World Press Freedom Day

  In a world where women and marginalized groups have made hard-won gains in public representation, a coordinated backlash is underway. Digital platforms – once tools of empowerment – are increasingly weaponized to silence, intimidate, and discredit women, particularly those in media, politics, and activism. Gendered disinformation, cyberviolence, and defamation campaigns are rising sharply, often backed by powerful political and economic forces. These attacks are not isolated; they reflect a broader, systemic effort to reinforce patriarchal control and reverse the progress toward equality. This chapter outlines the links between online and offline violence, the erosion of journalistic independence, and the misuse of laws to restrict women’s freedom of expression. It also calls for urgent action: from strengthening legal protections to reforming media structures and ensuring women’s access to justice and leadership.  What is at stake is freedom for women, for truth, for us all...

  Journalists and media actors sometimes even fac e several types of attacks at the same time, such as a verbal and a physical attack performed within the same incident by the same aggressor. In this section we show how many alerts involved a certain type of attack.   The types of attacks are grouped into 5 main types with detailed information provided below:        Physical: In more than 1 out of 5 incidents (21.1%, 132 alerts) media actors were physically attacked. In 49 incidents (7.8%) media actors were injured. Three journalists were killed: the investigative journalist Peter R. de Vries in the Netherlands, the television reporter and veteran crime reporter Giorgos Karaivaz in Greece, and the local radio presenter Hazım Özsu in Turkey.  Verbal: In more than 4 out of 10 incidents (41.1%, 257 alerts), media actors were verbally abused. This includes intimidation/threatening (25.2%, 158 alerts), insult/ab‐ use (78 alerts), discrediting (32), hara...

  In Italy a major concern for media freedom in 2021 was the safety of journalists reporting from anti-vaccine and anti-green pass protests. MapMF recorded 45 alerts, with 72 attacked persons or entities related to media. Hostility against the press including multiple serious physical attacks were documented by MapMF, with some journalists badly injured. Intimidation and harassment of journalists by anti-vaccine groups, both online and offline, was widespread, worsening an already dangerous climate for journalist’s safety. Meanwhile, 26 Mapping Media Freedom | Monitoring Report – 2021 Mapping Media Freedom | Monitoring Report – 2021; 27 vexatious lawsuits and SLAPPs targeting media outlets and threats against individual journalists from organised crime groups remain major concerns. Attacks and threats against journalists covering COVID-19-related protests were documented across the country, from Bo‐ logna and Florence to Rome. Overall, 36% of all alerts in Italy in 2021 were recor...

  Media freedom in Greece was thrust into the international spotlight in April 2021 when well-known Greek crime reporter Giorgos Karaivaz was gunned down out‐ side his house in Athens. He had returned home from a shift on a daytime show on Star TV when he was ambushed by two men on a moped and shot at least six times with a silenced weapon, killing him instantly. The assassination, the first of a journalist in Greece since 2010, shocked the country’s journalistic community and was met with pledges by the Prime Minis‐ ter to bring those responsible to justice. The killing also led to greater scrutiny of the suffocating climate for independent journalism in a fragmented landscape marked by a politically polarised press. Even before the assassination, 2021 began with a worrying start for Greece’s journalistic community. In January, a new plan for policing protests was launched by the Ministry of Civil Protection, raising concerns it could seriously limit the ability of journalists ...

  Media freedom in Slovenia continued to decline in 2021 under pressure from the government of Prime Minister Janez Janša. The country saw the seventh highest number of alerts on the MapMF platform with 29 alerts and 41 attacked persons or entities related to media, leading the Media Freedom Rapid Response (MFRR) to launch an online fact-finding mission in May to assess the situation. Increasing pressure on independent journalism during this time centred on the financial suffocation of the Slovenian Press Agency (STA) and increasing political in‐ terference at the public broadcaster. Con‐ cerningly, many of these violations were recorded while Slovenia held the rotating presidency of the Council of the EU.  At the beginning of the year, UKOM, the Government Communications Directorate, suspended the financing of the STA for the second time in three months, in what media rights groups called an attempt to destabilise the agency through financial blackmail. The PM and leading...