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	Struggling to put food on the table during Covid-19 by New Internationalist, Scroll India, agencies   July 2021   Nigeria: Covid-19 Impact Worsens Hunger in Lagos   The economic impact of the Covid-19 pandemic has worsened the plight of families living in poverty in Lagos State, Nigeria and left many people struggling to afford food and meet other basic needs, Human Rights Watch and Justice & Empowerment Initiatives (JEI) said in a report released this week. The number of Nigerians experiencing hunger doubled during the pandemic.   The 87-page report, “‘Between Hunger and the Virus,’ The Economic Impact of the Covid-19 Pandemic on People Living in Poverty in Lagos, Nigeria,” documents how a five-week lockdown, rising food prices, and a prolonged economic downturn have had a devastating impact on informal workers, slum dwellers, and other urban poor families in Lagos. The absence of a functioning social security system meant that government assistance, including cash transfers and food handouts, reached only a fraction of people going hungry.   “The troubling reality of the Covid-19 crisis for many families in Lagos has been hunger and deprivation,” said Anietie Ewang, Nigeria researcher at Human Rights Watch. “With people still battling every day for survival, the pandemic has highlighted the critical need for a functioning social security system that will allow all Nigerians to achieve an adequate standard of living.”   The World Bank forecasted in January 2021 that the Covid-19 crisis will result in an additional 10.9 million Nigerians entering poverty by 2022, defined as people living below the national poverty line of around $1 a day. In Lagos State, high levels of urban poverty – most of the state’s more than 20 million residents live in slums or informal settlements – left people vulnerable to the economic impact of the pandemic.   Between May 2020 and March 2021, Human Rights Watch spoke with more than 60 people from 13 communities in Lagos State, conducting multiple rounds of interviews to document the evolution of the pandemic. Human Rights Watch also analyzed surveys by Nigeria’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) and by JEI and the Nigerian Slum/Informal Settlements Federation, an advocacy group for people living in poverty.   Lagos residents said the Covid-19 crisis devastated their already fragile access to food and livelihoods.   Margaret Okuomo, a mother of seven in Ago Egun Bariga, lost her job as a cleaner in March 2020. She quickly exhausted her meager savings and was unable to feed her children.   “We [have] our fill in the morning, and sometimes at night we just soak two handfuls of garri [a staple made from cassava] and sleep,” she said.   Human Rights Watch’s analysis of NBS data found that half of households surveyed nationwide in May, August, and November 2020 had run out of food in the preceding 30 days, compared with a quarter of households surveyed in 2018 and 2019.   NBS data shows that nearly one third of people surveyed in August 2020 had taken on debt during the Covid-19 crisis. More than half of households used these loans to purchase food.   The economic impact of the pandemic has underscored the importance of the right to social security, which requires states to use a range of measures, such as unemployment benefits, cash transfers, and food assistance, to ensure people can obtain an adequate standard of living.   http://www.hrw.org/news/2021/07/28/nigeria-covid-19-impact-worsens-hunger-lagos http://socialprotection.org/voices-africans-affected-covid-19-crisis-experiences-impacts-covid-19-incomes-livelihoods-and   June 2021   Brazil: Breaking records – for the rich and the hungry, by Leonardo Sakamoto. (New Internationalist)   A worker with Covid-19 was rescued from slave labour in a sugar cane plantation in São Paulo, Brazil’s wealthiest state. He had fever, was coughing and aching, and had difficulty walking. But he kept on working nonetheless.   He was part of a group of 22 people freed earlier this year by specialized government teams that have been investigating reports of modern slavery since 1995. He and his colleagues had been ‘sold’ to their employer and they were starving. But slave labour is also a result of abject poverty, which has increased during the pandemic.   Research released by the Brazilian Network for Research on Sovereignty and Food and Nutritional Security revealed that in 2020, 19 million people went hungry in the country – out of 116.8 million who had some degree of food insecurity. Hunger affected nine per cent of Brazilians – the highest rate since 2004.   These figures were released in early April. On the same day, the Brazilian government, responding to pressure from Congress, resumed payment of the pandemic emergency benefit to unemployed workers that it had suspended several months earlier.   This programme had provided monthly instalments of between $116 and $232 per family at the beginning of last year. It was then reduced to between $58 and $116 a month, to be cut further to between $28 and $72 today.   With $28 a month, a single person living in São Paulo can buy only 23 per cent of the food they need, according to a survey by the Inter-Union Department of Statistics and Socioeconomic Studies. But our leader Jair Bolsonaro believes that the best way to fight Covid-19 is to push workers out onto the streets and that the sooner the population becomes infected the sooner the pandemic will end. The problem is that people will die as a side effect; in Brazil, on a massive scale so far.   The research on hunger was carried out in the last quarter of 2020, when reduced emergency aid was still in place. So the figures for 2021 are likely to be even worse, as Bolsonaro suspended payments at the end of 2020 and only resumed them 96 days later.   Also in April, Brazil learned that it had 20 more billionaires than last year, up from 45 to 65 according Forbes magazine, with a 72-per-cent increase in their total assets from $127 to $219 billion.   The fact that a small group of Brazilians lives in a ‘premium category’ that concentrates wealth while 116.8 million do not know whether they will eat each day is ‘an aberration’, says Oxfam Brazil’s director Katia Maia.   Referring to the paucity of the new benefit, she says: ‘This new emergency aid shows that human life is not a priority.’ Opposition and even government allies in Congress are calling for an increase.   Meanwhile, a new scandal has erupted: the government spent $440,730 on Jair Bolsonaro’s holiday, including security, accommodation and transport. This is enough to provide a monthly $116 aid payment to at least 3,800 Brazilians.   In Brazil, the idea of taxing the super-rich is taboo and tax reform is constantly postponed. The country’s super-rich pay far less tax than the middle class.   Such inequality confirms the view that the government exists to serve the most affluent and control the poorest. Over time, inequality leads to lack of faith in institutions – which helps to explain the state of Brazil today.   A recent study suggests that as many as six in ten Brazilians are struggling to put food on the table, reports Beatriz Miranda.   The Covid-19 pandemic has deepened Brazil’s ongoing hunger crisis, according to a recent study. Meagre welfare assistance has meant that around 60 per cent of the country’s population – 125 million people – are now unable to get three square meals per day. This is a major jump from 35 per cent who were food insecure in 2004, and amounts to a major reversal of the gains made in 2014, when the UN removed Brazil from the World Hunger Map.   According to research published by the Brazilian Research Network on Food, Nutritional Sovereignty and Security in April, the quality of meals has sharply declined for six in ten households. Less people can afford to buy quality food and the consumption of fruit has diminished by 40 per cent, vegetables by 36 per cent.   Many look to the government’s failure to effectively address the economic impacts of the pandemic. Unemployment, lack of support for informal workers forced to stay home and self-employed people having to shut businesses have all contributed to this deterioration.   ‘In December, the federal emergency cash was modest, but it still existed. After January, the population was left without this assistance for months. What we see now is that the demand has grown immensely,’ says social historian Adriana Salay Leme, a hunger researcher at Sao Paulo University who is volunteering in Quebrada Alimentada, a food assistance movement in Sao Paulo.   Despite the federal cash transfer programme, emergency welfare has been inconsistent (no allowance was paid from January to March 2021); insufficient (it currently consists of four installments of around US$28, and is expected to last until July 2021), and unable to assist those most in need (around 46 million people don’t have a bank account, internet access, or a taxpayer ID).   Many argue that the pandemic has simply prised open a long-worn crack in Brazilian statecraft. Leme identifies the root of the problem as a key moment in 2016, ‘when social assistance initiatives started to dismantle’.   She cites the now closed PNAE (National School Feeding Programme), CONAF (National Confederation of Family Agriculture), and Bolsa Família (Family Allowance – the world’s largest conditional cash transfer scheme), as examples.   Not coincidentally, 2016 also marked the return of neoliberal governance in Brazil, with the tenure of President Michel Temer, who came to power after the controversial impeachment process of social democrat President Dilma Rousseff. Marked by strong pro-privatization rhetoric – a kind that remains under current president, Jair Bolsonaro – Temer’s rule enacted an austerity package that, according to the UN, represented an ‘attack on poor people’. Since then, the welfare state system that prevailed in Brazil from 2003 to 2016 has been increasingly under threat.   According to Renato Maluf, a former President at Brazil’s National Council of Food and Nutritional Security (also dismantled by Bolsonaro), such a fallout was expected: ‘There has been an economic crisis since 2015, which has only worsened after Temer took office. (…). When you dismantle social programmes in a context where the economic conditions are getting worse, we know the result will be bad. And the pandemic has only made things more critical,’ he told media outlet O Joio e O Trigo in October last year.   The scale of the crisis has also meant that NGOs and grassroots campaigns have had to fill the gap. Dozens, if not hundreds, of food campaigns across the country right now are distributing millions of meals, including Panela Cheia Salva, Tem Gente Com Fome, and Cozinhas Solidarias.   The demand, however, is much bigger than the donations have been able to cover and some food campaigns are even working with waiting lists:   ‘The number of requests for basic food items is very high. Our main challenge is to get more donations. We are still figuring out how to deal with the waiting list. Lots of people are calling us asking for food, but donations have decreased,’ René Silva, founder of NGO Voz das Comunidades, in Rio de Janeiro, told media outlet G1 in March.   http://newint.org/features/2021/06/08/view-brazil http://newint.org/features/2021/06/17/pandemic-has-worsened-brazil-hunger-crisis-fjf http://newint.org/immersive/2020/09/29/death-covid-19-or-hunger http://newint.org/special/food-justice-files   June 2021   Not only are India’s poor eating less, they are eating less nutritious food - Indians need more relief measures during the second Covid-19 wave, writes Shoaib Daniyal for Scroll India.   Even before the pandemic hit, India was one of the world’s most malnourished countries. As could be expected for such a country with such poor development indicators, Covid-19 hit India’s poor hard. To compound the problem, the Indian government put in place what was the world’s harshest lockdown with little planning.   A new paper by economists Jean Dreze and Anmol Somanchi has now analysed survey data (collated here) to look at the impact of India’s first Covid-19 lockdown in 2020 on food deprivation. Their conclusion is grim: “the lockdown and the economic recession that followed led to a severe nutrition crisis”.   Income crash   The first impact of the lockdown was obviously on incomes and employment as India put in place the world’s harshest restrictions which shut down almost all economic activity.   Across the board, surveys showed a drastic drop in incomes compared to pre-lockdown levels.   A survey by IDinsight, a data analytics organisation that focuses on the social sector, found that the average weekly income of non-agricultural respondents crashed from Rs 6,858 in March 2020 to Rs 1,929 in May, and was still around that level in September.   The proportion of non-agricultural respondents who reported zero days of work shot up from 7.3% in early March to 23.6% in the first week of May and was still as high as 16.2% in the first week of September.   Another survey by consulting firm Dalberg found that primary income earners of 52% of households were unemployed in May despite having a job before the lockdown and another 20% were still employed but earning less than before.   Dreze and Somanchi argue that this hit was not temporary and it was “doubtful that income and employment ever regained their pre-lockdown levels before a second wave of the Covid-19 epidemic hit the country in early 2021”.   Like with incomes, surveys across the board pointed an alarming rise in food insecurity. Depending on the survey, between 53%-77% respondents argued that they were eating less after the pandemic hit than before. Even more alarmingly, lifting the lockdown had a rather small effect.   A survey by the Centre for Sustainable Employment at the Azim Premji University, for example, found that even in the September-November period, the proportion of people eating less than what they did before the start of the pandemic was as high as 60%. (It was 77% during the lockdown).   The situation was even worse amongst poorer groups. The non-profit organisation ActionAid found that 35% of surveyed informal, mainly migrant workers were eating fewer than two meals a day in May.   Similarly, a survey by Pradan, another non-profit, covering informal sector workers in rural areas of 13 states found that half of them were eating fewer meals than before.   The quantity of food was not the only red flag – so was its nutritional value. Data from the Centre for Monitoring the Indian Economy shows that while expenditure on cereals remains almost constant, there was a drastic decline in money spent on nutrient and protein-heavy food such as eggs, meat, fish and fruits. And this holds across income groups. On meat and fish, in fact, the expenditure of the top 25% income group drops to levels below that for the middle 50% pre-lockdown.   The silver lining in this was the performance of India’s public distribution system, which supplies either free or highly subsidised foodgrains to Indians. During the lockdown, both state governments as well as the Union government announced relief measures such as free and increased rations. Dalberg, for example, notes that as many as 89% of Indians received PDS grain during lockdown. Moreover, a similar number also received free grain as per temporary lockdown schemes.   Given that a second Covid-19 wave in India this summer had led to most of the country going under state-implemented lockdowns, the paper recommends that a “second, stronger wave of relief measures is essential to avoid a repeat of last year’s tragic humanitarian crisis”.   One of the paper’s co-authors, Jean Dreze, has also recommended cash transfers as a way to help Indians hit hard by the pandemic lockdowns.   Unfortunately, far from better relief measures, Indians are finding that even a repeat of last year’s assistance is running into trouble. The Hindu reported that almost a third of ration card holders have been unable to access free rations allocated by the Union government due to distribution issues at the state level.   http://scroll.in/article/996600/the-pandemic-in-data-not-only-are-indias-poor-eating-less-they-are-eating-less-nutritious-food http://www.socialscienceinaction.org/resources/key-considerations-indias-deadly-second-covid-19-wave-addressing-impacts-and-building-preparedness-against-future-waves/ http://www.socialscienceinaction.org/blogs-and-news/urgent-call-for-basic-human-rights-and-services-to-be-protected-for-indias-poorest-during-covid/ http://scroll.in/topic/56473/a-tsunami-of-suffering http://scroll.in/article/994378/harsh-mander-a-lesson-in-how-to-end-the-mass-suffering-unleashed-by-indias-first-lockdown http://blogs.bmj.com/bmjgh/2021/09/04/lessons-from-covid-19-strengthening-the-public-health-system-in-india-or-accelerating-privatisation/ http://www.dw.com/en/india-why-are-female-community-health-workers-on-strike/av-61164184 http://www.ipsnews.net/2022/02/inequality-pro-rich-policies-buoy-billionaires-rise-india/ http://owsa.in/the-precarity-of-urban-households-demand-of-livelihood-safety-nets/ http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-61091336 Visit the related web page
	Journalism, the vaccine against disinformation, blocked in more than 130 countries by Reporters Without Borders, agencies 2021 World Press Freedom Index   UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet said she was alarmed by restrictive measures imposed by several States against the independent media, as well as the arrest and intimidation of journalists, saying the free flow information was vital in fighting COVID-19.   “Some States have used the outbreak of the new coronavirus as a pretext to restrict information and stifle criticism,” Bachelet said.   “A free media is always essential, but we have never depended on it more than we do during this pandemic, when so many people are isolated and fearing for their health and livelihoods. Credible, accurate reporting is a lifeline for all of us.”   The UN human rights chief also noted that some political leaders had directed statements towards journalists and media workers that created a hostile environment for their safety and their ability to do their work.   According to the International Press Institute there have been over 130 alleged media violations since the start of the outbreak, including more than 50 reported instances of restrictions on access to information, censorship and excessive regulation of misinformation.   It reported that nearly 40 journalists have been arrested or charged in the Asia-Pacific, Americas, Europe, the Middle East and Africa for reports critical of the State response to the pandemic or for simply questioning the accuracy of official numbers of cases and deaths related to COVID-19. The actual number of media violations and arrests is probably far higher.   There have also been reports of journalists disappearing after publishing coverage critical of the COVID-19 response, and several news outlets have been closed by the authorities over their reporting.   “This is no time to blame the messenger. Rather than threatening journalists or stifling criticism, States should encourage healthy debate concerning the pandemic and its consequences. People have a right to participate in decision-making that affects their lives, and an independent media is a vital medium for this,” Bachelet said.   “Being open and transparent, and involving those affected in decision-making builds public trust and helps ensure that people participate in measures designed to protect their own health and that of the wider population and increases accountability.”   Additionally, independent media provide medical professionals and relevant experts a platform to speak freely and share information with each other and the public, she said.   The UN’s human rights chief echoed concerns raised by the Secretary-General about the “dangerous epidemic of misinformation” around the pandemic which generated confusion and more ill-health, and paid tribute to the journalists working in the independent media whose fact-checking provided truth and clarity.   “Journalists are playing an indispensable role in our response to this pandemic, but unlike the grave threats posed to other essential workers, the threats media workers face are entirely avoidable. Protecting journalists from harassment, threats, detention or censorship helps keep us all safe,” Bachelet said.   http://en.unesco.org/themes/safety-journalists http://en.unesco.org/commemorations/worldpressfreedomday http://www.un.org/en/observances/press-freedom-day   The 2021 World Press Freedom Index compiled by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) shows that journalism, the main vaccine against disinformation, is completely or partly blocked in 73% of the 180 countries ranked by the organisation.   This year’s Index, which evaluates the press freedom situation in 180 countries and territories annually, shows that journalism, journalism, which is arguably the best vaccine against the virus of disinformation, is totally blocked or seriously impeded in 73 countries and constrained in 59 others, which together represent 73% of the countries evaluated. These countries are classified as having “very bad,” “bad” or “problematic” environments for press freedom, and are identified accordingly in black, red or orange on the World Press Freedom map.   The Index data reflect a dramatic deterioration in people's access to information and an increase in obstacles to news coverage. The coronavirus pandemic has been used as grounds to block journalists’ access to information sources and reporting in the field. Will this access be restored when the pandemic is over?   The data shows that journalists are finding it increasingly hard to investigate and report sensitive stories, especially in Asia, the Middle East and Europe.   The 2021 Edelman Trust barometer reveals a disturbing level of public mistrust of journalists, with 59% of respondents in 28 countries saying that journalists deliberately try to mislead the public by reporting information they know to be false.   In reality, journalistic pluralism and rigorous reporting serve to combat disinformation and “infodemics”, including false and misleading information.   “Journalism is the best vaccine against disinformation,” RSF secretary-general Christophe Deloire said. “Unfortunately, its production and distribution are too often blocked by political, economic, technological and, sometimes, even cultural factors. In response to the virality of disinformation across borders, on digital platforms and via social media, journalism provides the most effective means of ensuring that public debate is based on a diverse range of established facts.”   For example, President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil (down 4 at 111th) and President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela (down 1 at 148th) promoted medically unproven Covid-19 remedies. Their false claims were debunked by investigative journalists at media outlets such as Brazil’s Agência Pública and in-depth reporting by Venezuela’s few remaining independent publications. In Iran (down 1 at 174th), the authorities tightened their control over news coverage and stepped up trials of journalists in order to weaken the media’s ability to scrutinise the country’s Covid-19 death toll. In Egypt (166th), President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi’s government simply banned the publication of any pandemic statistics that didn’t come from the Ministry of Health. In Zimbabwe (down 4 at 130th), the investigative reporter Hopewell Chin’ono was arrested shortly after helping to expose the overbilling practices of a medical equipment supply company.   Norway is ranked first in the Index for the fifth year running even though its media have complained of a lack of access to state-held information about the pandemic. Finland maintained its position in second place while Sweden (up 1 at 3rd) recovered its third place ranking, which it had yielded to Denmark (down 1 at 4th) last year. The 2021 Index demonstrates the success of these Nordic nations’ approach towards upholding press freedom.   The World Press Freedom map has not had so few countries coloured white – indicating a country situation that is at least good if not optimal – since 2013, when the current evaluation method was adopted. This year, only 12 of the Index’s 180 countries (7%) can claim to offer a favourable environment for journalism, as opposed to 13 countries (8%) last year.   The country to have been stripped of its “good” classification is Germany (down 2 at 13th). Dozens of its journalists were attacked by supporters of extremist and conspiracy theory believers during protests against pandemic restrictions.   The press freedom situation in Germany is nonetheless still classified as “fairly good,” as is the case in the United States (down 1 at 44th), despite the fact that Donald Trump’s final year in the White House was marked by a record number of assaults against journalists (around 400) and arrests of members of the media (130), according to the US Press Freedom Tracker, of which RSF is a partner.   As a result of falling four places, Brazil joined the countries coloured red, indicating that the press freedom situation there is classified as “bad”. The vilification and orchestrated public humiliation of journalists have become trademarks of President Bolsonaro, along with his family and closest allies. Brazil shares the “bad” classification with India (142nd), Mexico (143rd) and Russia (down 1 at 150th), which deployed its repressive apparatus to limit media coverage of protests in support of Kremlin opponent, Alexei Navalny.   China (177th), which continues to take Internet censorship, surveillance and propaganda to unprecedented levels, is still firmly anchored among the Index’s worst countries, which are indicated in black on the World Press Freedom map.   Right below China is the same trio of totalitarian countries that have historically occupied the bottom three places. Two are Asian: Turkmenistan (up 1 at 178th) and North Korea (up 1 at 179th). The third is African: Eritrea (down 2 at 180th). Regardless of their continent, these countries maintain absolute control over all news and information, enabling the first two to claim they had no Covid-19 cases and the third to maintain complete silence about the fate of 11 journalists who were arrested 20 years ago, some of whom have allegedly been held in metal containers in the middle of a desert.   The country that fell the furthest in 2021 was Malaysia (down 18 at 119th), where the problems include a recent “anti-fake news” decree allowing the government to impose its own version of the truth. Big descents were also registered by Comoros (down 9 at 84th) and El Salvador (down 8 at 82nd), where journalists have struggled to obtain state-held information about the government’s handling of the pandemic.   Most of the 2021 Index’s biggest gains are in Africa. Burundi (up 13 at 147th), Sierra Leone (up 10 at 75th) and Mali (up 9 at 99th) have all seen significant improvements, including the release of four journalists with the independent Burundian media Iwacu, the repeal of a law criminalising press offences in Sierra Leone and a fall in the number of abuses in Mali.   2021 Regional rank   Europe and the Americas (North, Central and South) continue to be the most favourable continents for press freedom, even though the Americas registered the biggest deterioration in its regional violations score (up 2.5%).   Europe registered a sizeable deterioration in its “Abuses” indicator, with acts of violence more than doubling in the European Union and Balkans, compared with a 17% deterioration worldwide. Attacks against journalists and arbitrary arrests increased in Germany (13th), France (34th), Italy (41st), Poland (down 2 at 64th), Greece (down 5 at 70th), Serbia (93rd) and Bulgaria (down 1 at 112th).   Although there was less deterioration in Africa’s “Abuses” score, it continues to be the most violent continent for journalists, and the Covid-19 pandemic fuelled the use of force to prevent journalists from working.   In Tanzania (124th), President John Magufuli called the virus a “western conspiracy,” suggesting that Tanzania had kept it at bay “by force of prayer.” He imposed an information blackout on the pandemic before his death in March 2021.   In the Asia-Pacific region, the “censorship virus” spread beyond China, in particular to Hong Kong (80th), where the National security law imposed by Beijing seriously threatens journalists.   Australia (up 1 at 25th), experienced a disturbing variant: in response to proposed Australian legislation requiring tech companies to reimburse the media for content posted on their social media platforms, Facebook decided to ban Australian media from publishing or sharing journalistic content on their Facebook pages.   The Eastern Europe and Central Asia (EECA) region held onto its second-to-last position in the regional rankings, in part because of events in Belarus (down 5 at 158th), where journalists were subjected to an unprecedented crackdown in an attempt to cover up the massive street protests in response to the contested presidential election result.   There has been no significant change in the Middle East & North Africa (MENA) region, which maintained last place in the regional rankings. In Algeria (146th) and Morocco (down 3 at 136th), the judicial system is being used to help silence journalists, while the Middle East’s most authoritarian countries – Saudi Arabia (170th), Egypt (166th) and Syria (up 1 at 173rd) – have taken advantage of the Covid-19 pandemic to reinforce their methods for gagging the media and to reaffirm their monopoly on news and information.   In this region, still the toughest and most dangerous for journalists, the pandemic has exacerbated the problems that have long plagued the press, which was already in its death throes.   RSF’s global indicator – its measure of the level of media freedom worldwide – is only 0.3% lower in the 2021 Index than it was in 2020. However, the past year’s relative stability should not divert attention from the fact that it has deteriorated by 12% since this indicator was created in 2013.   http://rsf.org/en/2021-world-press-freedom-index-journalism-vaccine-against-disinformation-blocked-more-130-countries/ http://cpj.org/covid-19/ http://correspondent.afp.com/will-journalism-recover-covid-19 http://globalvoices.org/2021/06/28/myanmar-journalists-endure-attacks-for-reporting-the-coup/ http://www.iwpr.net/global-voices/spotlight/press-freedom-2021 http://www.iwpr.net/global-voices http://iwpr.net/global-voices/spotlight/freedom-expression-middle-east   http://informationdemocracy.org/2021/06/16/the-forum-on-information-and-democracy-calls-for-a-new-deal-for-journalism/ http://informationdemocracy.org/2020/11/12/250-recommendations-on-how-to-stop-infodemics/ http://ethicaljournalismnetwork.org/ http://internews.org/covid-19/approach/   Dec. 2020   Press freedom: Journalists end up in jail for reporting on coronavirus crisis. (RSF/DW, agencies)   Hundreds of journalists are in prison worldwide for not giving in to government censorship, according to the German chapter of Reporters Without Borders. The findings were published in its annual report on press freedom.   Five countries were responsible for more than half of the jailed journalists recorded by RSF in 2020   At least 387 people working in the media industry around the world had been imprisoned by December 1 of this year, the German office of the press freedom NGO Reporters Without Borders (RSF) announced in its annual report on Monday.   Five countries were responsible for over half of all convictions: China led the pack with 117 jailed journalists, followed by Saudi Arabia (34), Egypt (30), Vietnam (28) and Syria (27).   While the majority of imprisoned press workers were still men, the number of women arrested in 2020 increased by a third to 42.   Since the outbreak of the global coronavirus pandemic early in the year, over 130 members of the press, be they journalists or otherwise, have been arrested for reporting on the crisis. Some 14 of those were still in jail at the time of the report's publication, said the report.   An infographic showing the number of jailed journalists in China, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Vietnam and Syria.   "The high number of imprisoned journalists worldwide throws a harsh spotlight on the current threats to press freedom," said Katja Gloger, the head of the RSF German office.   Gloger condemned the response of far too many governments to protests, grievances or the COVID-19 crisis with repression against the "bringers of bad news."   "Behind every single one of these cases is the fate of a person who faces criminal trials, long imprisonment and often mistreatment because he did not submit to censorship and repression," she added.   Her colleague, Sylvie Ahrens-Urbanek, highlighted one particular example of reprisals for reporting on the coronavirus pandemic — the case of investigative journalist Hopewell Chin'ono from Zimbabwe, who was arrested for reporting on the government's sale of overpriced COVID-19 medication. He was "brutally arrested," said Ahrens-Urbanek, and spent a month and a half in prison. Release on bail was repeatedly refused.   Reporters Without Borders gave particular attention to Belarus, where at least 370 journalists have been arrested in the wake of the contested presidential election on August 9. Although most of those were released after a short period, the crackdown on journalists represents a reduction in press freedom.   The report also highlighted the detention of the Australian WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, currently in Belmarsh high-security prison in the UK. RSF claimed that the conditions had become much worse following a coronavirus outbreak in the prison and that Assange had been placed in de facto isolation.   The report expressed concern for the health of those imprisoned journalists who have not received proper medical attention during the pandemic and who have been subjected to the psychological effects of increased isolation.   Five journalists were facing death sentences as of December 1, one of whom — Iranian journalist Ruhollah Zam — was executed on December 12. The other four were in the custody of the Houthi rebels in Yemen.   RSF counted 54 media workers who had been kidnapped in Syria, Iraq and Yemen; some of them have not been heard from in years. Another four journalists disappeared under unexplained circumstances in 2020 — one in Iraq, one in Congo, one in Mozambique and one in Peru.   The NGO began issuing its yearly report in 1995. It includes cases of journalists and other professionals working in the field of journalism. The compilers only include data if it can be carefully confirmed, which sometimes leads to certain countries, such as Turkey, showing lower numbers than reported elsewhere.   http://rsf.org/en/news/rsfs-2020-round-35-rise-number-women-journalists-held-arbitrarily http://rsf.org/en/ranking# http://informationdemocracy.org/2020/11/12/250-recommendations-on-how-to-stop-infodemics/ http://ethicaljournalismnetwork.org/news/inside-ethics-blog http://cpj.org/reports/2020/12/record-number-journalists-jailed-imprisoned/ http://cpj.org/reports/2020/06/covid-19-here-are-10-press-freedom-symptoms-to-track/ http://www.opendemocracy.net/en/democraciaabierta/la-cadena-tragica-133-vidas-perdidas-por-informar-en-mexico-en/ http://www.iwmf.org/women-in-covid19-news/ http://www.iwmf.org/reporting/ http://www.globalr2p.org/publications/mass-media-and-genocide-prevention-the-promise-and-peril-of-the-digital-age/ http://www.icij.org/ http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/   # Photo Stories: http://www.magnumphotos.com/theme/magnum-photos-on-covid-19/ http://www.magnumphotos.com/newsroom/environment/jonas-bendiksen-future-proofing-life-earth http://correspondent.afp.com/ http://www.msf.org/year-pictures-2020 http://www.msf.org/year-pictures-2019 http://www.noorimages.com/stories http://1000dreamsproject.com/ http://www.movingwalls.org/moving-walls/25.html Visit the related web page
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