FREEDOM OF PRESS DEFINITION DOWNLOAD

The fifth version of Midjourney, an AI programme that generates very high-definition images in response to natural language requests, has been feeding social media with increasingly plausible and undetectable fake “photos”, including quite realistic-looking ones of Donald Trump being stopped by police officers and a comatose Julian Assange in a straitjacket, which went viral. And now AI is digesting content and regurgitating it in the form of syntheses that flout the principles of rigour and reliability. The disinformation industry disseminates manipulative content on a huge scale, as shown by an investigation by the Forbidden Stories consortium, a project co-founded by RSF. Meanwhile, Twitter owner Elon Musk is pushing an arbitrary, payment-based approach to information to the extreme, showing that platforms are quicksand for journalism.

The remarkable development of artificial intelligence is wreaking further havoc on the media world, which had already been undermined by Web 2.0. The unprecedented ability to tamper with content is being used to undermine those who embody quality journalism and weaken journalism itself. The difference is being blurred between true and false, real and artificial, facts and artifices, jeopardising the right to information. In 118 countries (two-thirds of the 180 countries evaluated by the Index), most of the Index questionnaire’s respondents reported that political actors in their countries were often or systematically involved in massive disinformation or propaganda campaigns. The 2023 Index spotlights the rapid effects that the digital ecosystem’s fake content industry has had on press freedom. The volatility is also the consequence of growth in the fake content industry, which produces and distributes disinformation and provides the tools for manufacturing it.Ĭhristophe Deloire, RSF Secretary-General This instability is the result of increased aggressiveness on the part of the authorities in many countries and growing animosity towards journalists on social media and in the physical world. 'The World Press Freedom Index shows enormous volatility in situations, with major rises and falls and unprecedented changes, such as Brazil’s 18-place rise and Senegal’s 31-place fall. The last three places are occupied solely by Asian countries: Vietnam (178th), which has almost completed its hunt of independent reporters and commentators China (down 4 at 179th), the world’s biggest jailer of journalists and one of the biggest exporters of propaganda content and, to no great surprise, North Korea (180th). There are changes at the bottom of the Index, too.

The Netherlands (6th) has risen 22 places, recovering the position it had in 2021, before crime reporter Peter R. But – unusually – a non-Nordic country is ranked second, namely Ireland (up 4 places at 2nd), ahead of Denmark (down 1 place at 3rd). Norway is ranked first for the seventh year running. In other words, the environment for journalism is “bad” in seven out of ten countries, and satisfactory in only three out of ten. The 21st edition of the World Press Freedom Index, compiled annually by Reporters Without Borders (RSF), sheds light on major and often radical changes linked to political, social and technological upheavals.Īccording to the 2023 World Press Freedom Index – which evaluates the environment for journalism in 180 countries and territories and is published on World Press Freedom Day (3 May) – the situation is “very serious” in 31 countries, “difficult” in 42, “problematic” in 55, and “good” or “satisfactory” in 52 countries.

FREEDOM OF PRESS DEFINITION DOWNLOAD

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Freedom of press definition