The number of people that live in countries where they are not free to express opinions and beliefs or freely access information has surged in the last year, according to a new report.

Some 4.2 billion people – over half (53%) of the global population – live in 39 countries deemed to be facing a crisis of freedom of expression, meaning that they cannot freely express their views or access information without serious consequences, according to the annual Global Expression Report from human rights NGO, Article 19.

This is higher than during any time in the current century and up from 34% of people in 2022 – driven largely by the fall of India, the world’s most populous country, into the “crisis” category in 2023.

These 4.2 billion are among more than three quarters (77%) of the world's population – more than six billion people – who live in places where freedom of expression is considered to be "in crisis", "severely restricted" or "restricted", the worst three among the five possible categories designated by Article 19.

While the annual ranking looks at how much freedom of expression everyone has in society - and not just journalists - Article 19 executive director, Quinn McKew told Press Gazette that press freedom continues to suffer around the world.

McKew said: "In the past year, 29 countries declined on the indicators relating to media freedoms, with only 12 advancing. In the past decade, the discrepancy is even starker - 94 countries have seen a decline in media freedoms, while only 29 have seen an advance.

"We know media freedom is essential for a proper functioning of democracy. Too many leaders around the world see it as a threat to their entrenched power, and authorities are determined to silence the press. We’re seeing this every day in all the corners of the world - India where prime minister Modi and his followers routinely harass the media, particularly female journalists, force online platforms to block independent media content or even jail journalists too critical of the current regime; in Argentina where Javier Milei shut down the country’s biggest news agency; or in Tunisia, where a number of journalists have been detained in the latest wave of arrests of civil society, political opposition and the media.

"Even in the European Union, press freedom comes under attack: most recently in Italy, where Georgia Meloni attempts to turn the public broadcaster into a mouthpiece of her government."

Over the past decade, freedom of expression has deteriorated sharply. Some 6.2 billion people in 78 countries - over 80% of the global population - are less free to express their views and opinions now than ten years ago. In contrast, just one in 25 - or 303 million - people live in countries where the expression environment has improved since 2013. As a consequence, only one in four (23%) people today live in countries rated by Article 19 as "open" or "less restricted" - the highest among their five categories.

On a country-by-country level, the picture is similar. In 2023, just eight countries were considered to be "open" or "less restricted", down from 13 ten years ago.

Alongside a critical decline in media freedom, India is one of the countries that has seen the biggest declines in freedom of expression overall in the past decade. Its expression score (where 100 is the best score a country can be awarded) has plummeted 35 points since 2014 when current hardline Hindu nationalist prime minister, Narendra Modi took office, forcing the country from the "severely restricted" to "crisis" category.

India is among nine countries including Ethiopia, Ecuador and Moldova that fell into a worse freedom of expression category in the last year,

McKew said: "This year’s Global Expression Report sounds a very loud alarm bell. At no point in the last 20 years have so many people been denied the benefits of open societies, like the ability to voice opinions, access a free media or participate in free and open elections.

"India’s decline has happened in plain sight, yet it’s a story not many want to talk about. The data is clear - the first signs of an erosion of democracy come from attacks on expression. Given that India touts itself as the ‘world’s largest democracy’, the silencing of voices should be of major global concern.

"But violations of freedoms happen every day and around the world, as leaders degrade our freedoms one by one. Many do so through subtle policy changes presented in the name of ‘public safety’, 'morality’ or ‘national security’ - tightening the net until there is no room left to breathe.

Five countries improve their category

While the general trajectory has been towards deterioration, Brazil is among five countries that bucked the downward trend. Following former Prime Minister Jair Bolsonaro’s defeat in 2022, Brazil’s expression score increased by 26 points in the last year, bringing the country back into "open" category. The country had dropped into the "restricted" category in 2019, following Bolsonaro’s victory. Among the improvements seen in Brazil in the last year according to Article 19 has been less harassment of journalists.

UK freedom of expression: worse than its peers

Despite ranking as "open", the UK (rank 33) is below Belgium (4), Ireland (8), Germany (9) and France (22). It is one of several non-authoritarian states that has taken a hit to its freedom of expression in recent years, having lost seven expression points since 2000, declining from a score of 88 to 81 over this period. Last year McKew told Press Gazette that the 'war on woke', curbs on the rights to protest, and the push to withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights as among negative developments pushing down the UK's score.

On press freedom, McKew said this year that the UK's anti-SLAPP bill was a "positive" development. The bill intended to protect those who speak out on matters of public interest against lawsuits meant to silence has government support and is currently working its way into legislation. She added however that "more needs to be done to strengthen it to ensure that it lives up to its promise of protecting journalists against vexatious lawsuits."

She added: "This year, we’ve seen worrying signs of authoritarian regimes being increasingly emboldened to target journalists outside of their borders - the attack on Pouria Zeraati, journalist at Iran International, was a shocking reminder of that.

"The UK government must take those attacks seriously and do more to help ensure that journalists in exile can still consider the UK a safe-haven where they can continue their important work.

"The ongoing imprisonment of Julian Assange is also an affront to press freedom in the UK - though [Monday's] court decision to grant him a right to appeal is a step in the positive direction."

Threat to press freedom in conflict contexts

Russia was among the countries singled out in the report last year for a serious decline in freedom of expression as the government forced hundreds of Russia journalists into exile amid its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Russia which remains in the crisis category saw a further deterioration in its score this year, falling from seven points in 2022 to four in 2023 as the conflict continues to stifle freedom of expression in and outside the country.

"Two years on, Putin’s regime continues to threaten and undermine those operating outside of Russia, while targeting those still in the country, persecuting voices critical of the war under spurious charges of ‘extremism’ or spreading ‘fake news’ about Russia's military," said McKew. "A bigger problem is the continued corrosive influence of Russia outside Russia as a key part of its war on western democracy. For example, the recent “foreign agent” legislation in Georgia took a page directly from the Kremlin."

Elsewhere, wars such as the ongoing conflict in Gaza have also led to attacks on freedom of the media. At least 105 journalists and media workers have been killed so far in the conflict which began on 7 October last year. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, the conflict was a source of 75% of all journalist deaths worldwide in 2023 and Israel is now the sixth-worst jailer of journalists in the world. While it remains in the "less restricted category", Israel's expression score has fallen from 74 in 2022 to 69 in 2023.

McKew said: "Since 7 October, Israel has critically undermined press freedom and taken actions which inhibit vital, independent reporting on the conflict. Foreign media still face severe restrictions on access to Gaza, denying their audiences access to objective information about ongoing hostilities and human rights violations. The banning of Al Jazeera, one of the only international outlets operating from inside Gaza, at the start of May was another example of Israel’s dangerous attempts to control the narrative of the war and censor essential independent reporting about it."

Sudan meanwhile, another state in conflict, languishes in the crisis category for another year, having declined from 15 to 10 points.

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Outgoing BBC World Service director Liliane Landor has warned the organisation “cannot be overtaken by better-resourced competitors” in a speech urging proper resourcing for the service.

Speaking at one of a series of events spotlighting the work of the World Service Landor said the BBC “cannot afford to be left behind through economic necessity” as Russia and China step up investment in their foreign-facing media efforts.

Landor’s speech led into a series of presentations about the World Service’s use of open-source intelligence techniques to investigate stories overseas, touching on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Chinese involvement in Africa and the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.

Landor said that “72% of our audience comes from countries with no or low media freedom”, which she said meant World Service journalists operate “in a very challenging environment”.

The World Service announced last week that more than 300 of its journalists, approximately 15% of the total, are working in exile.

‘In order to compete, we need resources’

Historically funded by the Foreign Office, since 2014 the World Service has been mostly paid for through the licence fee with partial support from the Government. In the most recent financial year the World Service was funded with £249m from the licence fee and £103m from the UK Government.

The week before Landor made her speech the House of Commons International Development Committee launched an inquiry into the future of funding the service, apparently prompted by remarks made in March by BBC director-general Tim Davie in which he said “we cannot keep asking UK Licence Fee payers to invest in [the World Service] when we face cuts to UK services…

“Russia and China are investing hard, and not properly funding one of the UK’s most valuable soft power assets makes no sense economically or culturally.”

Landor told the audience last week that “the challenge for me, for us, is how to remain present on the ground and relevant for our audiences amongst fierce competition from state actors like Russia and China”, who she said were “investing heavily in Africa, in Asia, in the Caribbean, in the Middle East, in old and new Media”.

“We need to compete. And in order to compete, we need resources, and we need to remain relevant.”

Neither China nor Russia are new to international, English-language broadcasting, but in the past decade news outlets associated with their governments have become much more prominent than before.

In December Press Gazette reported Chinese state broadcaster CGTN has set up a “content exchange” through which it distributes free, professional-quality video news packages to any newsrooms that want them. Some of the content advances the goals or viewpoint of the Chinese government, for example regarding the large-scale detention of Uyghurs in Xinjiang.

Last month Landor informed colleagues she will be leaving the World Service in July, saying she was "deeply concerned about the operational capability of the World Service if additional cuts continue to weaken it further".

Speaking last week, she said: “Ultimately… what the World Service needs in order to remain an effective broadcaster has not changed since its inception. It's about three things, simple things: we need sustainable funding, we need unwavering editorial independence and we need a clear strategic purpose…

“We cannot be overtaken by better-resourced competitors. And we simply cannot afford to be left behind through economic necessity. We cannot allow the World Service to be depleted.”

In 2022 the BBC announced plans to shed nearly 400 jobs in the World Service, end ten foreign language radio services and move seven foreign language services online-only as part of a cost-cutting exercise. The licence fee has been under strain recently after it was frozen against inflation for two years, creating what the corporation says will ultimately be a £400m funding shortfall by the end of the current settlement in 2027.

The most recent BBC annual report revealed the weekly reach of the World Service had declined 12% year-on-year to 318 million people.

During a question and answer session after the presentations last week, BBC Africa Eye executive producer Daniel Adamson similarly said that “no other country in the world has anything like” the World Service.

“The Russians and the Chinese would love to have something that has 10% of the reach of the World Service… but it's too late now — there is only one, and it has been created over a century. It could not be created now.”

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The Wall Street Journal is aiming to act as “an employer our employees want us to be” as it pushes for the release of reporter Evan Gershkovich one year on from his arrest in Russia.

Paul Beckett, formerly Washington bureau chief for the WSJ, initially worked informally on attempts to free Gershkovich but it became his sole responsibility when he was appointed assistant editor in the autumn.

US-born Gershkovich was arrested on 29 March 2023, while covering Russian mercenary group Wagner, on espionage charges firmly denied by the WSJ and the US. His pre-trial detention has repeatedly been extended, taking him up to the one-year mark this week.

Beckett told Press Gazette that despite its best efforts the WSJ is as “in the dark” about Russia’s reasoning for the arrest as anyone.

“The Russian system is so opaque,” he said. “We’ve seen no evidence, we’ve heard a few statements from the government, but otherwise, we’re in the dark.”

Asked about the 32-year-old’s state of mind, Beckett said: “He’s working very hard on staying okay. He’s a resilient young man. He meditates, he exercises, he writes letters, he reads, he plays chess with his father in Philadelphia.

“Dow Jones has lawyers who see him every week and see how he is doing.” Gershkovich is being held in Lefortovo prison in Moscow, where he spends 23 hours a day in a small cell.

‘We know we can’t solve this ourselves’

Beckett said that keeping up the efforts to secure Gershkovich’s release has required “every part of the news organisation”.

He said there were four pillars through which the WSJ, owned by News Corp’s Dow Jones, is sustaining support for its reporter.

“The first category is relations with the US government which is maintained by external lawyers and internal Dow Jones lawyers, because they will ultimately be the ones who get him out,” Beckett said.

“Secondly, for Evan, we try to provide practical and emotional support – even things you don’t think about like making sure his bank account and Google account remain active.

“Third is about being an employer our employees want us to be and ensuring that the newsroom is involved in efforts to keep him in the spotlight.

“Lastly, there is the broader awareness campaign because we know we can’t solve this ourselves.”

‘Every Dow Jones department involved’ in keeping spotlight on Gershkovich

Beckett added that the whole team is involved in keeping awareness up: “We’ve had to bring together so many WSJ departments to keep the spotlight shining.

“Every department at Dow Jones has probably touched this in one way or another, to varying degrees of course.”

For example to mark the one-year anniversary of his arrest, the WSJ is offering print adverts to papers that would like to run them. Similar ads were offered after Gershkovich was imprisoned for 100 days with, Beckett said, a significant response.

The editorial department created a page, sitting outside the usual WSJ paywall, with updates on Gershkovich’s case.

The hashtag #IStandWithEvan has helped spread awareness, with its usage growing each time Gershkovich appears in court.

Other journalists have also done their bit, Beckett added: “CNN anchor Jake Tapper interviewed Gershkovich’s parents and has tweeted daily about the efforts to get Evans home which has helped.”

Following Gershkovich’s arrest, the WSJ withdrew all its foreign correspondents from Russia. He was later named one of the 100 most influential people of 2023 by Time magazine.

Before joining the WSJ, Gershkovich worked at Agence France-Presse, The Moscow Times and The New York Times.

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Local news deserts are a growing concern for democracy in the UK, but in Ukraine they are seen as a barrier to national recovery following the Russian invasion.

Research by the EU-funded Media Development Foundation has 13 rayons (or districts) of the country which are now devoid of independent local news (see main picture). The research has so far only looked at 11 out of Ukraine’s 24 oblasts (administrative areas).

Severely damaged Ukrainian regions were investigated to piece together the damage and decline of local journalism. The project found that journalism is essential to the nation’s recovery and attraction of foreign direct investment (FDI).

Launched in 2013, the Media Development Foundation (MDF) focuses on capacity building for independent local publishers.

The project’s head of research Maksym Sribnyi told Press Gazette how the project aims to raise awareness about Ukraine’s lack of local reporting and in turn, channel aid and investment into independent Ukrainian media.

He said: “The 11 regions we have covered in this first stage of research are recipients of aid from different countries.

“Local media is essential to overseeing this recovery process as it provides insight into the needs of each area.”

He added: “The idea of mapping news deserts was floating around before the war – but the full-scale invasion accelerated the need.

“The map of Ukrainian media organisations has been reshuffled thrice over ten years so we are not as aware of the regional situation as we should be.”

In the 11 regions covered, the team found 879 operating editorial teams. Kharkiv and Donetsk hosted the most independent editorial teams (14 and 13 respectively).

However, many deserts appear to be growing, such as in the case of Luhansk where many media outlets have disappeared since the Russian occupation.

The research found that in some cases, newspapers entirely consisted of reprinted press releases, suggesting they are operated from outside the local area, with no grounded or contextual understanding.

Andrey Boborykin, a resident expert with the MDF, oversaw the methodology and findings. He explained: “Ukraine has not performed well in terms of corruption, and of course, this has been present on the local level.

“Independent local journalism is essential in holding authorities accountable, so we see a direct correlation between safeguarding FDI and safeguarding the health of local media.”

He stressed the importance of integrating independent journalism into foreign aid packages, underlining how it is currently underrepresented.

Boborykin said the rapid decline of the digital advertising economy since the war has had extreme consequences on independent journalism.

He said: “The overall downturn in the economy makes the independent publishing sector even more reliant on support.

“At this time, it is hard to advise Ukrainian publishers anything but to work with international donor funds.”

However, Boborykin anticipates a change in the reader revenue economy.

He explained: “Our population has previously not been used to digital donations but they are now more comfortable with this since Ukrainians have been donating for military needs.

“This familiarity could help local newsrooms in the future.”

The investigation’s methodology is complex and has some gaps, which the researchers have themselves highlighted.

The research only acknowledged media outlets with at least some online presence, found it difficult to collect information from temporarily occupied territories, and ignored media outlets which did not indicate their ownership structure or focussed on too specific a topic.

They hope to expand their research to map the entire of Ukraine by May.

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The Russian government has added more than a dozen journalists and media executives to its list of individuals banned from entering the country.

All of the newly-added media names are associated with either the BBC, Guardian News and Media or the Daily Telegraph.

The Russian foreign ministry said it was responding to “the aggressive anti-Russia policy pursued by Ldaondon” and that “work on expanding Russia’s blacklist in response to Britain’s actions is ongoing”.

The 13 new additions join a group already including the likes of Guardian editor Kath Viner, Daily Mail editor Ted Verity, BBC director-general Tim Davie, and presenters Piers Morgan and Huw Edwards.

[From August last year: Russia declares war on UK journalists – 41 leading editors and reporters sanctioned]

The foreign ministry referred to the newly-banned group of journalists as “Russophobia-charged officials and correspondents” publishing “propaganda support for the Zelensky regime”.

They include BBC News chief executive Deborah Turness, analysis editor Ros Atkins, disinformation correspondent Marianna Spring and two journalists working in the corporation’s new “BBC Verify” effort.

In The Guardian group are the newsbrand’s world affairs editor Julian Borger, chief reporter Daniel Boffey, columnist Emily Bell and both GNM’s chairperson and its chief financial and operating officer.

The three Telegraph journalists added, Colin Freeman, Francis Dearnley and David Knowles, all work on the publisher’s “Ukraine: the latest” podcast.

Dearnley, The Telegraph’s assistant comment editor, said on Twitter he was “proud” to have been sanctioned.

Also appearing on Friday’s list was Culture Secretary Lucy Frazer, who the Russian government said “actively lobbies to bar Russian athletes from international sports”.

The Russian government said the journalists added were “implicated in fabricating fraudulent anti-Russia stories to be promoted in the media and in spreading false information about our country as they are trying to prevent and cut short attempts at impartial coverage of the developments in Ukraine and to exclude signs of dissent by using methods described by George Orwell in his novels 1984 and Animal Farm”.

Asked by Semafor editor Ben Smith about his reaction to finding out he’d been banned, The Guardian’s Borger said: “I felt a surge of pride at first, imagining my writing had unsettled the Kremlin, but when I saw the full list of names it looked more like they had been chosen almost at random, either by an algorithm or an intern in a hurry.”

Indeed, one name on the list is The Telegraph’s chief people officer Mark Musgrave. The list also includes a “Keith Freeman” – apparently a misspelling of Colin Freeman’s name. The only article on telegraph.co.uk under the Keith Freeman byline is headlined “‘The UK’s patient zero was one of my hotel guests'” and was written by the chief operating officer of a network of short-stay apartments.

Full list of journalists and media executives newly banned from Russia:

• BBC News chief executive Deborah Turness
• BBC News disinformation correspondent Marianna Spring
• BBC analysis editor Ros Atkins
• BBC Verify data and investigative journalist Daniele Palumbo
• BBC Verify journalist Jake Horton
• Guardian News and Media chair Charles Gurassa
• Guardian chief financial and operating officer Keith Underwood
• Guardian columnist and Tow Center professor Emily Bell
• Guardian world affairs editor Julian Borger
• Guardian chief reporter Daniel Boffey
• Telegraph head of audio development and Ukraine podcast presenter David Knowles
• Telegraph chief people officer Mark Musgrave
• Telegraph assistant comment editor Francis Dearnley
• Former Sunday Telegraph chief foreign correspondent Colin Freeman

The previous list as published on Press Gazette is as follows:

• Shaun Walker: Correspondent, The Guardian
• Con Coughlin: Columnist for the Daily Telegraph
• Stuart Ramsay: Chief correspondent, Sky News
• James Rothwell: Journalist for the Daily Telegraph
• John Witherow: Editor-in-chief, The Times
• Chris Evans: Editor-in-chief of the Daily Telegraph
• Richard Sharp: Chairman of the Board of Governors, BBC
• Tim Davie: Director general and editor in chief, BBC
• Kath Viner: Editor-in-chief, The Guardian
• Clive Myrie: Presenter and foreign correspondent, BBC
• Orla Guerin: Foreign correspondent, BBC
• Nick Robinson: Today presenter, BBC
• Paul Adams: Diplomatic correspondent, BBC
• Nick Beake: Europe correspondent, BBC
• Alex Thomson: Chief correspondent, Channel 4 News
• Dan Rivers: Correspondent, ITV News
• Peter Beaumont: Reporter, The Guardian
• Emma Graham-Harrison: Reporter, The Guardian
• Sophy Ridge: Journalist and host, Sky News
• Cathy Newman: Journalist and host, Channel 4 News
• Ted Verity: Editor-in-chief, Daily Mail
• Christian Broughton: MD, The Independent
• Larisa Brown: Defence editor, The Times
• Mark Galeotti: Political scientist and freelance journalist
• Joe Barnes: Brussels correspondent, Daily Telegraph
• Gideon Rachman: Columnist for the Financial Times
• Luke Harding: Foreign correspondent, The Guardian
• Dominic Lawson: Columnist for The Sunday Times and Daily Mail
• Lawrence Freedman: Columnist for The Sunday Times
• David Aaronovitch: columnist for The Times
• Dan Sabbagh: Defence and security editor for The Guardian
• James Crisp: Europe editor for The Daily Telegraph
• David G Rose: Freelance
• Caroline Wheeler: Political editor for The Sunday Times
• John Ryley: Head of Sky News
• Jonathon Munro: Head of BBC News
• Edward Carr: Deputy editor of The Economist
• Jerome Starkey: Defence and Ukraine correspondent for The Sun
• Robert Peston: Political editor for ITV News
• Piers Morgan: Presenter at TalkTV
• Huw Edwards: Presenter for BBC News at Ten.

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Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich’s detention by Russian authorities has entered its 100th day.

The American journalist was arrested on 29 March on charges of espionage while working for the paper.

Both he and employer News Corp strongly deny the charges, which WSJ editor Emma Tucker described this week as “a brazen attack on journalism and the free press”.

News Corp has led a campaign to keep attention on Gershkovich’s imprisonment, and on Friday was coordinating a flurry of social media activity to highlight the 100-day milestone.

Journalists and supporters were asked to take part in a “social storm” at 3.30pm BST and 10.30am ET on Friday by posting group photos with #IStandWithEvan t-shirts and signs, links to the WSJ’s page about him, and pictures with the WSJ’s Friday print edition which will feature a special wraparound for the campaign. (Social cards and other assets relating to the campaign can be downloaded here.)

Who is Evan Gershkovich?

Gershkovich, the son of Soviet emigrants to the US, was arrested in Yekaterinburg while on a reporting trip covering the mercenary Wagner group.

He began working for the WSJ in January 2022, the month before Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. He had already been working as a journalist in Russia before that, having reported for The Moscow Times from 2017 to 2020 and then for AFP.

Gershkovich is said to be the first US journalist arrested in Russia since the end of the Cold War. He has twice appealed against his pretrial detention, and both times has been refused. The US government has said that it regards Gershkovich to have been wrongfully imprisoned.

After months with no signs of conciliation from Russia, this week Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters that “there are certain contacts [between the US and Russia] on this matter, but we do not want to make them public, they must be carried out and continued in complete silence”, a statement some have said suggests the possibility of a prisoner swap.

In May the defence and diplomatic editor of The Independent, Kim Sengupta, told a Reporters Without Borders panel that he suspected “the only route out now [for Gershkovich] would be some kind of a prisoner exchange”.

What has Wall Street Journal editor Emma Tucker said?

Tucker, who took over as WSJ editor in February, wrote to colleagues across the industry asking them “to keep Evan’s story front and centre”.

Tucker wrote: “All of us at the Wall Street Journal are moved by the show of support for Evan and his family from industry colleagues across the globe. Your assistance and news coverage are invaluable and deeply appreciated.

“People around the world see Evan’s arrest for what it is – a brazen attack on journalism and the free press. What remains a worrying reality is that if this can happen to Evan, it can happen to anyone, and it affects reporters across all our organisations. Attacks on the press have far-reaching consequences – not just for journalism and media but for governments and democracies everywhere.”

The BBC’s Russia editor Steve Rosenberg told the NewsXchange conference in Dublin last month that Gershkovich’s detention showed there was no way to safely report truthfully from Russia: “I try and say things how they are – if the authorities want to punish a journalist they’ll find a way of doing this.

“Even if you follow the letter of the law, they’d say you got a comma wrong.”

Marking the 100-day threshold, chief executive of the UK’s News Media Association Owen Meredith said: “The wrongful detention of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich is a full-throated assault on the fundamental principles of free speech and democracy. The work of courageous journalists like Evan is critical to ensuring that we understand as fully as possible the war in Ukraine and its horrific impact upon people’s lives.

“On this incredibly difficult 100-day milestone, we stand with Evan, his loved ones, and our colleagues across the global news media sector in calling for his immediate release. We all have a stake in this. Journalism is not a crime, and a free press is pivotal to maintaining a free society.”

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More than six billion people – 80% of the global population – have less freedom of expression than they had in the year 2000, according to a new report.

The Global Expression Report from UK-based free speech NGO Article 19 found that just 13% of the world’s population lived in countries classified as “open” in 2022, down from 22% at the turn of the 21st century.

Instead the largest share of the global population (34% or 2.7 billion people) lived in countries where the right to express opinions and beliefs and freely access information was in crisis.

The report found that 78% of global population – more than six billion people – lived in places where freedom of expression was considered to be “in crisis”, “severely restricted” or “restricted”, the worst three among the five possible categories.

While the report looked at the freedom of expression of everyone, not just journalists, Article 19's executive director Quinn McKew told Press Gazette it "has never been harder to be a journalist almost anywhere in the world in the past 30 years than it is right now".

She added: "We've seen declines across the board. Even in friendly countries, it is becoming much more challenging. You have cases of lawsuits being filed against journalists. In difficult countries in Europe and in other places, you have increasing physical threats against them as well."

Among the countries singled out by the report was Russia, which saw its score fall from 15 to seven in 2022. Press freedom in the country has worsened in the context of the ongoing war in Ukraine as the country’s leadership used the conflict as a pretext to step up persecution of journalists, protesters and dissenters. More than 250 media outlets including the BBC, Voice of America and Novaya Gazeta have since been blocked in Russia.

McKew said: "This year’s Global Expression Report shows very clearly: freedom of expression is in decline and under threat around the world. With 80% of us now living with less freedom of expression than at the start of the century, we need to ask ourselves the question: what can be done to reverse this trend?"

She added: "While conflicts and power grabs prominently erode democracy and human rights, much of the decline comes from consistent, incremental erosion: changes in policy in the name of misguided understandings of 'public safety' or 'economic efficiency', or gradual shifts in attitudes of those in power – in autocracies and democracies alike.

"As the crackdown on free expression intensifies, so must our efforts to call out abuses of those in power – the big and the small – and advocate for solutions that put human rights at their heart. The global problems facing our societies can only be solved with more people being able to express themselves and have greater access to information, to hold power to account."

UK freedom of expression: Press freedom high but 'war on woke' has impact

Although the top ten countries for freedom of expression were all in Europe, the region has become increasingly polarised. Two decades ago most countries in Europe were rated as "open" by Article 19. Now, 82% of people in Europe live in countries classified as falling into one of the two extremes - either "open" or "in crisis".

While the UK is classified as "open", at rank 34 it places lower than comparable European nations such as Ireland (8), Germany (9) and France (23). Denmark and Sweden came out on top as the two most open countries in both the region and globally.

Of the UK, McKew said: "We continue to see a government that is incredibly hostile to the exercise of individuals right to dissent that is exacerbated by all the anti-protest laws. All of these are being housed under this kind of 'war on woke'. But it's not a 'war on woke', it's a war on people's ability to speak and to say things that are unpopular and that's the fundamental reason why freedom of expression is considered a protected right, because it's saying things that are unpopular leads to change, leads to calling out of corruption and leads to calling out of discrimination.

"Unfortunately, with things like the continued curbs on the rights to protest, the Online Safety Bill which puts incredible amounts of surveillance on individuals, and the continued push to withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights, the entire environment in the UK for full protection of human rights and civil rights in particular is increasingly hostile and becomes more worrying."

Press freedom in the UK is, however, a bright spot, with McKew saying the UK is continuing to make "good progress" on legally combating SLAPPs (strategic lawsuits against public participation) - lawsuits aimed at silencing criticism.

"The fact that anti-SLAPP amendments have been added to the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency bill is great and a real step forward," she said

"This is happening at the time that we're seeing the anti-SLAPP directive work in the EU pulling back from making really positive strides. So the UK is continuing to push all of this which is great to see. We'd like to see it, of course, expand beyond thinking that anti-SLAPP regulation and laws should be put in place just for economic crimes, but should be more broadly applied so that journalistic freedom is not impinged in this way."

She added: "The UK press is still very robust and very diverse. I think sometimes the robustness and diversity of the press can mask some of the other underlying problems when it comes to freedom of expression in the country."

Decade-long decline in global freedom of expression

Globally, freedom of expression has been in decline for over a decade. Between 2012 and 2022, 6.3 billion people living in 81 countries saw their freedom of expression worsen, while just 452 million people in 21 countries saw it improve. Much of this decline, however, was gradual, with no new countries entering the "open" or "crisis" categories in 2022.

In contrast to the stark falls of Afghanistan and Myanmar in 2021, there were no big one-year declines in 2022. The report noted that 2022 was a year of "consolidating autocracies, entrenching repression, and ongoing silence". Autocratic regimes in Hong Kong (score 14), Nicaragua (score 2), Turkey (score 7) and Belarus (score 2) entrenched power and cracked down on dissent and protest, said the report.

The report also found that restrictive countries increasingly have more economic clout. In 2000, open countries accounted for 63% of global income, compared to 39% today.

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A prisoner exchange is the “only route out” of jail for detained Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, the defence and diplomatic editor of The Independent believes.

Kim Sengupta said he thought the Russian government is otherwise unlikely to release Gershkovich, who was arrested on a reporting trip in March under charges of espionage.

Sengupta was speaking on Wednesday morning at a panel convened in London by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and the Foreign Press Association for the launch of the 2023 World Press Freedom Index.

[Read more: Press Freedom Index 2023 – Russia slides down ranking amid global volatility]

Appearing alongside Sengupta, RSF London’s bureau director Fiona O’Brien said the British government needed to “stop pushing ‘business as usual’ lines” in its dealings with governments that detain journalists.

Russia fell nine places in the RSF Press Freedom Index for 2023, to 164th.

Sengupta, a longtime war correspondent who has been reporting from inside Ukraine since the country was invaded by Russia, told the audience at London’s Royal Over-Seas League: “It seems to me – talking to people at The Wall Street Journal – the only route out now [for Gershkovich] would be some kind of a prisoner exchange. The Russians are not going to free him any time soon.”

Sengupta said that “the situation in Ukraine is dangerous” for journalists, but not as dangerous as Iraq in “the really bad days”.

“But the difference is it’s the first war that many of us have covered [in which] two relatively modern states” were fighting, he said.

When covering Syria or Iraq during the insurgency, Sengupta said, journalists would “run into a checkpoint and if you were really unlucky, you’d get abducted.

“But here, if you’re unlucky, or you miscalculate, you run into a barrage of missiles.”

Sengupta said that early on in the war, a spot he had been at with a Sky News colleague was shelled ten minutes after his departure, killing four people.

“At one point in March, April last year, the [insurance] premium for a journalist [posted to Ukraine] was £15,000 a week,” he added.

[Read more: Why The Independent’s Geordie Greig and Bel Trew put footage of a murder in documentary about Ukraine]

Asked by Daily Express deputy political editor Martyn Brown whether the UK government was doing enough in the face of global press freedom abuses, RSF’s O’Brien said: “It’s not just about sticking up for press freedom… the UK needs to stop pushing ‘business as usual’ lines.

“So countries like China, at the same time as we have these massive abuses of human rights going on, we have the Foreign Secretary talking about the value of trade and welcoming Chinese dignitaries without ever raising issues that are essential to the values we claim to hold in this country.

“It’s two things that have to happen in tandem.”

The RSF is currently engaged in the campaign to free Hong Kong publisher Jimmy Lai, who is imprisoned in the city over lease fraud charges his lawyers contend are spurious. Lai faces at least ten further years in prison if found guilty of charges levied under Hong Kong’s new National Security Law.

China comes second to last in RSF’s 2023 index, at 179th. The only country with a lower score is North Korea.

[Read more: UK government silence over detention of Apple Daily owner Jimmy Lai ‘an outrage’]

O’Brien also said “a very practical thing that the UK can do right away is have an emergency visa scheme, in small numbers, for journalists, who need for the sake of their lives to escape the situation they’re in”, citing the cases of journalists trapped in Afghanistan by a hostile Taliban administration.

Former BBC World Service presenter Rana Rahimpour responded to Brown’s question saying that in her opinion the Government should “continue to fund BBC World Service”.

Referencing the closure of BBC Persian Radio and other non-English language services, Rahimpour said: “It’s a huge asset for this country to have a service that employs journalists from all over the world – some of the best journalists in their own countries – who are broadcasting impartial views to all these countries… You need to educate people about their rights so they can demand those rights.”

Rahimpour told the audience she had herself been the subject of targeted harassment after covering protests over the death in Iran of Mahsa Amini, receiving 500,000 abusive mentions on Twitter. A recording of a phone conversation Rahimpour had with her mother was also published online, she said, the same day her car was broken into at her home in London.

Citing the closure of Iran International Television‘s UK offices, she said: “The threat is now so serious that even in London, journalists are not feeling safe to cover Iran.”

But Rahimpour focused attention on the detentions of Niloufar Hamedi and Elahe Mohammadi, holding up a picture of the two journalists who originally broke news of Amini’s death. The pair, who were charged last week, have been in detention for 223 days as of Wednesday.

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The Independent’s international correspondent Bel Trew has said she wanted to avoid “fetishising” violence in the brand’s first feature-length film – although one scene showing a man being murdered sparked debate in the newsroom.

The documentary The Body in the Woods follows Trew and her team over a year in Ukraine as they attempt to identify the body of a teenage boy they found at an abandoned Russian camp in April 2022.

Trew, as well as recently-installed Independent editor-in-chief Geordie Greig and former editor Christian Broughton, were among those gathered at London’s Frontline Club on Tuesday for the UK premiere of the documentary.

Almost entirely avoiding footage of explosions or fighting, The Body in the Woods does feature one extended scene, shot at a distance from a Ukrainian military drone, in which a man is shot dead by Russian snipers.

Broughton, who is now the managing director of The Independent, said at a post-screening discussion panel that “there was some debate in the office” at how much of the footage should be included.

“To be frank, I was someone who initially questioned… seeing the moment by the roadside, particularly,” Broughton said. “You [Trew] were really strong, and actually I remember Geordie very much saw things as you did.”

Trew said: “There is often a focus on the violent side on the frontlines, and I think what you’ll notice in this film is that we’re not on the frontlines – partially, but you don’t see a single trench or a single soldier – and that was actually deliberate.

“So what you do see is violence, obviously, but it’s done in a way that doesn’t fetishise the killing, which is what I wanted to try and do. So we had a long conversation, particularly about the death of Maxim, who is the young man, the father, who you saw being shot in the drone footage – who was actually holding up his hands and saying the word ‘children’ – ‘I have a child in the car’ – when he was killed.”

Maxim had been driving west from Kyiv in the hope of escaping the city with his wife, son and a friend. Russian snipers fired on their vehicle, shooting out the engine and killing the mother.

Trew said she knew Maxim’s last words because “the female passenger, who you saw being led off by soldiers, she survived with his son, so I spoke to the family and I got the inside story of what happened there.

“And a lot of news outlets wouldn’t be able to show that moment where he is shot, but I think it’s important to show because he wasn’t doing anything but shouting ‘I have a child in the car’ and he was murdered and it’s actually very hard for me to watch that because I got to know his family.

“It’s a fine line between fetishising it, glorifying it, and showing what it is for what it is, and how pointless and unnecessary it is.”

In comments emailed after the screening, Greig told Press Gazette: “War is always ugly and difficult to report and with Bel’s groundbreaking documentary, shot in the middle of the war in Ukraine, we had intense discussions as to what imagery is acceptable to show, as it includes some disturbing scenes which we did think necessary for the particular narrative of war that Bel has explored.

“We wanted to maintain impact but to also show due sensitivity as to what was broadcast. Independent TV is in the vanguard of journalism, going to places where light is shone on difficult truths. That always leads to debate by reporters and editors as to what make good journalism in a way that is responsible and sensitive to those affected in the war as well as our viewers.”

The Body in the Woods is the first longer documentary film produced by The Independent, which launched Independent TV in September 2020.

Introducing the film, which can be watched for free on the news brand’s website, Greig said it was a “great moment in the history of The Independent”.

“It’s a great milestone in what we do and I want to pay tribute to Bel and to the team who’ve made this happen.

“The cliche, which is often the truth, is that truth often gets lost in war. Well the truth has been found in this narrative, which is moving, which is courageous, and which sheds light on a shadowy hinterland of war for people who were there during the bombing, during the violence, and who have to pick up the pieces.”

Greig became editor of The Independent in January, filling a longstanding vacancy at the Lebedev-owned, online-only newspaper since Broughton’s appointment as managing director in October 2020.

Greig had previously been editor of the Mail on Sunday from 2012 until 2018 and then of the Daily Mail between 2018 and November 2021.

He recently made his first public comments on his ousting from the Mail, telling Radio 4’s Media Show: “I am of the simple belief that editors are a bit like football managers, that the owner of the club has a right to move the personnel around.”

Greig finished his remarks at the screening by saying: “It’s a remarkable piece of reporting and Bel, who I’ve known for more than ten years – at different publications – has really come into her own here, and I’m very, very proud to see this moment where we have our UK premiere.”

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Swiss virtual private network provider Proton VPN has set up dedicated servers to allow free access to Deutsche Welle (DW) in countries where the broadcaster is blocked.

VPNs protect the privacy of internet users by making secure, encrypted connections directly between devices or networks.

DW, a German state-funded news agency, is currently blocked in Russia, Turkey and Iran. An internet user in those countries should now be able to access DW if they download Proton’s VPN application.

Proton VPN’s chief technology officer Samuele Kaplun wrote on the company’s website that DW approached Proton in autumn last year “to see if we could help them make their independent reporting available all around the world”.

“Internet censorship is unfortunately becoming commonplace, but we believe our partnership with DW, which is the first of its kind, is an effective way to fight back,” Kaplun wrote.

“Given DW’s work in the face of persistent internet blocks, our partnership is a natural extension of our work, even if it has no precedent.”

Proton said that its VPN saw a 5,000% increase in sign-ups in Iran following outbreak of the Mahsa Amini protests and a 9,000% increase in sign-ups in Russia following the government’s invasion of Ukraine.

Originally crowdfunded, Proton says it is “primarily supported by our community”. Neither DW nor Proton disclosed how the new servers are being funded, but the tech company said it had been “able to develop novel anti-censorship features” for the networks “thanks to the support of the Proton community”.

Those new features, it said, included a protocol that detects and evades attempts to block VPN connections and another that hides that a user is using a VPN in the first place.

Proton provides both free and paid-for VPN options: the new dedicated servers which allow browsers to access DW are available to all users.

Anyone hoping to use the VPN must first download the Proton VPN application on their phone or computer. Once installed, a user needs to select a server with a DW logo in either the US, Netherlands or Japan, as seen at right. Once connected, dw.com and its affiliated websites should be browsable from locations where they would otherwise be blocked.

DW was blocked by the Russian authorities in March last year shortly after the country invaded Ukraine, alongside the BBC, Radio Free Europe and independent news site Meduza. As well as news organisations, specific journalists have been proscribed by the Russian government, among them Huw Edwards, Robert Peston and Piers Morgan.

The BBC has engaged in its own efforts to broadcast into Russia and Ukraine. Some 14 years after retiring its shortwave transmissions, last March the corporation launched two new shortwave frequencies (15735 kHz from 4pm to 6pm and 5875 kHz from 10pm to 12pm, Kyiv time) in order to broadcast into the countries.

Prior to the conflict, the BBC had already set up deep web mirror versions of its website accessible via the Tor browser. That browser can be downloaded here; the Russian mirror can be accessed here, the Ukrainian one here and the general international one here.

In the opposite direction, Russian state-backed RT has lost its broadcast licence in Europe and the UK but its website remains accessible.

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