"Without the press, there is no freedom," warns a UN alarmed by disinformation

In the midst of an increase in disinformation around the world, the UN denounced this Tuesday the increase in censorship and attacks against journalistss and recalled that "without the press there is no freedom."

The organization went ahead World Day of Press Freedom, which is observed on May 3, with an act at its headquarters to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the start of this annual celebration and to analyze the main problems that the media are currently facing.

That panorama is quite black, according to the messages expressed today by United Nations leaders, experts and journalists.

The UN Secretary General, António Guterres, warned in a video message that the “truth is threatened” by those who seek to “blur the lines between fact and fiction, between science and conspiracy”.

Guterres also denounced the "growing concentration of the media in a few hands", the financial collapse that has wiped out a multitude of independent media, the increase in regulations that limit the work of journalists and expand censorship, and the attacks suffered by reporters. .

"The independent journalists and press freedoms are under attack around the world. Without journalists delivering news and information people can trust, I fear we will continue to see civic ties unravel, democratic norms erode, and trust in institutions and people so essential to order undermined. worldwide," warned Arthur Gregg Sulzberger, the president and publisher of The New York Times.

Sulzberger compared this difficult situation with the "hope" that existed thirty years ago, when World Press Freedom Day was established, a moment in which the end of the Cold War suggested an expansion of freedoms and a that the big media enjoyed great economic strength.

However, the arrival of Internet -with the damage it did to that traditional business model and the ease of spreading misinformation- they left that era a fleeting thing and has led to a period of "weakness for the press" that has destabilized democracies and benefited autocrats, he said.

The head of the New York newspaper, who gave one of the keynote speeches at today's conference, warned of the difficult situation in both countries where press freedoms were robust and where they were already weak or non-existent.

In the former, he said, journalists now face systematic campaigns that undermine their credibility and attacks against legal protections that ensure they can do their job.

In the latter, they suffer increasing levels of harassment and violence, with record numbers of murders and arrests.

Sulzberger drew attention to attacks on the press in countries such as China, Hungary, Egypt, Nicaragua or Russia.

"There's a global attack on journaliststheir work and the public's right to know," he insisted.

The director general of Unesco, Audrey Azoulay, warned of the threat that this poses to all the inhabitants of the planet. “Without the press, there is no freedom,” she said, quoting Philippine journalist Maria Ressa, the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize laureate.

Guterres also insisted on that idea: "basically all our freedom depends on the freedom of the press," he stressed.