Coronavius Kills the Truth

The truth is the first victim in the war, says the old saying. The conclusion may be that journalists are often collateral damage. This has probably never been more universally true than in the ongoing battle against the coronary. Worldwide, both autocratic and democratic governments have responded to the epidemic by limiting information, criminalizing independent reporting, and attacking rapporteurs orally and sometimes physically.

<x) His organisation has drafted, what it says is a partial list of 200 cases of arrests, threats and harassment over media coverage. This includes the imprisonment of journalists in the Dominican Republic, Nigeria, Kenya, Ethiopia, Iran, Liberia, and Turkey.

No, no one has been arrested in the United States yet; President Trump has been restricted by being reviled and slandered by reporters participating in the daily reality show, which he calls a press conference. But Trump has given governments around the world a model for printing independent journalism of the epidemic: constructing “false news”.

In a website organised by the Aspen Institute last week, Simon released a long list of countries that have adopted new regulations or laws that criminalise false “reporting about the epidemic arbitration on what constitutes false information are governments themselves. Some are ordinary autocrat suspects: Vladimir Putin's Russia, Iran, Thailand, Zimbabwe. But a surprising number of states are usually thought to be democracy with freedom of speech guaranteed - Hungary, South Africa, and Bolivia.

One of the most extraordinary cases is India, where Prime Minister Narendra Modini has set a three-week impasse for 1.3 billion residents, which was necessary and made an extraordinary effort to block journalists, which was not necessary. The government postponed a verdict by India's Supreme Court, asking all media to publish only official information on pandemic. Although the court did not go that far, Mod has forced most of the media to behave as if it was approved by the Court.

It has already reduced the flow of this official information to a fraud. He has not yet held a press conference on Coronavirus; nor has the health minister. Instead, selected journalists are invited to receive reports from a low-level official. We are all quoting the new bureaucratic,” said Raksha Kumar, an independent journalist. She added to Aspen's Webinari, that only pro-Modit state media were allowed to ask questions at the conference.

Indian journalists who reject this regime are at great risk. Vidya Krishnan, an independent healthcare reporter, wrote articles showing the government's failure to collect protective equipment. Paralyzingly, officials labeled the articles as false “ ”, and it underwent the flow of cyberattacks. “In my work reporting on 17, almost 18 years of health, I've never seen anything like this,” said Krishnan in an interview with the Committee for the Protection of Journalists. “I've been called no patriots, called traitors, people demand that I be immediately arrested for spreading false news”.

Krishnan's case is a typical illustration of the situation in many countries where attacks are directed against journalists who report shortages in medical equipment or suspect official figures in the number of infections or deaths. The zero case may have been Chen Qiushi, a Chinese journalist who travelled to Yehan in January and posted videos on YouTube, reporting that hospitals there were overloaded with patients and shortages in supplies.

On February 6, according to the Committee for the Protection of Journalists, Chen disappeared after telling his family that he planned to report from a temporary hospital. He hasn't been found yet.

There have been numerous similar occasions. Three Algerian journalists raising doubts about the results of tests by a state laboratory are being prosecuted. An Iranian journalist was arrested after criticising his government's failure to prepare for pandemic in Titter. In Haiti, eight journalists investigating whether a government office was forcing people to meet together were attacked by bandits.

Foreign correspondents weren't mine. Egypt expelled a correspondent from the British Guardian newspaper who questioned the official figures for infections; Iraq suspended Reuters office license in Baghdad because it did the same. Run from China last month of journalists from “The Post”, “New The York Times” and <x4Wall Street Journal” was not nominally connected to the epidemic, but there has been the effect of reducing independent reporting, at a time when the Xi Jinping regime is suspected of forging statistics.

Simon points out that China is openly expressing the idea that the control of information is essential to preventing the disease. “There is a big risk,” he said, that this argument “is taking place worldwide”. If that happens, a major reason will be that leading democracy in the world not only does nothing to stop the “the impression of Covid 19”, but its president is actively supporting it. / The Washington Post world.al