The Age of AI: Abolishment of Investigative Journalists

This is one of the most dangerous times for journalists to be writing in a decade, according to a report highlighted by an article in Time. The article states:

Journalists around the world have faced a substantial increase in physical and verbal attacks compared to previous years. The report also noted that a decline in media freedom around the world … had been matched by an increase in authoritarian tendencies guided by strongman leaders.

This is shocking, but it also does not come as much of a surprise.

One doesn’t need to ask why it is shocking. It’s blatantly obvious. The thought that individuals might face threats and intimidation on a daily basis for writing is already awful enough. Then we remember Daphne Caruana Galizia, Jan Kuciak, Viktoria Marinova and Jamal Khashoggi, amongst so many others, and realise further how absolutely barbaric attacks on journalists can and do get. The verbal assaults become physical, and only grow worse as time passes.

But the reason I find this reality so unbelievable and unacceptable goes much further. These things are happening today, not in the age of cavemen or ancient civilisations. We boast of living in times where driverless cars are soon to be the norm and mobile phones to be anachronisms replaced by forms of artificial intelligence. The world is evolving in technologies that seemed things of fiction to be smirked at with an 'ah, that would be good' in the pages of a book. 

And yet people are intimidated, threatened, vilified and killed for what they write. A woman is called a ‘witch’ as if these were medieval times, when a woman who had intelligence and stood up before men and challenged them with good reason was called a sorceress and was murdered for it. In the 21st century a man can be hunted down and shot with his fiancée. A woman can be attacked, raped and murdered. This is the world we live in. Furthermore, ironically enough, it seems that 'progresses' in technology are actually being manipulated to further the regression and authoritarian behaviour, as with facial recognition software. What is this, 1984? Barbaric tactics and technology rolled into one - this is why it is the most dangerous time for journalists.

Recognising that this is reality and highlighting it is not pessimistic. On the contrary, it’s a sign that we are aware that life can be better. The report that this article highlighted was 'a wake-up call about the precarious state of freedom of expression', and so the fight for free expression should be sustained. 

We cannot be blinded by the seemingly good state of things that is cleverly wrapped in the folds of propaganda. That is perhaps the greatest danger.