REVIEW: The struggle for media freedom amid jihadists, gaggers and ‘democratators’

Abstract

Robie, D. (2015). The struggle for media freedom amid jihadists, gaggers and ‘democratators’. Pacific Journalism Review, 21(2): 197-199. Review of The New Censorship: Inside the global battle for press freedom, by Joel Simon. New York: Columbia University Press, 2015. 236 pp. ISBN978-0-231-16064-3.

One of the ironies of the digital revolution is that there is an illusion of growing freedom of expression and information in the world, when in fact the reverse is true. These are bleak times with growing numbers of journalists being murdered with impunity, from the Philippines to Somalia and Syria. The world’s worst mass killing of journalists was the so-called Maguindanao, or Ampatuan (named after the town whose dynastic family ordered the killings), massacre when 32 journalists were brutally murdered in the Philippines in November 2009.