlets are endangering the underpinnings of democracy in Japan,” RSF warned.

If much of this sounds familiar to Malaysians, it is because there are many parallels on our turf to the situations described here. In the past year alone, a number of actions taken by the authorities have had a dampening effect on a free media. These include the blocking of news sites, including The Malaysian Insider, which then closed down for commercial reasons, and the suspension of two publications of The Edge Media Group. In addition, media offices have been raided, journalists arrested and suits filed against them.

These actions feed into criticism of the country’s human rights record, which has been highlighted in the US State Department’s latest Country Reports on Human Rights Practices in 2015. The department cites Malaysia for selectively enforcing laws, including the Sedition Act, to silence critics, but the government has dismissed the report as “based on unsubstantiated information” and chided the US for continuing to “ignore Malaysia’s sovereign right to determine its internal affairs”.

In the global context, the new tendency to scuttle a free media is a consequence of the growing democratisation of information through new communication technologies such as social media. The RSF report acknowledges this development as a game changer for the current times.

“Today, it is increasingly easy for powers to appeal directly to the public through new technologies, and so there is a greater degree of violence against those who represent independent information,” Deloire said.

“We are entering a new era of propaganda where new technologies allow the low-cost dissemination of their own communication, their information, as dictated. On the other side, journalists are the ones who get in the way.”

Whether the press can enjoy the freedom they need to promote the public interest in this new battlefield is a question that citizens can answer.

R B Bhattacharjee is associate editor at The Edge Malaysia

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