Amid the public discourse of fake news and President Trump’s announcement via Twitter about his planned “fake news” awards ceremony, CPJ is recognizing world leaders who have gone out of their way to attack the press and undermine the norms that support freedom of the media. From an unparalleled fear of their critics and the truth, to a relentless commitment to censorship, these five leaders and the runner-ups in their categories have gone above and beyond to silence critical voices and weaken democracy.

Most Thin-skinned

Winner: President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey

Turkish authorities have repeatedly charged journalists, news outlets, and social media users for insulting Erdoğan, insulting other Turkish leaders, and insulting “Turkishness” in general. Over the course of 2016, the Turkish judicial system handled 46,193 cases of “insulting the president” or “insulting the Turkish nation, the Republic of Turkey, the parliament, the government, or the institutions of the judiciary,” the daily newspaper Cumhuriyet reported in June 2017, citing figures from the Justice Ministry.

Runner-Up: President Donald Trump, United States

In response to media coverage critical of him, Trump has threatened to “open-up” U.S. libel laws, sue news outlets, and subject their broadcast licenses to review. He regularly attacks outlets and individual journalists on Twitter and in speeches, calling them “sad,” “failing,” or “garbage.” Since declaring his presidential candidacy in 2015, Trump has posted about 1,000 tweets critical of the press. CPJ research shows that when public figures and political leaders lob insults at the media, they encourage self-censorship and expose journalists to unnecessary risk.

Most Outrageous Use of Terror Laws Against the Press

Winner: President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey

Turkey is the world’s worst jailer of journalists, with at least 73 behind bars when CPJ conducted its most recent prison census on December 1. Every journalist jailed for their work in Turkey is under investigation for, or charged with, anti-state crimes — in most cases for belonging to, aiding, or making propaganda for an alleged terrorist organization.

Runner-Up: President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Egypt

Of at least 20 journalists jailed in Egypt at the time of CPJ’s latest prison census, 18 were charged with, or convicted of, anti-state crimes such as aiding or inciting terrorism or belonging to banned groups.

In 2017, Sisi’s government passed a new anti-terrorism law that furthered its crackdown on the press by, among other things, enabling authorities to put journalists acquitted of terrorism-related charges on a watch list that restricts their financial and other rights, according to news reports.

Chinese President Xi Jinping (R) meets with Egypt’s President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi on September 5, 2017 in Xiamen, Fujian Province of China. (Du Yang/CHINA NEWS SERVICE/VCG via Getty Images)

Tightest Grip on Media*

Winner: President Xi Jinping, China

Beijing, under the increasingly iron grip of Xi, uses a combination of traditional censorship and internet controls to keep the news media in line. China is consistently one of the world’s worst jailers of the press; in 2017 it was the second worst globally, with at least 41 journalists in prison. Most traditional media is controlled by the government, and journalists risk losing their jobs or being banned from traveling if they push the boundaries of censorship directives at their news outlets or in personal blogs. Reporters’ sources and international journalists are also harassed and obstructed. Internet controls include the Great Firewall, human and automated censors, and pressure on technology companies to comply.

Runner-Up: President Vladimir Putin, Russia

Under Putin, independent media has been all but eradicated as journalists experience threats of violence or imprisonment and other types of harassment. His government recently ordered international news outlets including Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty to register as foreign agents (in response to a parallel move by the U.S.), and blocked their journalists from entering Parliament. Russian authorities have tried with varying success to emulate the Chinese model of internet censorship.

*This category excludes countries with no independent media, such as North Korea and Eritrea.

Russian President Vladimir Putin raises a glass in Moscow on December 28,2017 in Moscow, Russia. (Photo by Mikhail Svetlov/Getty Images)

Biggest Backslider in Press Freedom

Winner: State Counselor and de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar

CPJ listed Myanmar in 2015 as the ninth most censored country worldwide, but after Suu Kyi’s party took power in 2016, the last five journalists in jail were pardoned and hopes for media freedom were high. However, most of the legal structure that has long restricted the press remains in place and journalists continue to be imprisoned. Security officials obstruct and harass journalists trying to cover what the U.N. has termed “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing” by authorities in the country’s northern Rakhine State. On December 12, two Reuters reporters covering the crisis were arrested on suspicion of violating the Official Secrets Act and held incommunicado for two weeks before being allowed to see their lawyer and families. Reuters reported that if convicted, the pair could face up to 14 years in prison.

Runner-Up: President Andrzej Duda, Poland

Under Duda, the conservative-nationalist government led by the Law and Justice party has dramatically changed the reputation of Poland, which for decades was a symbol of democracy for its peaceful journey from communism to European Union membership. The independent media was a pillar of that transition. More recently, the government has taken direct control of public media and announced plans to change regulations in a way that would force foreign owners of news outlets to give up their majority stakes, according to news reports. Government offices have canceled subscriptions to pro-opposition news outlets, while state-owned companies redirected advertising money to friendly media, according to U.S. watchdog Freedom House. In December, Poland’s media regulator levied a 1.5 million zloty ($415,000) fine on leading news broadcaster TVN24 in relation to its coverage of protests in parliament in 2016, according to news reports which cited critics as saying the government is trying to warn journalists to self-censor. The government’s parallel moves to reform the judiciary prompted the European Commission in December to take the unprecedented step of launching a process intended to suspend the country’s voting rights in the European Union.

Overall Achievement in Undermining Global Press Freedom

A version of this post originally appeared on CPJ’s website. The Committee to Protect Journalists is a New York-based, independent, non-profit organization that works to safeguard press freedom worldwide. You can learn more at CPJ.org or follow the CPJ on Twitter @pressfreedom or on Facebook here.

The post CPJ Presents the Press Oppressors Awards appeared first on MediaShift.

By CPJ Middle East and North Africa Program and CPJ Technology Program. A version of this post originally appeared on CPJ’s website.

The mobile messaging app Telegram is popular in Iran, where citizens who have limited access to uncensored news and mainstream social media sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, use it to share and access information. But the app’s estimated 20 million users in Iran, including those who use Telegram to report and communicate with sources, could be putting themselves at severe risk of data compromise, security experts warn.

Created in 2013 by two Russian brothers, Telegram describes itself as a secure and private alternative to apps such as WhatsApp. But whereas WhatsApp applies end-to-end encryption to all traffic by default using the highly secure Signal encryption protocol, Telegram does neither. Security experts have expressed skepticism about the esoteric encryption Telegram uses, saying it is poorly designed and implemented.

In Iran–which ranks seventh on CPJ’s 10 Most Censored Countries list–authorities have blocked millions of news websites and social networking sites, and use arbitrary detentions as a way to silence dissent. Iran is also the third worst jailer of journalists worldwide, according to CPJ’s last prison census. In at least two cases on the census, journalists were arrested over social media posts.

“If social media sites were not filtered in Iran, instant messaging applications would have been used at the same rate as other countries. Iranian users would have probably preferred to use Twitter or Facebook,” an Iranian blogger known as Vahid Online told CPJ. The blogger, who is based in the U.S. and has more than 44,000 followers on Telegram, uses the app to post summaries of news items and the most notable reactions to them. Many of the reactions are tweets, Facebook posts or blog posts that would otherwise be blocked for Iranians.

Vahid Online said that Telegram’s Channel function, a one-way communication method that allows users to share content with large audiences, has been instrumental in attracting Iranian users. “There is a big population in Iranian cities and towns that have never had access to computers and don’t even have email accounts, but they have now connected to the online community through Telegram,” he said. “Many of the YouTube videos that for years were blocked for Iranians have been shared on Telegram and many Iranians are able to see them for the first time.” An example of this greater access was illustrated during Iran’s parliamentary election in February. In the run up to the vote, former president Mohammad Khatami posted a video on YouTube encouraging people to vote for all the candidates that had been published on the reformist’s list. Khatami is banned from media in Iran and YouTube is blocked. However, the video was widely shared on Telegram.

Official news outlets and journalists are also using Telegram to reach their audience. An informal CPJ review of Telegram accounts found that posts from journalists affiliated with official news agencies was consistent with their state-sanctioned reporting and that most posts were used as a way to get information out quickly. The discrepancy in how the app is used to share and report news was illustrated on May 3, when pictures showing the release of cartoonist Atena Farghadani, who had been jailed since January last year, were widely published by bloggers and citizen journalists on Telegram channels but ignored on Telegram by state media and more traditional channels.

Although Telegram has helped open up an important space for conversation in Iran, numerous technology security experts have warned that the app’s security flaws make it unsafe. Nima Fatemi, an independent security researcher based in the U.S., said, “Normal chats, which is the default option, are not end-to-end encrypted, meaning Telegram and anyone they share your data with, can read, store, analyze, manipulate or censor users’ conversations.”

Telegram’s head of support, Markus Ra, told CPJ that claims the app’s encryption is not robust enough are not true. He said that the Secret Chat option uses end-to-end encryption and that Telegram does not have access to the plain text for Secret Chat message. Ra said, “Thanks to our apps being open-source, this can be easily confirmed by any interested party.” Ra said that technically, Cloud Chats could be deciphered by the server, but added, “We have disclosed exactly zero bytes of user data to third parties since our launch day in August 2013.”

Photo by Eduardo Woo on Flickr and used here with Creative Commons license.

Of course, willingly disclosing user data is not the same thing as leaving it vulnerable to hacking and surveillance. For example, in late April, two Russian activists’ Telegram accounts were accessed by third parties, the Moscow Times reported. The activists have blamed MTS, one of Russia’s largest mobile operators, which initially acknowledged the men’s phone settings had been tampered with by its “security department” but then denied any deliberate interference, the newspaper said.

“If any of [Telegram’s] servers get compromised, all of the users’ data is up in the air,” said Fatemi. “We know from the Snowden revelation and all massive hacks that no single computer can be protected from hackers. Especially if it’s a juicy target with millions of people’s conversations stored on it.”

In his message to CPJ, Ra linked to the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Secure Messaging Scorecard published in 2014, as an illustration of how the app’s open source code resulted in a positive audit. Telegram “Secret Chats” earned a perfect rating in the first version of the scorecard. Electronic Frontier Foundation warned on its website however, that the scorecard is “out of date, and is preserved here for purely historical reasons.”

“We are in the process of redoing the scorecard, so the version that Telegram cites is not current and was never intended as an endorsement,” Nate Cardozo, senior staff attorney at Electronic Frontier Foundation, told CPJ. “Version 1.0 of the scorecard does not reflect EFF’s current thinking on encryption, nor does EFF encourage anyone to use it for practical advice.”

Cardozo pointed out “critical flaws” with Telegram, including its lack of end-to-end encryption and its use of non-standard MTProto encryption protocol, which has been publicly criticized by cryptography researchers, including Matthew Green, an assistant professor of computer science at the Johns Hopkins Information Security Institute and a leading expert on applied cryptography.

Seemingly arcane details such as an app’s encryption protocol and implementation can directly impact the lives of the journalists who use those apps. CPJ recommends that journalists should use WhatsApp or Signal as a more secure way to communicate, a recommendation echoed by Cardozo. Both apps use the Signal encryption protocol, which is based on open, well-tested cryptographic algorithms. The Signal protocol, which CPJ staff use for our most sensitive work, has been reviewed and endorsed by leading security experts.

A version of this post originally appeared on CPJ’s website. The Committee to Protect Journalists is a New York-based, independent, non-profit organization that works to safeguard press freedom worldwide. You can learn more at CPJ.org or follow the CPJ on Twitter @pressfreedom or on Facebook here.

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