Disinformation and artificial intelligence are gaining weight through official propaganda campaigns and have become a growing challenge to press freedom around the world, according to Reporters Without Borders' (RSF) annual report. .
In its annual ranking for 2023, which assesses the situation in 180 countries, released yesterday, RSF highlights an unprecedented global decline, in which only three out of ten countries have a "satisfactory" situation. Of the total number of countries analyzed, in 31 press freedom is considered to be in a "very serious" situation, the lowest classification in the report, compared to 21 just two years ago.
Within the general volatility, RSF highlights Brazil's advance of 18 places (place 92), linked to the departure from power of the previous president, the far-right Jair Bolsonaro, or the fall of 31 in Senegal, which led the classification in Africa. The Secretary General of RSF, Christophe Deloire, highlighted the fragility of Latin America, a region with an index of murders of informants equivalent to that of countries at war.
RSF also points to disinformation campaigns, which it defines as the "deception industry". In this context, the development of generative artificial intelligence "has shaken the already fragile universe of the media", along with attitudes such as that of the owner of Twitter, Elon Musk, who "has taken to the extreme an arbitrary logic and of censorship".
A battleground fueled by the Ukraine war, where Russia "launched a media arsenal in record time" to spread its official discourse, which has seen it fall nine places in the rankings , up to No. 164. Since the start of the war, the Kremlin has stepped up its crackdown on critical media, forcing the vast majority into closure or exile. The persecution led to its latest victim last month, with the arrest of the American journalist of The Wall Street Journal Evan Gershkovich, accused of "espionage".
The situation of press freedom is "very serious" in 31 countries - an unprecedented figure -, "difficult" in 42, "problematic" in 55, "good" in 44 (almost all in Europe) and only "very good" in 8. That is to say, the conditions for practicing journalism are adverse in 7 out of 10 countries in the world.
Norway leads the list for the seventh consecutive year, followed by Ireland, which relegates Finland to third place. In the fourth is Sweden. The bottom of the ranking is closed by North Korea, in front of China, the largest prison for journalists in the world.
Among the main falls are the United States, where the murder of two journalists has had a negative impact on their position (45). The concentration of media in oligarchs close to Prime Minister Narendra Modi in India and the increasing repression of journalists in the run-up to the May 14 elections in Turkey (the democracy with the most jailed journalists) have brought down the two countries in the area of "very serious" situation.
Significant falls also in Tunisia, with an "increasingly authoritarian" president, and Peru (which loses 33 places, to 110), "where journalists pay the price of persistent instability".
