Law enforcement and ministry officials visited the offices of Voice of Democracy (VOD) on the morning of February 13 ordering journalists to stop publishing immediately. Sen instructed the Ministry of Information to cancel the outlet’s publishing and broadcasting licences, revoking its right to continue radio and online news services. Since the decision, VOD’s online Khmer and English services have been blocked by several internet service providers throughout the country.

On February 9, VOD released an article in Khmer that claimed Hun Sen’s son, Lieutenant General Hun Manet, had signed a donation of USD 100,000 for earthquake relief in Türkiye under his father’s name. Hun Manet, the head of Cambodia’s military, disputed the claim, and urged the outlet via social media to provide sources for their article. On February 11, Sen demanded a public apology from the outlet within 72 hours, later shortening the deadline to 10 am on February 13. Despite receiving an official, apologetic letter from the Cambodian Centre for Independent Media, VOD’s parent company, Sen ordered the revocation of the licence.

The decision has been condemned by media rights and civil society organisations, who denounced the arbitrary and likely politically motivated closure of VOD. In a group statement, press freedom advocates identified how existing measures to remove or alter disputed publications already exist in Cambodia’s Press Law, and urged the government to speak out against harmful and sexist language directed towards the author of the article.

The Cambodian government has previously targeted critical and independent news outlets ahead of the 2018 election, including the shuttering of Cambodia Daily in 2017, and the coerced 2018 sale of the Phnom Penh Post to a business associate of Hun Sen.
The CamboJA said: “No journalist should ever be attacked as a result of their work or identity. We hope the government acknowledges the essential role of VOD and its journalists, along with the remaining independent media outlets in the country, and their right to do their work in accordance with the law and without fear of intimidation and harassment”

The IFJ said: “Hun Sen’s order to shutdown VOD represents an serious misuse of power and poses a severe threat to press freedom in Cambodia. The IFJ urges the Cambodian government to reverse its decision to shutter VOD and ensure the outlet is able to continue to produce independent and critical journalism without fear of reprisal.”

IFJ Reports

The General Secretary of the Federation of Media Workers Trade Unions Mr. Dharmasiri Lankapeli and the Deputy General Secretary Mrs. Indira Navagamuwa held a discussion with the Minister of Labor and Foreign Employment Mr. Manusha Nanayakkara on November 22, 2022, at the Ministry, which revealed the sad working conditions of professional journalists in Sri Lanka.

The Federation of Media Employees Unions explained in this discussion that journalism is the only profession that does not have the basic professional rights that the majority of professional journalists in Sri Lanka should have.

A report compiled a unique exploration of the professional status of journalists and the challenges faced by the media industry by the Federation of Media Employees Trade Unions The matter was clarified to the minister.

The IFJ-Union to Union (UTU) Global Union program with the guidance and support of the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) organized this program.

The Minister also agreed to hold a broad discussion on the professional issues faced by journalists and the challenges faced by the media industry on December 13 with a large representation of journalists.

“The United Kingdom is a great country but we face a profound economic crisis.
That’s why I am standing to be Leader of the Conservative Party and your next Prime Minister.
I want to fix our economy, unite our Party and deliver for our country”.

Rishi is a British politician who has been Leader of the Conservative Party since 24 October 2022. He was Chancellor of the Exchequer from 2020 to 2022 and Chief Secretary to the Treasury from 2019 to 2020.He has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Richmond (Yorks) since 2015.
Sunak was born in Southampton to parents of Punjabi Indian descent who migrated to Britain from East Africa in the 1960s.He was educated at Winchester College, read philosophy, politics and economics (PPE) at Lincoln College, Oxford, and gained an MBA from Stanford University in California as a Fulbright Scholar.
Sunak was elected to the House of Commons for Richmond in North Yorkshire at the 2015 general election, succeeding William Hague. Sunak supported Brexit in the 2016 referendum on EU membership. He was appointed to Theresa May’s second government as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Local Government in the 2018 reshuffle. He voted three times in favour of May’s Brexit withdrawal agreement.
After May resigned, Sunak supported Boris Johnson’s campaign to become Conservative leader. After Johnson was elected and appointed Prime Minister, he appointed Sunak as Chief Secretary to the Treasury. Sunak replaced Sajid Javid as Chancellor of the Exchequer after his resignation in the February 2020 cabinet reshuffle.
As Chancellor, Sunak was prominent in the government’s financial response to the COVID-19 pandemic and its economic impact, including the Coronavirus Job Retention and Eat Out to Help Out schemes. He resigned as chancellor on 5 July 2022, citing his economic policy differences with Johnson in his resignation letter. Sunak’s resignation, along with the resignation of Javid as Health Secretary, led to Johnson’s resignation amid a government crisis.
In July 2022, he stood in the Conservative party leadership election to replace Johnson,and lost the members’ vote to Liz Truss.Following Truss’s resignation amid a government crisis, Sunak won the October 2022 Conservative Party leadership election.

Concentrated media power has been a major (in some ways dominant) force behind the subversion of democratic politics in the United States, a force driven by commercialized images and narratives, celebrity and sports spectacles, profit-making, and mostly conservative opinion—all resulting in a narrowing of the public sphere.
Media capacity to shape popular consciousness—or forge ideological hegemony—turns on both structure and content of communications transmitted across the terrain. In advanced state-capitalist society, and especially the United States, media culture appears as the dominant and in many ways all-consuming mode of communication.
Here we refer to more than just information since the media reproduces images, stories, myths, and spectacles that, in diverse ways, help sustain existing institutions, practices, and values. In this complex modality, corporate media forms a uniquely thriving propaganda system, reaching into every corner of society with high levels of technological sophistication, material resources, and ideological legitimation.

Understanding media oligarchy
To understand contemporary Indonesia one must understand how media oligarchy works here. Media oligarchy shapes the news the public consume every day. News have become increasingly biased and partisans. The most obvious examples are news coverage on the presidential election in 2014. Media were between the two rival camps.
Recent trends have involved oligopolistic ownership, deregulation, expansion of advertising, and rightward shift in political content. Expanded corporate control—over film, TV, cable, radio, print journalism, the Internet—has meant a steady decline of citizenship coinciding with the spread of political alienation discussed elsewhere in this book.
As media culture becomes more integral to all realms of American public life, its effects have been profoundly depoliticizing and thus undemocratic.
A vibrant, democratized communications system would of course impose relatively few limits to political discourse, especially on issues (finance, jobs, the environmental threats, warfare) of urgent importance to public welfare. Media culture largely defines how crucial issues are framed, valorized, and contextualized, what is emphasized, what is trivialized, and what is ignored or dismissed altogether. It establishes the range of views permitted and who is allowed to express those views. While media and popular culture appear open and diversified, in fact those who manage this trillion-dollar empire devote abundant time and resources to governing the flow of information.
However, the decline in trust in mainstream media has not been followed by growth of credible alternative media. Consequently, most people fall victim to hoaxes. Hoaxes and fake news become easily viral because people tend to seek information that would affirm their own beliefs. Some groups see this as an opportunity to gain money from producing fake news.
To make it worse, the internet and social media have also empowered media oligarchs. Media owners are more aggressive in buying competitors to expand their media business, integrating with other businesses, and investing in digital media and communication infrastructure.
Some media owners also enter the political arena by forming parties and placing their cadres in governmental positions. Similar to the political realm, media companies increasingly look like a dynasty: slowly inherited to family members.

Indira Priyadarshini Nawagamuwa

Violence and harassment against women journalists can occur everywhere: in newsrooms, in relation to their sources, at home, on the way home, online. Violence and harassment have devastating implications for the targeted journalist as her well-being, her work, her private life and eventually press freedom are affected.

To mark 25 November, The International day for the elimination of violence against women and girls, the IFJ is calling on all its unions to campaign for the full ratification by their government of ILO Convention 190. Read the testimonies of IFJ Gender Council members in Canada, Cyprus, Greece, Peru and Portugal on why ratification of the Convention is key for women journalists.
he International Labour Organization (ILO) passed on 10 June 2019 a new Convention – ILO C190 to end violence and harassment in the world of work, as well as a recommendation, 206.

We need this convention and its recommendation to be ratified by governments across the world.
Why? Because it can save journalists’ and citizens’ lives by outlawing harassment and violence in the world of work and turn workplaces into violence-free zones.

Journalism can be a dangerous profession. In order to cover breaking stories, journalists put themselves in contexts of war, conflict and natural disasters. In order to report on corruption, human rights abuses and political chicanery, journalists often incur the wrath of the most powerful in society.

Women journalists who find themselves in such situations are often the specific focus of violence. According to IFJ statistics, almost 65% of women media workers have experienced intimidation, threats or abuse in relation to their work. This is a threat to freedom of expression and media freedom.
Abuse can come from all directions: a senior-editor who uses his position to intimidate a young female journalist; a female reporter reporting outside being groped or receiving sexist comments or being physically assaulted by her interviewee or bystanders.

ILO C190 can bring about change. It changes female journalists’ lives by outlawing violence in the world of work and making it a health and safety issue media employers have to respond to.

Today, ask your government to ratify the convention and make a change in your newsroom.

Five things to know about ILO Convention 190 on harassment and violence in the world of work

• Once it’s ratified by your government it becomes legally binding
•  It protects all media workers irrespective of their status (freelance, interns, part-time)
•  It makes violence and harassment a health and safety issue. Media employers will need to include violence and harassment when managing occupational health and safety issues.
•  It covers gender-based violence, including: sexual harassment, bullying,
  stalking, online harassment and all other forms of violence.
•  It includes domestic violence because it can have a big impact on your mental health and performance at work.

Here’s what your union can do NOW:

Inform your members about violence and harassment in the workplace.
Include language on ending violence and harassment at work in collective bargaining agreements, using C190 and its recommendation R206 as a basis.
Work with media to make sure that health and safety policies include violence and harassment, and more specifically gender-based violence.

For more information, please contact IFJ on +32 2 235 22 16

The IFJ represents more than 600,000 journalists in 146 countries