How democracies are using autocratic tools to muzzle journalism

In November 2024 a canopy on a Serbian railway station collapsed, killing 16 people. The most likely cause of the shoddy workmanship was corruption. Huge protests erupted, and independent journalists reported on them.

Some were then beaten by thugs while cops looked on. Half were beaten by cops. In 2025 there were at least 91 physical attacks on journalists in Serbia, according to the country’s Independent Journalists’ Association. Assailants are seldom punished, which “encourages new crimes against journalists”, says Jelena Petkovic, a local specialist in media safety.

Serbia has all the trappings of a democracy. It does not lock up journalists for what they write. Yet in dozens of ways it makes their jobs and lives difficult, unless they support the government.

KRIK, an investigative outlet that often exposes graft in the Serbian government, has been hit with more than 30 lawsuits in the past few years, of which 17 are current, says Stevan Dojcinovic, the editor. He has to spend up to five days a month in court. Official media accuse him of working for the CIA and for George Soros, a Jewish billionaire. Faked pictures of him with a gang boss have been circulated, as well as real, intimate photos meant to embarrass him. “It has taken a huge, heavy toll,” he says.

Meanwhile, all the terrestrial broadcasters are state-controlled or owned by friends of the right-wing populist president, Aleksandar Vucic, so they say what he wants them to. Zoran Kusovac, a media consultant, recounts that a friend divorced her TV editor husband partly because she was sick of Mr Vucic’s nightly calls.

Around the world, media freedom is in retreat. On an index devised by Reporters Without Borders (RSF), a watchdog, the global score has regressed since 2014 from 67 out of 100 (where America is today) to under 55 in 2025 (as bad as Serbia). “For the first time in the history of the Index, the conditions for practising journalism are “difficult” or “very serious” in over half of the world’s countries and satisfactory in fewer than one in four,” says RSF. Others find a similar trend. Data from V-Dem, a research project based in Sweden, imply that the global average has deteriorated since 2004 from 0.66 (on a scale of 0 to 1) to 0.49, roughly the difference between Mexico and Hindu-nationalist India today.

The greatest decline is occurring not in dictatorships, where proper journalism has long been almost impossible, but in places that still purport to be democratic. Typically the governments of such places do not try to snuff out criticism entirely. Rather, they skew the incentives for newsgatherers, so that ordinary people hear plenty of praise of the ruling party and only occasional squeaks of dissent. The aim is to keep the powerful in power and reduce scrutiny of how they abuse it.

An analysis by The Economist found strong links between media-muzzling and corruption. Looking at 80 years of data from about 180 countries collected by V-Dem, we found that a reduction in media freedom in a given country was a strong predictor that graft in that country would subsequently grow worse (see chart 1). This held true even after correcting for past and current levels of corruption, change in incomes and worldwide trends.

This is more than a case of bad things coinciding. Our analysis is temporal: it tests whether a shift in one variable reliably predicts a future shift in another. In statistical lingo this is called “Granger causality”—and we found plenty of it.

In the absence of a probing press, it is easier for officials to embezzle unobserved or make sweetheart deals without pushback. The statistical relationship is sizeable: all else equal, a country where press freedom degenerates from the level of Canada to that of Indonesia is predicted to see a slide into corruption equivalent to Ireland becoming Latvia.

And there appears to be a feedback loop: a rise in corruption is also a good predictor that media will subsequently grow less free, perhaps because when those in power have plenty to hide, they have extra cause to gag nosy hacks. “If we report on corruption…our journalists are doxxed,” says Wahyu Dhyatmika, the CEO of Tempo, a weekly in Indonesia. One was sent a severed pig’s head; others have received dozens of unrequested food deliveries, a reminder that the bigwigs they report on know exactly where to find them.

These feedback loops magnify the damage, meaning the full cost of bad policies is felt only gradually. Institutions have inertia: our model implies that on average it takes roughly four years after media clampdowns for just half the eventual rise in corruption to appear. A leader can muzzle the press today, but voters may not notice the subsequent surge in skulduggery until after the next election.

Another dynamic is that as media freedom diminishes, elites are less likely to offer reasoned justifications for their policies (see chart 2). And this, too, tends to come before an increase in corruption. That fits with the rise of populism around the world, a movement that relies more on emotion than reason. Populist leaders usually try to weaken institutional checks on their own power, including the media; and this opens the door for graft and abuse.

Taken together, our statistical analysis finds that populist politics, corruption and squeezing critical media not only go together, but mutually reinforce each other. Governments that gag the press today will govern worse tomorrow.

Plenty of countries are on this perilous path. A “big shift we’ve seen in recent years is the adoption by supposedly democratic countries of many of the techniques that we have traditionally seen in authoritarian regimes”, says Jodie Ginsberg, the head of the Committee to Protect Journalists, a watchdog. These techniques usually stop short of jailing or killing reporters. Rather, they tend to fall into three main categories: rhetorical, legal and economic.

The rhetorical trick is to pretend that critical journalists pose a threat to the nation. Autocratic regimes have long done this; now many elected leaders do, too. Mr Vucic describes uncomplimentary coverage as “pure terrorism”. Argentina’s president, Javier Milei, pushes the catchphrase “We don’t hate journalists enough.” Supporters of India’s ruling party refer to critical reporters as “presstitutes”.

Donald Trump recently posted that it was “seditious, perhaps even treasonous” for the New York Times to publish “fake” reports to “libel and demean the president of the United States”. He added: “They are true Enemies of the People, and we should do something about it.” The White House publishes a list of “media offenders”, naming individual reporters it accuses of lying, malpractice or “left-wing lunacy”.

Such unprecedented rhetoric from an American president aggravates an already hostile atmosphere for reporters. Americans’ trust in the news media is at an all-time low, according to Gallup. Only 8% of Republicans in America trust them to report fairly or accurately, down from 33% in 2007, the year the iPhone was introduced, ushering in the age of rage bait.

Mr Trump’s demonisation of journalists erodes the taboo on other politicians doing the same, says Ms Ginsberg. “The Trump textbook is being picked up by global leaders everywhere,” agrees Thibaut Bruttin, the head of RSF.

Fighting talk at the top can spur digital mobs to harass reporters. Female journalists bear the brunt: a global study by UNESCO found that 75% had received online abuse and 42% endured harassment or threats of violence in person. When victims were asked who instigated the abuse, the most common answer, after anonymous culprits, was “political actors”.

In nearly every democracy, free expression is enshrined in law. So it ought to be hard for governments to use criminal law as a cudgel against journalists. But they are finding workarounds. One is to use civil law. Recent years have seen a surge in Europe in vexatious lawsuits by plutocrats, intended to bankrupt pesky journalists or hobble media outlets. A report in 2023 counted more than 800, adding that this only “scratch[ed] the surface of the…problem”. Mr Trump has embraced the tactic, suing ABC, the BBC, CNN, the New York Times and others, sometimes demanding billions of dollars in damages.

Another wheeze is to hit media companies with laws that are unrelated to journalism. In September Turkey’s government seized control of Can Holding, a conglomerate that includes television stations, accusing it of tax evasion and money-laundering. In Tanzania, where President Samia Suluhu Hassan took over in 2021 promising liberal reforms, journalists have been arrested for “treason” while covering a blatantly rigged election in October.

By accusing journalists of common crimes, governments can spread the idea that they are untrustworthy. They can also intimidate others into self-censorship. “The bit that’s always difficult to measure is the stories that don’t get written, or the questions that don’t get asked because people are fearful,” says Ms Ginsberg.

Digital technology has changed what it means to be a journalist, allowing anyone with a phone to disseminate shocking footage to a potentially global audience. Nasty regimes correctly see this as a threat, and have pushed back with broadly worded internet laws that can be weaponised against critics. Several ban the dissemination of “fake news”, which in some places means any statement the government denies. A new law in Zambia criminalises the “unauthorised disclosure” of “critical information”, defined as anything that “relates to public safety, public health, economic stability [or] national security”.

An index by Freedom House, an American think-tank, finds that internet freedom has declined worldwide for 15 straight years. This is not just a case of autocrats turning off the internet during protests (as in Iran in January) or elections (as in Uganda in the same month). In the past year, half of the 18 countries previously labelled digitally “free” (out of 72 judged) grew less so. Globally the most consistent deterioration in the past 15 years was in a measure of “whether online sources of information are manipulated by the government or other powerful actors”. Many use AI to create fake pro-government stories on fake sites that look like familiar news outlets.

The final category of coercion, economic, is especially powerful because governments have lots of money and media firms typically do not. In 160 out of 180 countries surveyed by RSF, news outlets can achieve financial stability “with difficulty” or “not at all”.

In Indonesia the quality of journalism has gone downhill in the past five or six years “mostly because of financial pressure”, says Mr Dhyatmika of Tempo. Government advertising goes to fawning outlets. Big private advertisers shun critical media, for fear of upsetting politicians. They don’t “see Tempo as a safe brand because we do investigative journalism”.

When donors or NGOs support independent media, governments pass laws against “foreign agents” to restrict them, a trick mastered by Vladimir Putin. Another ruse is to get friendly tycoons to buy and tame critical media outlets.

When several of these press-gagging techniques are combined, the effect can be overwhelming. In India, the world’s largest democracy, journalists are in theory free to report what they like. But those who seek to expose abuses by the ruling Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party face a hailstorm of discouragement. Abhinandan Sekhri, the boss of Newslaundry, a digital news group in Delhi, says he has received official notices that he or his firm is suspected of tax evasion about 80 times in the past four years. Pro-government media firms sue Newslaundry for “defamation” and “copyright infringement” when it criticises their bias. Tax officials raid its offices. Police pop in to question Mr Sekhri: one time for six hours; another, for 13.

Mr Sekhri is hard to bully. He says he can keep doing his job because there is nothing dodgy in his life, he has no wife or children to worry about, he is a Hindu, and he comes from a privileged background so he knows lawyers who will represent him pro bono. Nonetheless, defending himself is taxing. And most journalists are far more vulnerable to pressure than he is.

Those most at risk are “not the high-profile ones in Delhi”, says Mr Sekhri; they are the ones “uncovering shady activities of some local god-man in a small village”. Some god-men may be vengeful. Jagendra Singh, who wrote about alleged links between a politician in Uttar Pradesh and the “sand mafia”, who steal truckloads of sand from public land and sell it to cement firms, died of burn injuries after a visit from police. The police said it was suicide.

Independent journalism survives in India, in online outlets such as the Wire and the Caravan, and on social media and YouTube. But every reporter faces a choice: between a life of penny-pinching and peril telling the truth, or one of financial and physical security praising the government.

Nearly everyone interviewed for this article noted the change in attitude to press freedom in the White House. America’s domestic media ecosystem is sophisticated and pluralistic enough to cope, but American policy also affects countries where journalism is more precarious. Orkhan Mammad, the editor of Meydan TV, an independent outlet from Azerbaijan, a corrupt petrostate in the Caucasus, says the president, Ilham Aliyev, used to release political prisoners because of pressure from America. But this year the pressure has ceased, Mr Mammad laments; Mr Trump’s family has business ties with the Azerbaijani elite, and Mr Aliyev has shrewdly endorsed him for a Nobel peace prize.

“Once Trump came back to power in 2025, Aliyev shut down everything. Around 100 journalists fled or are in jail. We realised we couldn’t work with anyone inside the country any more. It was too dangerous for them.” Mr Aliyev’s tactics are “horrible”, he says. “Every time someone is arrested, they have to hand over their phone and computer. The government then will release personal photos found on [them].”

America used to fund hundreds of independent media groups in countries with shaky civil liberties. Mr Trump froze that funding, hobbling Meydan, among many other outlets. “We have to figure out how to pay for our colleagues’ legal fees, food, basic necessities inside jail,” Mr Mammad says. In August a man Meydan hired to deliver supplies to jailed journalists was arrested for “smuggling money”.

Life has grown so tough for independent journalists in some countries that many, like Mr Mammad, work from abroad. At a conference of such exiles in Kuala Lumpur, the mood was grim. Those attending fretted about the difficulty of reporting remotely. Information is hard to gather; phones may not be secure.

Since the Pegasus spyware scandal in 2021, when many reporters’ devices were revealed to be bugged with Israeli software, it has been tough to persuade whistleblowers anywhere to talk to journalists. “One source told me: ‘I now know why my wife lost her government job,’” recalls Nelson Rauda, a journalist from El Salvador whose phone was hacked.

Even exile is not always safe. Several regimes silence critics from afar. Iran hired an assassin in New York to try to kill Masih Alinejad, an Iranian journalist who champions women’s rights. Belarus hijacked a passenger plane to capture Raman Pratasevich, a dissident editor, in 2021. Since then, Mr Mammad says, all exiled journalists worry about their flights being diverted. As for Mr Pratasevich, after two years in custody, he now praises the corrupt dictatorship that kidnapped him. ■