The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) have released their end of year report, revealing a record number of journalists were jailed in 2020, as governments cracked down on freedoms during the Covid-19 pandemic, and dealt with economic and political instabilities.
The AJF is not surprised by these global figures. In 2020 we begun our Asia–Pacific Press Freedom Landscape Mapping (PFLM) project, which will be formally launched in the new year. The PFLM tracks press freedom incidents in the Asia–Pacific region since AJF’s inception in 2018 to the present day, which of course includes the Covid-19 pandemic. The spike of incidents we’ve seen in our region alone has been significant and deeply concerning.
Read the CPJ report to find out more about the global statistics, and we look forward to sharing the PFLM with you soon.