Rise in press freedom ranking but ‘could do better’

Let’s start with the good news: New Zealand has risen three places in the World Press Freedom Index and has the highest ranking of any Commonwealth country. It now sits at 16^th.

The latest index was released on World Press Freedom Day on Saturday.

Last year Canada was five places ahead of us. This year it is five places behind, pulled down particularly by coverage of indigenous rights protests which has seen journalists arrested. We continue to outrank the United Kingdom by four places. Our neighbour across the Tasman continues to lag well behind – weighed down by the concentrated ownership of its media. However, Australia has improved by 10 places and has risen from 39^th to 29^th.

The top of the index continues to be dominated by countries in Northern Europe: Norway, Estonia, Netherlands., Sweden, Finland, and Denmark again fill the first six places.

Last year, the United States had dropped ten places to 55^th in the face of public distrust and official antagonism. Many may have been surprised to see it is now down only two more places to 57th. The reason is simple: The index reflects activity in the previous January to December year.  The open assaults on media and challenges to the Constitution by the Trump Administration had yet to register. Expect next year’s ranking to plummet.

Conditions for journalism are poor in half of the world’s countries and, for the first time in the index’s 23-year history, the global state of press freedom is now classified as a “difficult situation” – only one place above the bottom.

The index measures five main indicators: Political, social, legal, economic, and security. Its authors, Reporters Without Borders (RSF), say economic pressures are proving a major – yet often underestimated – factor in seriously weakening the media. And here is where New Zealand’s good news ends. New Zealand is picked out as one of the countries adversely impacted by media shutdowns.

Reading the country-by-country analysis it appears New Zealand owes its rise in the ranks more to the deterioration of other nation’s media freedoms than improvements in our own position.

Yes, we are blessed with long-standing freedom from the sort of oppression that blights many other countries. Certainly, we are light years away from the situation in the lowest ranked country Eritrea (180^th) where all independent media have been banned since it became a dictatorship in 2001.

However, these things are relative. The index report warns that the New Zealand media landscape has deteriorated due to our society’s “growing polarisation”. It also warns of “mob censorship” and cites a December 2023 study by Massey University’s Susan Fountaine and Cathy Strong which found that not one of the 128 Stuff journalists and visual journalists they surveyed was untouched by abuse, threats or violence related to their job. It was most commonly delivered via work email on a daily or weekly basis. One respondent described her inbox as a “festering heap of toxicity”. Women journalists bore the brunt of online abuse.

Again, this is relative. New Zealand journalists operate in a comparatively safe environment free from physical attacks, imprisonment, and murder. Contrast our situation with the fate of Ukrainian journalist Viktoriia Roshchyna who was captured by Russian forces and tortured before her mutilated and unidentified remains were returned in a body exchange. Last week, CNN reported that – following DNA identification –  a forensic examination found numerous signs of torture and ill-treatment including abrasions and haemorrhages on various parts of her body, a broken rib and possible traces of electric shock. The injuries were sustained while Roshchyna was still alive. Her cause of death has not been determined because when her corpse was returned the brain, eyeballs and part of the trachea were missing.

Viktoriia Roshchyna, who was willing to put her life in danger  in a determined bid to reveal the invading Russian forces’ crimes against humanity, has joined the pantheon of journalists who have died for their craft. The Committee to Protect Journalists reported that last year at least 124 journalists and media workers were killed. It was the largest total since the CPJ started collecting data three decades ago and two-thirds of them were Palestinians reporting the horrors in Gaza. Deaths and incarceration figure strongly in the Reporters Without Borders report.

While we salute fallen colleagues and thank our lucky stars that we do not face the media oppression evident in countries such as Syria, China and North Korea (which join Eritrea at the bottom of the index), we need to judge press freedom in New Zealand on own terms.

And things are getting worse, not better.

The withholding of information from journalists – both public interest disclosures and matters with no justification for secrecy – has become entrenched. I have lost count of the number of times I have seen spurious “for privacy reasons” and “commercially sensitive” excuses. I am even more concerned, however, at the institutionalised willingness of judicial officers to suppress matters before courts and tribunals.

Andrea Vance, in the latest Sunday Star Times, set out how coroners are increasingly withholding the names of the deceased and other crucial details in inquests. The suppression often follows requests from relatives that are made with the support of Police, who may be proactively suggesting such requests be made. For their part, Police have become more and more circumspect in their dealings with media. Why?

On coronial inquests Vance makes a telling point – there is no privacy beyond the grave – and rightly states that secrecy “raises serious concerns for transparency, public accountability, and broader principles of open justice and freedom of expression”. She goes on to point out that these restraints imposed on and observed by professional news media are ignored on social media.

The judicial system and the public sector in general can impose unjustified restrictions for two reasons. The first is a lack of public outcry which can be put down to a combination of rock-bottom trust in news media and news avoidance, both of which engender complacency over press freedom. The second was noted in the Press Freedom Index section on New Zealand.

In the absence of a written constitution and specific laws on the subject, freedom of the press is not legally guaranteed…For years, journalists have demanded a review of the 1982 Official Information Act (OIA), designed to guarantee government transparency. In fact, the law grants government agencies excessive time periods to respond to reporters’ requests and forces news outlets to pay hundreds of dollars to obtain public information.

The report went on to note that the Chief Ombudsman had made suggestions for improvement in 2023. What it did not say was that in March this year Peter Boshier issued ‘reflections’ on the OIA as he was leaving that office. He found the legislation itself remains fit for purpose but stated that “every agency that I have investigated (for alleged breaches of the Act) still has noteworthy and sometimes concerning gaps in its OIA systems and processes.”

In other words, there is a problem with the culture within parts of our public service and within the governing executive. They seem to regard the public’s right to know as an imposition on their right to rule and execute decisions.

The impression I have of press freedom in this country is that its boundaries have been contracting, not expanding. That is the wrong direction of travel for a participatory democracy.

While it is pleasing to see New Zealand well within the top quartile of the Press Freedom Index, our situation is not rated as “good” but only as “satisfactory”. When I was at school, such a determination on a report card carried the subtext “room for improvement”.

You can access the 2025 Index here