Media freedom is in decline and journalists around the world are working in an intense climate of fear.

This year’s evaluation by Reporters Without Borders shows a marked drop in the number of countries where it is safe for journalists to work.

The World Press Freedom Index covers the state of journalism in 180 countries.

It found only eight percent of them have a media climate considered “good” for journalists.

The biggest deterioration is in the Americas with the United States, Brazil, Venezuela and Nicaragua performing poorly.

The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region continues to be the most dangerous for journalists.

So what is causing violence against journalists?

Presenter: Mohammed Jamjoom

Guests:

Aidan White – president and founder of the Ethical Journalism Network

Rami Khoury – professor of journalism at American University of Beirut

Caroline Muscat – cofounder and editor of The Shift News

Source: Al Jazeera News

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White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told special counsel investigators that she misled the press about the reason President Donald Trump fired FBI Director James Comey in May 2017, when she told reporters “countless” FBI agents had lost confidence in the agency’s leader.

The revelation was just one of many brought to light Thursday when the Justice Department published a redacted version of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report detailing his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Story Continued Below

According to Mueller’s report, on May 10, 2017 — the day after Comey was fired — Sanders told reporters that the president, lawmakers and DOJ officials had lost confidence in Comey.

“Most importantly,” she added, “the rank and file of the FBI had lost confidence in their director.”

In response to a reporter’s question citing widespread support for Comey among the bureau’s agents, Sanders said: “Look, we’ve heard from countless members of the FBI that say very different things.”

Mueller’s report said: “Sanders acknowledged to investigators that her comments were not founded on anything.”

The White House press secretary told the special counsel in 2018 that her reference to “countless members” had been a “slip of the tongue” and said her comment about rank-and-file agents’ loss of confidence was made in “the heat of the moment,” according to the report.

Sanders did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday.

Mueller’s team scrutinized Trump’s decision to fire Comey as part of an attempt to determine whether the president intended to obstruct justice, a conclusion the special counsel ultimately did not offer. The report said investigators found “substantial evidence” that Trump dismissed the FBI director for his “unwillingness to state that the president was not personally under investigation” by the special counsel.

The report references multiple occasions for which the president or his aides offered a variety of reasons for Comey’s firing, citing the FBI director’s handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation and low morale within the bureau.

Trump also said FBI morale was at “an all-time low” in his draft termination letter, a claim he contradicted during an earlier dinner with Comey when he told the bureau director “the people of the FBI really like” him, according to the report.

“No evidence suggests that the President heard otherwise before deciding to terminate” Comey, the report said.

Mueller’s report also said after her briefing on Comey, Sanders spoke with the president, “who told her she did a good job and did not point out any inaccuracies in her comments.”

Image: Igor Golovniov/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

A coalition of opposition political parties has called on Egyptian voters to reject proposed constitutional amendments that could allow President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to stay in power until 2030.

The Civil Democratic Movement, which includes liberal and left-leaning parties, decried the amendments on Thursday, calling them an “assault on democracy” and urged people to break the “barrier of silence” and participate in the referendum by voting “No”.

“We want people to go and say no,” said Abdel-Aziz al-Husseini of the Karam party.

The three-day referendum on the proposed changes will begin on Saturday.

The dates were announced less than 24 hours after parliament, packed with Sisi’s supporters, overwhelmingly approved the proposed amendments. 

In general terms, the changes extend a president’s term in office from four to six years and allow for a maximum of two terms. 

But they also include a special article specific to Sisi that extends his current second four-year term to six years and allows him to run for another six-year term in 2024 – potentially extending his rule until 2030.

The move comes eight years after a pro-democracy uprising ended Hosni Mubarak’s three-decade rule, and nearly six years after Sisi led a popular military overthrow of the country’s first freely elected President Mohamed Morsi, after protests against his rule.

‘Absolute dictatorship’

Speaking to reporters on Thursday, Khaled Dawood, an opposition leader and former head of the liberal Dostour, or Constitution Party, said if the referendum passes, “our dream and hope to have a president who is elected once every two terms have come to an end”.

“Unfortunately, the Egyptian regime is not learning the lessons of 2011 revolution or experiences in Algeria and Sudan,” he said in reference to recent mass uprisings in Sudan and Algeria that led to the downfall of longtime rulers.

The opposition also said they were banned from hanging banners in the streets to call on voters to reject the amendments and said they have only used social media to reach out to people.

Sisi came to power in 2014 after overthrowing Morsi, who hails from the now-outlawed Muslim Brotherhood. 

The 64-year-old was re-elected in March 2018 with more than 97 percent of the vote, in a ballot boycotted by large swaths of the country’s political opposition after several potential candidates dropped out citing intimidation or were arrested.

Hassan Nafaa, a political analyst, told the Associated Press news agency that the proposed amendments amount to “legalising dictatorship in the constitution and that will have dangerous repercussions on the political system when all doors for freedom of expression are sealed”.

“The adjustment will lead to absolute dictatorship,” he added.

In a statement on Tuesday, Amnesty International said the proposed constitutional amendments would “facilitate the authorities’ crackdown on freedom of expression, association and assembly, erode people’s rights, and exacerbate the human rights crisis in the country”.

“The decision to put these amendments to the constitution to a public referendum, amid the worst crackdown on freedom of expression and severe restrictions on political parties and independent media, demonstrates the Egyptian government’s contempt for the rights of all people in Egypt,” said Magdalena Mughrabi, Amnesty’s deputy director for Middle East and North Africa.

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Indonesian President Joko Widodo on Thursday declared victory in a presidential election to lead the world’s third-largest democracy, but his challenger also claimed he won and complained of widespread cheating.

The stand-off comes as security officials and analysts warned of potential violence in the world’s most populous Muslim nation over the election dispute.

Unofficial results from private pollsters based on vote samples from Wednesday’s election pointed to a comfortable win for Widodo, with about 55 percent of the popular vote, giving him a lead of almost 10 percentage points over his rival, former general Prabowo Subianto.

The counts from reputable pollsters have proved to be accurate in previous elections, though the official result will not be announced until May 22.

Widodo told reporters he had received congratulatory calls from 22 state leaders, including Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and he invited his rival to meet.

“We all know that the QC [quick count] calculation is a scientific calculation method. From the country’s experiences of past elections the accuracy is 99.9 percent, almost the same as real count results,” Widodo said.

He also urged supporters to wait for official results to confirm the win.

‘Widespread cheating’?

At a separate news conference just minutes after Widodo declared victory, Prabowo appeared defiant and said his team had evidence of cheating and claimed to have won 62 percent of the popular vote based on internal polling.

“We have declared [victory] because we got evidence of widespread cheating at the village, sub-district and district levels across Indonesia,” he said, standing next to his running mate, Sandiaga Uno, who looked more subdued.

In 2014, Prabowo also claimed victory on election day before contesting the results at the Constitutional Court, which confirmed Widodo’s win.

A spokesman for Prabowo said he would take his complaint to the Constitutional Court if the Election Commission confirmed Widodo’s victory.

The commission said earlier on its website Widodo had secured about 50 percent of the vote, based on results from 808 of more than 800,000 polling stations, with Prabowo on about 45 percent.

The English-language Jakarta Post newspaper carried a front-page headline declaring “Five More Years” next to a picture of the president.

Alexander Raymond Arifianto, a political analyst at the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, said Widodo’s margin of victory meant the opposition did not appear to have a strong case to claim the election was stolen.

But he noted supporters of the challenger, including the hardline Alumni 212 movement, could hit the streets to dispute the election.

“So Prabowo has no case but the hardliners and Alumni 212 can create lots of headaches for Jokowi if they go ahead with their protest plan tomorrow and in future weeks,” he said, referring to president by his nickname.

‘Peaceful’ march

Novel Bamukmin, a spokesman for Alumni 212, said the movement planned a peaceful march after Friday prayers at Jakarta’s Istiqlal mosque.

“We just want to bow down to express our gratitude in order that this victory is recognised,” he said, referring to Prabowo’s claim he won the election.

Religious groups have in the past been able to mobilise tens of thousands of supporters.

From late 2016, they organised a series of big protests against the Jakarta governor, Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, the first ethnic-Chinese Christian to hold the job, who was subsequently jailed for insulting the Quran.

Police vowed firm action against any rallies that could disturb security.

“I appeal to anyone not to mobilise, whether to mobilise people to celebrate victory or mobilise due to dissatisfaction,” said national Police Chief Tito Karnavian.

Avoid ‘anarchy’

At the same news conference, chief security minister Wiranto called for people to avoid “any act of anarchy that breaches the law”.

Wiranto, who uses a single name, added security forces will “act decisively” against any threats to order and security.

Indonesia is an outpost of democracy in a Southeast Asian neighbourhood of authoritarian governments and is forecast to be among the world’s biggest economies by 2030.

A second term for Widodo, the first Indonesian president from outside the Jakarta elite, could further cement the country’s two decades of democratisation.

The election was a huge logistical exercise with 193 million people eligible to vote, more than 800,000 polling stations, and 17 million people involved in ensuring the polls ran smoothly. Helicopters, boats and horses were used to get ballots to remote and inaccessible corners of the sprawling archipelago.