The 2020 World Press Freedom Index, compiled by Reporters Without Borders (RSF), notes a clear correlation between suppression of media freedom in response to the coronavirus pandemic, and a country’s ranking in the Index.
“The public health crisis provides authoritarian governments with an opportunity to implement the notorious ‘shock doctrine’ – to take advantage of the fact that politics are on hold, the public is stunned and protests are out of the question, in order to impose measures that would be impossible in normal times,” according to RSF secretary-general Christophe Deloire.
The next ten years, he believes, will...