Threats to media freedom a reality

The ability of journalists to report freely on matters of public interest is vital to any democracy.

But threats to a free press are a sad reality, which international journalist Michael Holmes insisted is still impacting the profession across the board. The award-winning CNN journalist voiced his concern during the final meeting of the Rotary year held via Zoom last Thursday. Speaking to an audience that included the outgoing president of the Rotary Club of Barbados, Robin Ford, Holmes lamented that in a number of countries freedom of the press has already been eroded.

“Including in this country, [the United States of America] where freedoms are being rolled back almost daily by the Supreme Court. . . What we are seeing now in the US is A – an erosion of the media’s ability to have government access and B – being able to report without fear of retribution. And there are efforts, there was a case at the Supreme Court that thankfully did not take up … a case involving New York Times, it would roll back protections for the media not to be wantonly sued. It is not like defamation or libel… but for public figures to sue because they didn’t like the story,” he stressed.

A veteran journalist of almost 45 years, Holmes reiterated the seriousness of press freedom, noting with regret that the US has slipped down the rankings of the freedom index.

“You have seen that in all sorts of countries like Hungary [and] Holland, these are Western European nations, you are seeing an erosion of media freedoms. Forget about it if you are in Afghanistan or Mexico where journalists are being killed, 12 or 13 journalists in Mexico have been killed this year for doing their jobs. What we have seen in the US in recent years, and I will say under [Donald] Trump’s administration, is a vilification of the media. If you have a president who has a lot of activist supporters or armed militias, who describes the media doing its job as ‘the enemy of the people’, which let’s face it is what Stalin said, then you are in deep trouble.”

During his nearly one-hour-long address, Holmes, who has been anchoring his eponymous show on CNN since 2019, recounted several hair-raising experiences through his years in the field. As a war correspondent, he would have witnessed much gore and death covering grievous and high-profile stories including the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in December 1988 which left 259 people dead; the 20th anniversary of The Troubles, an ethno-nationalist conflict in Northern Ireland; the downing of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the Romanian revolution a month later; the Rwanda genocide in 1994 that saw some 800,000 people slaughtered in 100 days; the attack of the twin towers on September 11, 2001 and the fall of the Taliban. (KC)