Ever since Covid-19 hit the world a little more than a year ago, and people were forced to remain indoors, they have relied entirely on newspapers and news portals to bring them reports on the pandemic raging outside. The press has been at the forefront of detailing the rise in cases, the struggles in containment, and failures in policy-making. 

Yet, journalistic freedoms have been shrinking in several countries, often putting journalists in the path of peril. According to the 2021 World Press Freedom Index put together by Reporters Without Borders shows that journalism is completely or partly blocked in 73 per cent of the 180 countries ranked in the index. India is ranked 142nd in that index and is in the ‘bad’ category along with Brazil, Mexico and Russia. In the last one year, President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi’s government in Egypt—166th on the index—banned the publication of Covid-19 statistics that did not come from the Ministry of Health. Authorities in Iran which is ranked 174th are said to have clamped down on news coverage by media outlets and stepped up trials of journalists to stop them from investigating the Covid-19 death toll.