Some governments are using these as an excuse to restrict press freedom. Journalism in Pakistan is controlled with money, threats and coercion
Staff Reporter , Daily Dawn, Dawn TV, OK TV Report
London: A report released by a democracy-based think tank has stated that press freedom worldwide has declined significantly in the last 5 years and has reached its lowest level in the last 50 years.
According to a report by the Stockholm-based International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA), Afghanistan, Burkina Faso, and Myanmar (which are already considered among the weakest countries in terms of press freedom) have experienced the biggest decline in press freedom.
The report said South Korea saw the fourth-largest decline in press freedom, attributed to a rise in defamation cases against journalists and raids on journalists’ homes by the government and its political allies.
IDEA Secretary-General Kevin Casas-Zamora told AFP that the current state of democracy in the world is worrying.
The report said that more than half of the world’s countries (54 percent) recorded a decline in at least one of the five key indicators of democracy between 2019 and 2024.
Casas-Zamora said that the most important finding of our report is that press freedom has declined sharply worldwide.
He said that between 2019 and 2024, this is the biggest decline in the last 50 years; we have never seen such a sharp decline in any key indicator of democratic health.
The decline in press freedom was seen in 43 countries around the world, including 15 in Africa and 15 in Europe.
He said a toxic mix was emerging, including heavy government intervention, some of which were “remnants of measures taken during the pandemic.”
“You have the very negative impact of disinformation, some of which is really misleading,” the IDEA report said, and some governments are using it as a pretext to clamp down on press freedom.
Casas-Zamora said the think tank had also expressed concern about the concentration of traditional media around the world and the disappearance of local media in many countries, which play a crucial role in supporting democratic debate.
He said the report only covered the period from 2019 to 2024 and did not include the initial impact of US President Donald Trump’s return to the White House in January.
But what we saw in the elections at the end of last year and the first few months of 2025 is quite disturbing, he said, because what happens in the United States has repercussions around the world, it does not bode well for democracy globally.
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