Does independent journalism have a future?

Imagine waking up tomorrow and every journalist had been arrested or quit their jobs. What would the world look like without good-quality journalism? This seems like an unlikely scenario but globally independent journalism is under real threat and its future is uncertain.

The latest Reporters Without Borders’ World Press Freedom Index found that in seven out of ten countries worldwide, the press freedom environment is “bad”, while UNESCO’s latest World Trends in Freedom of Expression and Media Development: Global Report revealed how 85% of the world’s population experienced a decline in press freedom in their country in the preceding five years.

Contributing factors for this deterioration include the rise in authoritarianism causing more journalists to be persecuted for doing their job, the spread of disinformation and propaganda eroding public trust in media and the general collapse of the media market. These trends resonate particularly strongly in the Asia-Pacific media landscape where government-sanctioned persecution of independent media is commonplace.

The Asia-Pacific, which accounts for 60% of the world’s population, is home to some of the worst countries for journalists, with multiple countries ranking the lowest among the 180 countries included in the RFS Index China (179th), Vietnam (178th), Myanmar (172nd), and India (161^st).

China has been named the biggest jailer of journalists for the past two consecutive years, followed by Myanmar. In Afghanistan, women journalists are banned, and as one of my colleagues put it, “it is virtually illegal to be a woman in Afghanistan.”

The spread of disinformation and propaganda has also played a major role in diminishing public trust in the media. State-sponsored