Press freedom under attack: our journalists bear witness

Kai Reusser / swissinfo.ch

Today is World Press Freedom Day. The basic right to a free press is challenged in many countries in the world. China, Russia and Mexico are only the most glaring examples. Even here in Switzerland press freedom needs defending.

Many of our journalists at SWI swissinfo.ch have exercised their trade in countries where press freedom is under attack.

A number of them have known what it’s like to work in an unfree media environment.

In the course of their work, our journalists have encountered skeptical police officers who only laughed when they cited the freedom of information supposedly in force in Tunisia, or had to experience what a single critical question addressed to Vladimir Putin can have for consequences.

In today’s article, as well as looking at press freedom in Mexico and China, we will focus on a related issue in Switzerland. Marie Maurisse and François Pilet of Gotham City show what obstacles can be put in the way of journalists who report on economic crime in Switzerland. Gotham City is a regular media partner of SWI swissinfo.ch.

Read about conflicts with Vladimir Putin’s regime, which have been routine for our reporter Elena Servettaz since she was 16:

Read how the Interior Ministry in Tunisia had to reveal information for the first time under the freedom of information principle to our reporter Amal Mekki:

Three decades of censorship and attacks on journalists

by Patricia Islas, Mexico

SWI swissinfo.ch journalist Patricia Islas. swissinfo.ch

When I started my career as a journalist in 1987, I found myself face to face with Mexico’s censorship. “No criticism of national policy” was the rule in private-sector TV broadcasting. Investigative journalists had only one avenue open to them – using injustices in foreign countries to mirror the situation at home. They might talk about how a few families had a stranglehold on the countries in Central America to the south, or, over in Europe, crimes against humanity in the former Yugoslavia during the early 1990s. I had to learn to keep my voice down.

In those days in Mexico it was an open secret that TV broadcasting was censored. So I changed over to newspaper work. This gave me a certain freedom. But there too there were limits.

In the run-up to the 1994 elections I was given an assignment from my paper, which was supposed to be an independent news outlet. I was to follow a particular politician around from morning to night – he later became the candidate for the long-term governing party. I couldn’t do any real reporting. I mainly had to send in accounts of the politician’s doings to my superior. This was not my idea of journalism. My job was making me sick.

A few weeks after I quit that assignment, the presidential candidate was the victim of an assassination.

This murder sent shock waves through the Mexican political world and marked the beginning of the dominance of organised crime in Mexico. The result was a redistribution of political power and power in the media. Now it was not the state itself, but the owners of media concerns who carried out censorship – in accordance with their own interests and political preferences.

 It is 30 years since I left Mexico, and there is hardly a freer working environment in the country now than there was then. The “shadow state” of organised crime kills my colleagues with impunity, if they don’t like what they write. In 2023, four journalists in Mexico were murdered. As for 2024, violence against journalists is only expected to increase. This is an election year.

How foreign correspondents are forced out of China

by a member of our Chinese editorial staff

China, the second-rank economic power in the world with its population of 1.4 billion, is obviously an attractive assignment for foreign correspondents. Switzerland with its few crises and high cost of living is not so interesting in comparison!

As a journalist from China I am often surprised by how willing people in Swiss government departments are to answer each and every question and give journalists from abroad an insight into things. Swiss federal and cantonal governments, academic institutes and research centres, universities and multinational companies often provide a great deal of information to foreign correspondents resident here.

In China, on the other hand, a bad situation seems to be getting worse. Given the current geopolitical tensions, some countries – China in particular – have developed a more hostile attitude to foreign journalists. They are quite likely to question their legitimacy, deny them residency, or condemn them as mouthpieces for enemy propaganda, as a threat to national security, or even as spreaders of fake news. China relies on “visa blackmail” to prevent these journalists from doing their job.

During the Covid pandemic China increased its intimidation and harassment of foreign journalists and their sources.

Correspondents of several foreign media in China, including the Swiss French-language public broadcaster RTS, were arrested when they reported on demonstrations against the zero-covid policy in Shanghai. A BBC journalist was even assaulted. Many of the international correspondents were compelled to leave China and go across the border to report on China, say from Singapore or from Taiwan’s capital Taipei.

Foreign correspondents in Switzerland, on the other hand, have enjoyed good conditions since the 1960sExternal link. The professional independence of foreign journalists is for the most part respected – along with their right to information, their right to criticise, and their function as a critical view from outside.

In Switzerland too, information has its price

by Marie Maurisse and François Pilet, the founders of Gotham City, a regular media partner of SWI swissinfo.ch

Journalist Marie Maurisse, left, and François Pilet from Gotham City. Keystone / Dominic Steinmann

In Switzerland, journalists are fortunately not threatened by violence or guns – but by court cases. Since the start-up of Gotham City in 2017, we have had to deal with about ten lawsuits. Most of these were filed under Article 28External link of the Civil Law Code, which protects the person’s right to privacy.

So our opponents don’t exactly accuse us of libelling them. Gotham City relies systematically on publicly available legal documents or documents which we have free access to as journalists. Turning up this information is hard enough work.

Yet the people mentioned in our articles do not want to be named, but to maintain anonymity as private individuals. Their identities do not need to be revealed, they say, because they are not sufficiently well-known for their identity to be of public interest. Time and again, this is the matter courts are being asked to rule on.

At the moment a former banker, who is accused of hiding millions from the Swiss taxman, is trying to halt publication of an article naming him. Here again we maintain that this information is of public concern. We are waiting for a court decision.

For an independent media outlet like Gotham City this fight for information has a price: several thousand francs per year. We have to spend that amount on lawyers’ fees and court costs. For two years now, the group batfund.chExternal link has been collecting money to defray our legal costs. In Switzerland we are not the only ones being hit with these gag lawsuits. Several NGOs such as Amnesty International have condemned the practice. Yet the political majority in ParliamentExternal link sees no need for action on the issue.

Edited by Benjamin von Wyl and Samuel Jaberg

Adapted from German by Terence MacNamee/subbed ds