Introduction
Journalists and journalism persecution cases are currently on the rise. Many journalists seeking to inform citizens about political, economic, social, and health affairs have been persecuted. While citizens need to receive credible, accurate, and unbiased news, which is only possible when journalists have freedom, the journalists who are seen to be diligent in their profession have been threatened, intimidated, arrested, and beaten up. For example, in the case of French journalists Claude Vernon and Ghislaine, who were kidnapped following their interview with a local political leader in Kidal, a town located in northern Mali. Later, their bodies were found riddled with gunshots outside the town. Also, newspapers have been banned. Notwithstanding, websites have also been blocked due to the delivery of credible and unbiased news or even revealing evil secrets by the government. Internet services have also been jammed. Therefore, clearly, due to such inhuman persecution of journalists and unexpected denials of the journalist by assorted dictators and immature democracies, news organizations are in agreement that there is a global assault on journalists and journalism. Accordingly, the paper aims to investigate how journalists’ targeting and intimidation weaken and damage their reporting.
Case study
Since 1992 when CPJ started compiling a detailed report on journalists’ deaths, Claude Vernon and Ghislaine Dupont, French government-funded Radio France Internationale journalists, were the first journalists to be killed in Mali. Gunmen kidnapped Dupont, a senior reporter, and Vernon, a sound engineer in Kidal town. This occurred at around 1 p.m after they had finished their interview with a leader of the National Movement for Liberian Azawad (NMLA), Ambery Ag Rissa. According to the news, since January 2013, when French-led intervention drove out militants linked to Al-Qaeda who had overtaken the Saharan northern half of the country, the security of Kidal, which is a stronghold of NMLA has been questionable. The two, Dupont and Vernon, were in their second assignment in Kidal after reporting first in July during Mali’s presidential elections.
According to the RFI report, Dupont, a 57-year-old journalist for over 25, covered African affairs for RFI. She covered the Ethiopia and Eritrea conflict, as well as civil wars in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola, and Sierra Leone, where she was expelled in retaliation for her reporting in 2006. Her colleagues referred to him as “Gigi,” and in September, she had been promoted to station’s editorial board. On the other hand, Verlon, a 55 year old veteran technician, joined RFI in 1982. He was known for his technical prowess and had traveled with news crews in Iraq, Afghanistan, around Africa, and Lebanon.
On Sunday in a press conference, Laurent Fabius, a French Foreign Minister, said that the two journalists’ bodies were found outside the town next to their vehicle. According to Fabius, Al-Qaeda-linked terrorists are to be blamed for the murder. A crime against a journalist is a double crime. In other words, it is a crime against the freedom of been informed and to inform and also a crime against individuals who are coldly killed in cruel circumstances.
Literature review
Since the launch of the Platform in 2015, the number of serious threat alerts to journalists has sharply increased. Notably, it has doubled on an annual basis. According to the UNESCO report, between 2014 and 2019, a total of 495 journalists were killed. This represents an 18% increase compared with the previous years. Journalist threats are not only physical but also verbal abuse. In 2018, in many member states, there is an evident trend in media public stigmatization and verbal abuse as well as individual journalists, including the elected officials, mostly in the run-up elections. These actions, which are mainly propagated over social media, the potential target are the brand media, in some cases eliciting hostility, hate, and violence against them. Such actions are entirely unacceptable and must be highly condemned. However, the worrying bit is that the Platform alerts highlight instances where the authorities have not adequately responded to the journalist complaints. Some examples of 2018 verbal abuse from the political leaders include publishing of a list of journalists who attempted to be government critics, who are termed as ‘traitors.’ At the same time, these political leaders make threats to reduce the sources of public press funding on the basis that it pollutes public debate with public money.
There are over 17 long-standing cases of impunity for journalists murder detailed by the Platform. As a result, this is a disturbing indicator of how state authorities have failed the strict obligation under freedom of expression in Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights. It states that effective investigations should be conducted, and justice be brought for those responsible. Highlighting on such actions of deplorable lack of progress, the Platform started a particular page on impunity for murder cases. In the same year, 2018, three impunity cases for serious journalists’ murder cases were alerted. Shockingly, none of the alerts on the impunity of murdered journalists has ever had noticeable progress. Notably, the Platform has all failings of evidence, delays that are unexplained, and domestic investigation ommissions, which indicates a lack of political will by the state’s member to present the masterminds and perpetrators of such crimes to justice. Further, they also point out failing related to corruption or negligence, inadequate legal frameworks, and a lack of judicial capacity and or independence.
After serious and verified threats to media freedom, the overall response rate from member countries, as reported by the Platform in 2018, is 39%. Such a level is very low based on the present increased number of impunity death cases of journalists. Notably, very few states have genuinely taken necessary actions such as reforms of laws and policies regarding journalists’ security and freedom. More efforts are needed to resolve the problem of journalists persecution and bring about considerable improvements in the protection of the journalist and journalism, generally the media freedom.
Research Design and Methodology
In addressing the research question, a systematic review of the literature was conducted using the rules proposed by Denyer & Tranfield (2009). A systematic literature review (SLR) is guided by a list of specific steps that function to ensure that each publication relevant on a particular topic and minimize bias in research and errors. The systematic literature review (SLR) process is in this study aims to help identify all the relevant literature on how the targeting and intimidation of journalists damage and weaken their reporting and select as well as synthesize the themes with respect to the research question in a rigorous, transparent and complete manner. Moreover, a review procedure was followed that was based on the iterative cycle of identifying the most appropriate search keywords, surveying the relevant studies, and at the last stage carrying out an analysis.
A review protocol is shown below that lays out the whole procedure, starting with the execution of the protocol to the collection of data and lastly final article retrievals, which were used for analysis and reviews. Table 1 shown below comprehensively describes the search database selection, the publication collection, and the criteria of filtering.
Table 1. Research protocol
| Research protocol | Details description |
| Research online database | Searches were conducted in Web of Science (WoS) and Google Scholar, which are the top citation database internationally with coverage of multidisciplinary high-impact journals in the sciences, social sciences, art, and humanities over 10000 in number (Caulfield, Rachul, & Zarzeczny,
2012). |
| Publication types | Only academic peer-reviewed literature was considered. The search was limited to journal articles to ensure that the research originated from scholarly sources. |
| Language | Only publications in English were considered. |
| Date range | The specific date range used to conduct the research was between 2016 up to date |
| Search fields | Title, abstracts, and keywords |
| Search keywords | TS= (“global assault on journalists and journalism ” AND (intimidation of journalists OR damage and weakening of reporting by journalist persecution OR persecution of journalists * OR Media freedom *)) |
| Inclusion criteria | Only publications that studied journalist persecution, assault and intimidation BD were selected. |
| Exclusion criteria | publications with pure or deep technical focus were eliminated. Studies on journalist persecution beyond the policy and justice for journalists were filtered out. |
Results
The two journalists, Claude Vernon and Ghislaine Dupont were abducted and shot dead by armed men in Kidal, who are believed to be members of Al Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). The killings of female journalists are higher compared to female journalists. For the past two years, 60% of the journalist killings occurred in non-conflict zones. The primary reason why journalists are being targeted is that they investigate political wrongdoings, corruption cases, and criminal groups.
