Reflections on Trust Conference 2024

By Barry Malone , Deputy Editor-in-Chief, Context Newsroom (Headline Media Partner, Trust Conference 2024)

There is perhaps no greater human instinct than to protect our children.

And Al Jazeera English Correspondent in Gaza Youmna El Sayed realised, after 72 days of relentless reporting on the devastation unleashed during the conflict in Israel-Gaza, that she no longer felt she could do that.

Her reporting, she believed, could directly lead to those she loved being killed in an Israeli strike.

“That's the worst feeling as a parent,” she told an audience at the Thomson Reuters Foundation’s Trust Conference. “Now you know that you are a direct threat and danger to your family.”

Youmna’s husband received a phone call from a person who identified himself as a member of the Israeli military, warning that their family should leave home or they could be killed.

Her 12-year-old daughter one day screamed: "They're going to kill us because of you."

So, Youmna’s decision was made. She and her family managed to evacuate soon afterwards.

Delegates at the conference, held in London last month, heard of journalists in exile, journalists facing spurious legal threats for holding power to account, journalists who had been imprisoned and, like Youmna, journalists whose lives were in peril for simply doing their jobs.

These obstacles to media freedom are growing and the stats couldn’t be clearer.

“The World Press Freedom Index compiled by Reporters Without Borders shows that a growing amount of governments around the world are actively undermining the ability of journalists to do their jobs,” Thomson Reuters Foundation CEO Antonio Zappulla told the conference.

In Vietnam, he said, 40 journalists are held captive. In China, it’s more than 100.

The latest figures from the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) show that a staggering 320 journalists are in prison around the world. It is the second highest figure recorded by CPJ since it started gathering statistics in 1992.

And journalists are still paying the ultimate price for their work, with the vast majority of those this year – 123, according to CPJ – killed by Israeli strikes in Gaza. CPJ has said that, in several of these cases, the journalists were directly targeted for assassination, which it classes as murder.

All of this comes at a time when building free, fair and informed societies – underpinned by an unencumbered media – has never been more important.

Trust Conference heard that global freedoms have declined for 18 consecutive years, according to Freedom House. Political rights and civil liberties have been eroded in 52 countries.

Compared to 10 years ago, almost all components of democracy are getting worse in more countries than they're getting better.

And journalists, as Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Ressa told the conference, are now having to navigate a fragmented information landscape where mis- and disinformation are flourishing.

“We became journalists because information is power,” she said. “Now, the corruption in the world has begun in the informational ecosystem.”

It’s all very bleak. But there are brave and determined journalists, activists and legal professionals holding the line and fighting back in an increasingly treacherous environment.

Sevgil Musaieva, chief editor of Ukrainska Pravda, told the conference that several organisations offered to evacuate her from Ukraine after the war broke out. But Sevgil refused, determined to stay in her country and document the horror and destruction unfolding.

Amu TV’s Lotfullah Najafizada, an Afghan journalist who left Afghanistan after the Taliban came to power, works with Afghan journalists in exile to get fact-based information into the country.

“Journalists are journalists whether they can travel to their country or not,” he said.

Lawyers, too, are stepping up as bogus legal threats are increasingly wielded against media workers by authoritarian governments. Those lawyers then often find they become targets themselves.

Human rights lawyer Caoilfhionn Gallagher, who has represented several high-profile journalists facing legal cases, recounted receiving threatening phone calls and being intimidated by Chinese state security at a UN building in Geneva.

“Those things are all quite frightening,” she said. “It’s designed to try to stop you doing your job. And it makes me think if they care this much about the lawyers … just think about how much they hate my clients. It makes me more determined to stick with it and do my job.”

For Youmna, while she is clear-eyed about the terrible risks and lifelong trauma journalists can suffer from their work, the reason to keep going is evident.

"My motivation was always that the suffering is ongoing and the world does not realise,” she said. “I've always thought of it as the people behind the story are more important than anything else.”