Journalism: A Hellish Journey
Editor: Anita Newkirk Hackney
During the Trump administration, journalists were constantly under attack. When Trump dubbed news sources like the Washington Post, The New York Times, and others as ‘fake news,’ the United Nations condemned his vitriolic rhetoric against them. That didn’t stop Trump. He only escalated his vitriolic rhetoric against journalists. During his administration, a journalist died and many others were imprisoned and assaulted by the police for doing their job. Here’s an interesting question, is journalism a dangerous position?
Yes, journalism can be a dangerous position to hold depending on where the reported is located. For example, in 2018, Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi Arabian journalist was killed. Khashoggi was a US based journalist and critic of the Saudi Arabian government who covered major stories like the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the rise of the late al-Qaeda leader, Osama Bin Laden.
For decades, Khashoggi was close to the Saudi royal family and served as an adviser to the government; but he fell out of favor and went into self-imposed exile in the United States in 2017. On October 2, 2018, Khashoggi walked into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul and was murdered. In the months that proceeded, conflicting narratives about his murder started to emerge like what happened to his remains and who was responsible.
During that time, it was unclear. Saudi Arabian officials said that Khashoggi was killed in a ‘rogue operation’ by a team of agents who were sent to persuade him to return to the kingdom. However, the Turkish officials said the agents acted on the orders of the highest levels of the Saudi government. For more than two weeks after Khashoggi’s murder, Saudi Arabia denied any knowledge of his death. However, the Saudi government said a preliminary investigation by prosecutors had concluded Khashoggi died during a ‘fight’ after resisting attempts to return him to Saudi Arabia. Investigators concluded he was forcefully restrained after a struggle and was injected with a drug, which resulted in an overdose that led to his death. Khashoggi’s body was then dismembered and handed over to a local ‘collaborator’ outside of the consulate to dispose of his body.
According to an Instagram post from CNN on February 26, 2021:
“The U.S. intelligence report on the murder of Jamal Khashoggi says that Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman approved the operation to capture and kill the Saudi journalist…”
Khashoggi was a victim, like many other journalists, who were imprisoned and assaulted for doing their jobs. In 2020, arrests and assaults to journalists in the United States increased during the Black Lives Matter protests. Seven months after the protests started, 12 journalists faced criminal charges—some of them carried jail terms and fines—and members of the US press grappled with the unprecedented nature of the attacks on the media that occurred.
According to Katherine Jacobsen from CPJ.org:
“As the Committee to Protected Journalists publishes its annual tally of journalists imprisoned around the world, not a single U.S. reporter is behind bars for their work. But that statistic belies the country’s marred press freedom landscape following the summer’s Black Lives Matter protests in which journalists were handcuffed, shoved, and shot at with less-lethal ammunition.
At least 110 journalists were arrested or criminally charged in relation to their reporting, and around 300 journalists were assaulted in 2020, according to the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, of which CPJ is a founding member. The Tracker is working to verify more than 930 total incidents in 79 cities.”
Will this attack on the press happen again? It depends on who will lead the United States after President Biden leaves office at the end of his term. If the US elects another president like Trump, journalism is bound to be antagonized by a person of power yet again. Let’s hope there’s not another president like Trump on the horizon.
Journalism is a means of presenting factual documents of relevant occurrences that affect the public. If a person of power tries to remove or withhold news-related documents, it is oppressing the people’s right to know what’s going on around them. What is your opinion? Let us know in the comments below.
