Unesco and a revealing tale of two journalists

Bank Holiday Monday, in case you didn’t know, was also World Press Freedom Day. Unesco understandably marked the occasion. But more interesting than its official communiqué – and a great deal more informative about the way that organisation thinks – was a recent report it sponsored in support of two journalists said to be the subject of attacks on press freedom: Maria Ressa in the Philippines, and, at home, Carole Cadwalladr. The views expressed in that document are worth a closer look.

Maria Ressa is a long-standing and courageous thorn in the side of the Philippines’ strongman president Rodrigo Duterte. A man who has said openly that ‘just because you’re a journalist, you are not exempted from assassination if you’re a son of a bitch,’ Duterte is determined to silence her by attrition. In the last four years, Ressa has been subjected to ten arrest warrants, one hounding on a dubious allegation of tax fraud and a conviction