24 Time December 27, 2021/January 3, 2022
On may 23, a cOnTrOl TOwer radiOed
a Ryanair jetliner that it had a bomb on
board. A fighter jet appeared off its wing,
and Flight FR4978, en route from Greece
to Lithuania, was compelled to make a
sharp turn and land in Belarus. But there
was no bomb: only Roman Protasevich,
an ashen-faced journalist who informed
his fellow passengers that he was the
reason the plane was diverted. After dis-
embarking, the 26-year-old was led away
for the crime of reporting on political
opposition—exactly the sort of activity
essential to the functioning of a democ-
racy, should one ever occur in his be-
nighted homeland.
When a state openly hijacks a com-
mercial fight to abduct a journalist, the
message to the rest of the world is that the
impunity enjoyed by authoritarians has
reached a new level. After all, even the
Saudis tried to keep Jamal Khashoggi’s
fate a secret in 2018; along with a bone
saw, they brought a body double.
“It’s been a terrible year for press
freedom,” says Robert Mahoney of the
Committee to Protect Journalists, an
advocacy group based in New York
City. “Governments are increasingly
intolerant of criticism, of independent
reporting. They either jail journalists
or they prosecute them under vague
and sweeping antiterrorism laws, or
‘fake news’ laws, and try to shut them
down that way.”
Yet 2021 was also a year in which the
problem took the world stage. Calling
free expression “a precondition for de-
mocracy and lasting peace,” the Nobel
Committee awarded its Peace Prize on
Oct. 8 to two journalists. Dmitry Mu-
ratov of Novaya Gazeta dedicated the
award to the six reporters murdered
while working at one of the last inde-
pendent news outlets in Vladimir Pu-
tin’s Russia; in the Philippines, Maria
Ressa, co-founder of the online news
site Rappler, faced down President
Rodrigo Duterte while also documenting
Down but
Not Out
BY KARL VICK
how the brutal populist was enabled by
social media companies, as well as other
dark forces the Internet once held the
promise of keeping in check. “It’s a battle
for facts,” Ressa, who was a TIME Person
of the Year in 2018, told me in October.
This is why authoritarian regimes jail
journalists but find social media useful.
Putin’s troll farms create uncertainty not
only about U.S. elections but also about
“the facts on the ground” in places where
Russia is making military moves.So did the Scale, over the past 12
months, began to tip toward truth?
There was reason to hope. The year
began with Australian lawmakers com-
ing to the aid of news organizations by
forcing Google and Facebook to pay
for the news they collect ad revenues
from. And 2021 ended with a growing
consensus to compel social media plat-
forms to place the public good ahead
of business models that encourage po-
litical and social division. The source
of the groundswell? Whistle-blowerFrances Haugen’s leak of Facebook’s in-
ternal documents to news organizations
grounded not in “engagement” but in
trust built on the verification of facts.
There remains no shortage of old-
fashioned physical threats to journal-
ists. Since the military seized control
of Myanmar on Feb. 1, dozens of jour-
nalists have been arrested. The re-
turn of the Taliban put hundreds of
Afghan journalists at risk. In Mexico,
nine members of the press have been
killed so far this year. In November,
al-Shabab sent a suicide bomber to kill
the head of Radio Mogadishu in the So-
mali capital.
Yet so much depends on the archi-
tecture of communication. This year
18 countries used a “middlebox” in
China’s Huawei technology to block news
outlets —and 54 others could do the same.
The Internet has allowed journalists to
reach more people, faster than ever. “But
like any technology, it’s dual use,” notes
Mahoney. “You’ve seen this cheap and
instant communication revolutionizing
journalism and the distribution of news
and information, but also being turned
against the very publishers of that news
and information. It’s a constant battle.”
— With reporting by SimmOne Shah □△
A Ryanair flight lands in Vilnius on
May 23 after Belarus forced it down
to arrest a journalist on boardANDRIUS SYTAS —REUTERS
Truth