It is by now a storyline stitched into history, thanks to the popular press. In January 2011, tens of thousands of Egyptians took to Twitter and Facebook in a swell of rage that would ultimately topple an authoritarian government. Social media, this narrative went, would soon go on to reorder the Middle East.
But if you stuck with the story, as journalists Philip Bennett and Moises Naim have, you would know that it is the autocrats who are outmaneuvering their opponents now, and they’re using the internet to do so. The charges against fallen president Hosni Mubarak have been dropped, and the new repressive regime that now rules Egypt is thought to be devising a clandestine system to trace the conversations of Egyptian citizens on Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks. So much for the benign hand of the internet.
This digital tug-of-war between the oppressors and the oppressed is playing out well beyond the Arab world, as Bennett and Naim make clear in their authoritative piece on the new face of censorship. The world’s dictators may have been slow to adapt to new technology, but they’ve now leapfrogged those who would like to undo them. China is believed to have one of the most expansive surveillance systems in the world to monitor anything that smells of dissidence. But 21st-century censorship, as our authors describe it, comes in many flavors. In Venezuela, internet usage is rising while press freedom is on the wane. There, a popular strategy is to use shell companies as a kind of middleman between a tyrannical government and seemingly independent media outlets. The methods may vary but the outcome is the same: bare-knuckled censorship in a modern age. Hungary chokes the media into submission through taxes and fines. Pakistan favors bribes. Russia tosses rebellious editors out by the collar.
This despotic reign over the media draws far less publicity than does a street crowd of dissidents emboldened by their Twitter connection to the world. And that’s regrettable, since the lesser-known story is the one worth watching now.
These efforts at media suppression come at an especially grim moment for international reporting. The steady decline of foreign bureaus around the world has contributed to a volatile and dangerous climate in the field of international reporting. Seasoned and well-funded journalists are being supplanted by less-experienced and faintly resourced freelancers. In conflict zones, the situation is worse. Not only is there less money for extras like flak jackets and sat phones, extremists in these regions increasingly see foreign journalists as targets for ransom and retaliation.
But the crumbling economics of newsrooms created an opening for places like GlobalPost, as Alexis Sobel Fitts reports in a compelling piece in this issue. GlobalPost was born in part from the ashes of laid-off foreign journalists with the admirable mission of saving foreign reporting. Its for-profit model is simple: engineer a vast network of freelance journalists to produce work for a robust website of international news, funded mainly by advertisers and syndication arrangements. In many ways, GlobalPost has been a standout success, winning a prestigious George Polk Award and an Overseas Press Club Award, among others. It has also made a diligent attempt to support its staff in the field, but like other freelance-powered organizations, it has struggled to provide a living wage for its correspondents, and in some instances proper support.
Freelancers now represent about one third of the journalists imprisoned around the world, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Organizations trying to carry the mantle of international reporting deserve credit for their passion. But the job comes with responsibilities. Among them are providing freelancers in conflict zones with flak jackets, safety training, a place to sleep, and most of all, an editor on the other end of the phone line ready to lend advice.
Elizabeth Spayd is the editor in chief and publisher of CJR.