24 Feb 2025 Eroding communication rights threatens democracy

Politics-informed developments in the United States of America this year so far confirm that rights and entitlements can be rolled back with the stroke of a pen.

And there is a significant segment of society that is happy to cheer on a blanket erasure of constitutional and decades-old internationally recognized rights. There is more than a real risk of a return to times when freedom of expression was restricted to the elite classes and dissent was punished.

In many ancient societies, the right to freedom of expression belonged to rulers, religious, and traditional authorities. Early democracies in Athens and Rome allowed public discourse, but with limitations. Colonial powers prohibited freedom of expression in order to control the Indigenous populations of the lands they occupied.

The hard-won advent of legislation and institutional mechanisms was a turning point. These instruments laid the groundwork to check authoritarianism, to protect free speech, and to enshrine freedom of expression as a fundamental human right belonging to everyone without distinction.

In recent times, far-right governments have become the norm in many countries. Conservative movements offline and online are rising. Political leaders are backpedaling on promises made by previous administrations to uphold human rights. Private sector entities such as global tech (Meta being one example) have fallen in line, perhaps emboldened by actions by the government of the day and/or in order not to jeopardize their massive profit margins.

As for the right to freedom of expression including press freedom, regimes that bend towards authoritarianism are demonstrating intolerance towards media outlets and towards individuals that criticize them, as reported for example by The Hill, CBC News, and The Guardian. Organizational communications and websites are being sanitized of rights-based language that is now at odds with prevailing State rhetoric. Meanwhile, the political elite boldly defy the law, emboldened to test the limits of their power.

The question is whether legal and institutional protections are sturdy enough to prevent erasure of these rights, propelled by activism by an informed local and global civil society committed to human rights.

What happens next in arguably one of the world’s strongest democracies will be instructive not only for the USA but for the rest of the globe. Protecting human rights requires upholding communication rights: freedom of expression and opinion, press freedom, accessibility, affordability, and accountability.

Without these, as governments all over the world know well, the rule of law is in jeopardy, and, as Democracy Now! has pointed out, we are sleepwalking into autocracy.

Image: Shutterstock AI