"“Our belief a decade ago that the online revolution would liberate us
now seems a bit premature, doesn’t it?” Mr. Smith said in his customary
Mississippi lilt. “Autocrats have learned how to use those same online
tools to shore up their power. They flood the world of information with
garbage and lies, masquerading as news. There’s a phrase for that.”...
The Committee to Protect Journalists,
founded in 1981, works to advance press freedoms, particularly in
dictatorial and autocratic countries. In recent years, speakers at its
gala have increasingly referred to Mr. Trump’s attacks on the press and
the hostile atmosphere faced by American journalists.
On Thursday, the group presented its Gwen Ifill Press Freedom Award to Zaffar Abbas, the editor of a daily Pakistani newspaper, Dawn. The other honorees were Patrícia Campos Mello, a journalist at a Brazilian publication, Folha de S. Paulo; Neha Dixit, a freelance investigative journalist in India; two Nicaraguan broadcast journalists, Lucía Pineda Ubau and Miguel Mora, who were imprisoned for 172 days on false charges; and Maxence Melo Mubyazi, a journalist in Tanzania."
