Female journalists under attack as press freedom falters
(Interesting that we do not hear about the woman journalist,Alsu Kurmasheva, also held in ruzzia, as we do about her male counterpart)
(there are videos at the link below that I cannot embed)
Female journalists under attack as press freedom falters
Annie Kelly
Physical and online abuse, detentions, deportations and sexual violence – a global crackdown on women in journalism is intensifying
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guardian.org
About this content
Mon 6 May 2024 08.32 EDT
Last modified on Mon 6 May 2024 08.33 EDT
https://www.theguardian.com/media/article/2024/may/06/female-journalists-under-attack-as-press-freedom-falters#img-1
Female journalists are at the “epicentre of risk” as attacks on press freedom intensify around the world. According to organisations representing women in journalism, the past year has seen an escalation of smear campaigns; racist and gendered attacks; detentions; deportations; censorship; and police violence levelled at female journalists, which is leading to a “chilling” silencing of women’s voices in the media landscape. Kiran Nazish, the founder of the Coalition for Women in Journalism (CFWIJ), said: “We have seen a crackdown on women journalists in the past year from Poland to Bangladesh to Nigeria, Turkey, Canada and the US, as political will in maintaining press freedom declines. “Women and non-binary journalists are on the frontline of an increasingly hostile environment and are most at risk,” she said.
Nazish pointed to multiple examples of individuals targeted in the past year. In Iran, the country that jails the most female journalists, Parisa Salehi became the latest to be imprisoned, receiving a five-month sentence after being convicted of “spreading propaganda against the system” in connection with her reporting.
https://www.theguardian.com/media/article/2024/may/06/female-journalists-under-attack-as-press-freedom-falters#img-2
Perihan Kaya, a Kurdish journalist in exile in Switzerland, faces imprisonment in Turkey on terrorism charges. Photograph: Courtesy of Women Press Freedom
. . . .
Referring to the dystopian, patriarchal state depicted in The Handmaid’s Tale, Prof Julie Posetti, director of research at the Washington-based International Center for Journalists, said the rollback of women’s rights across the world, coupled with the political targeting of journalists and media organisations is, was creating a situation “close to Gilead in terms of digital and real-world threats facing women working in the media combined with the global assault on women’s rights happening in parallel. Women journalists sit at an epicentre of risk across the world.”
Posetti co-authored a global report for the UN on the online threats facing female journalists in 2021. “Five years ago, we looked at the storm of online harassment, threats and intimidation that women are facing online and this has only continued with the weaponisation of social media and artificial intelligence, and there is now no boundary between the offline and online world, where attacks in the digital space are now equally as present in the real world,” she said. “We’ve seen how these experiences are seeing women moving away from public-facing roles, pulling back from on-air positions or removing bylines, or leaving journalism entirely.”
. . . .
https://www.theguardian.com/media/article/2024/may/06/female-journalists-under-attack-as-press-freedom-falters#img-3
Indian journalists in Agartala protest in support of Palestinian journalists. Three in four female journalists have experienced a threat to their safety. Photograph: Majority World/Universal/Getty
. . . .
https://www.theguardian.com/media/article/2024/may/06/female-journalists-under-attack-as-press-freedom-falters#img-5
Alsu Kurmasheva, a Russian-American editor for the US government-funded Radio Free Europe, at a court hearing in Kazan, Russia, last month. She is accused of spreading ‘false information’ as a ‘foreign agent’ in a case seen as part of the Kremlin’s crackdown on free speech. Photograph: AP
. . . .
“In Russia, a Russian-American journalist, Alsu Kurmasheva, is locked in a five-metre cell and has been more than six months without hot water,” she said. “Her children haven’t heard from her since her unlawful detention. “During this time, we have pushed our advocacy to the White House along with other advocacy groups. Alsu’s case – from her detention to the response from her government to support her release – is symbolic of what women journalists around the world face. “Our greatest concern is that, added to this growing environment of threats and detentions, advocacy organisations like us face no support from democratic institutions, and the very citizens that these women risk their lives for look away when they are targeted.”
https://www.theguardian.com/media/article/2024/may/06/female-journalists-under-attack-as-press-freedom-falters