A free and unfettered news media has long been anathema to authoritarian rulers, but even George Orwell might not have anticipated that some of the most unscrupulous assaults on press freedoms would one day be perpetrated by democratically elected governments. Mr. Duterte has long harassed Ms. Ressa and her start-up, Rappler, and other independent media critical of his murderous campaign against drug dealers and drug users. At one news conference, Mr. Duterte warned a Rappler reporter not to come to his hometown, Davao City, because “something bad will happen to you.” Davao is thought to be home to the most vicious of Philippine vigilante bands, the Davao Death Squad . Poland under the nationalist Law and Justice Party has been stymied by civil society in its more brazen attempts to emulate Hungary, but the public broadcaster has become something of an ideological mouthpiece. The infamous state-ordered murder of Jamal Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist and critic of the Saudi crown prince, is in a class of its own, and Saudi Arabia is emphatically not a democracy, illiberal or otherwise.

Source: New York Times December 09, 2018 20:48 UTC