Shooting the messenger
Both Hong Kong and Russia have used national security legislation to effectively criminalize journalism. It's a tactic other countries, including democracies like Israel and India that are constitutionally committed to a free press, have adopted. China heads the list compiled by the Committee to Protect Journalists of countries that detain reporters, with Russia in fourth place. Israel is fast catching up, though, with the CPJ reporting that as of April 3, at least 19 of 25 journalists who have been arrested by the Israeli authorities are still in prison.
Frequently, these journalists are held without charge for as long as the authorities deem necessary. In India, similar rules that equate journalism with terrorism are invoked to detain journalists, in the disputed territory of Kashmir for instance, without formally charging them with a crime. In February, Aasif Sultan, the editor of a now defunct online magazine, was arrested again two days after being released from prison where he had been held without charge for five years. Pointedly, he wore a T-shirt with the words "Journalism is not a crime" emblazoned across his chest as he was led in handcuffs to another stint in arbitrary detention.
This week, the Israeli parliament approved a temporary law that enables the government to ban foreign news networks it believes pose a threat to national security. Already, it appears, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will use the powers granted him by the new law to ban the Qatari government-funded network Al Jazeera — which Netanyahu described as a "terrorist network" — from Israel.
Given the size of the protests against Netanyahu in Jerusalem this week, he has more pressing problems than the reporting of international journalists. But the focus on international journalists — alongside the suspicion of domestic media — is a growing trend in increasingly flawed democracies such as Israel and India, which are both sliding down global press rankings. Last month, the Sweden-based V-Dem Institute published its annual democracy report, downgrading Israel from a liberal democracy for the first time in 50 years in part because of the government's attempt to weaken institutions including the judiciary and the press. India was downgraded to an electoral autocracy in 2018 and V-Dem in this year's report describes the country as "among the worst government offenders when it comes to increasing their efforts to censor the media."