Massimo D’Angelo, Lecturer at the University of Greenwich and Research Fellow at Loughborough University London, discusses the pressures on independent media in democracies across the globe
In their influential 2018 book How Democracies Die, scholars Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt argue that one of the classic tactics used by governments sliding from democracy towards authoritarianism is to threaten and neuter a free, independent press. They note that governments can “use their control of referees to ‘legally’ sideline the opposition media, often through libel or defamation suits”. The positive relationship between a free press and a healthy democracy has long been recognised, so it is hardly surprising that the global erosion of democratic standards is accompanied by mounting pressure on independent media. What is more alarming today is that this deterioration is no longer confined to fragile or emerging democracies: it is being actively fuelled by countries once seen as consolidated democratic models, including the United States, long mythologised as the world’s leading democracy, and Israel, frequently described as “the only democracy in the Middle East”.
United States: Trump, the BBC and the ‘Enemy of the People’ Playbook
Donald Trump’s latest clash with the press has crossed the Atlantic. The trigger was a BBC Panorama documentary, Trump: A Second Chance?, aired days before the 2024 US election. The film stitched together two lines from his 6 January 2021 speech: “we’re going to walk down to the Capitol” and “we fight, we fight like hell”, spoken almost an hour apart, and ran them over footage of the Capitol crowd, creating the impression of a single, incendiary call to march on Congress.
After an internal memo exposed the edit, the BBC admitted an “error of judgement” and its director-general and head of news resigned. Trump responded by accusing the corporation of defamation and threatening a multi-billion-dollar lawsuit unless it retracts, apologises and pays damages, holding the case up as proof that the BBC is part of a global “fake news” cabal. For many observers, this is in contrast with the way the US First Amendment is often held up as a symbol of democracy: a constitutional safeguard meant to ensure that journalists can play their watchdog role without fear of financial or legal ruin. Yet when powerful politicians dangle ruinous lawsuits over critical coverage, that fragile protection appears to be at risk. Nor is this style of politics uniquely American. It increasingly resembles the so called “Orbán playbook” in Hungary, where Viktor Orbán’s governments have spent over a decade smearing critical outlets as enemies of the nation while using courts, regulators and friendly businessmen to bring once-independent media to heel.
The row fits a familiar pattern. In the US, he has branded mainstream outlets “the enemy of the American people”, floated revoking the broadcast licences of networks such as NBC and ABC, and launched eye-watering defamation suits against organisations including The New York Times, ABC, CBS and The Wall Street Journal. Many of these actions are widely seen as classic SLAPPs, strategic lawsuits against public participation, intended less to prevail in court than to drain newsrooms of time and money and send a warning to others. At the same time, Trump and his team have repeatedly threatened, and in some cases imposed, the removal of press credentials from reporters who challenge him, restricting their access to briefings and to the corridors of power. Together, this mix of lawfare and access denial functions as a pincer movement against watchdog journalism: report too aggressively, and you risk both losing your platform and being dragged into costly litigation.
Israel: The ‘Al Jazeera Law’ and Security as a Pretext
In April 2024, the Israeli Knesset passed what quickly became known as the “Al Jazeera law”, emergency legislation allowing the government to temporarily shut down foreign broadcasters deemed a security threat, seize their equipment and block their websites. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made clear who the first target would be, declaring on X that “the terrorist channel Al Jazeera will no longer broadcast from Israel” and vowing to act “immediately” under the new powers.
Within weeks, the cabinet unanimously approved measures to close the network’s offices, revoke press accreditation and pull its broadcasts off air, accusing the Qatari channel of serving as an “incitement” arm for Hamas and endangering Israeli soldiers. Media freedom groups such as the Committee to Protect Journalists, Reporters Without Borders, ARTICLE 19 and Amnesty International warn that the law sets a dangerous precedent: a tool ostensibly crafted for wartime security that normalises treating critical journalism as a national security threat. The government is now pushing to make these emergency powers permanent, a move that would entrench the state’s ability to shut down foreign media at will and further shrink Israel’s already embattled space for independent reporting. This is part of a wider pattern in which national security has become a catch-all justification for silencing uncomfortable reporting: in Russia, for example, sweeping “fake news” and “foreign agent” laws have been used to criminalise independent coverage of the war in Ukraine and to brand critical outlets as enemies of the state.
Global Trend: Elected Governments Quietly Rewriting the Rules
Freedom House’s 2025 Freedom in the World report warns that the erosion of media freedom is no longer confined to autocracies: independent journalism is “increasingly coming under pressure in Free and Partly Free countries”, as elected leaders set out to weaken the very checks that restrain their power.
Instead of jailing reporters en masse, governments are leaning on subtler tools: civil and criminal defamation cases, police raids on newsrooms, smear campaigns and regulatory pressure. In South Korea, authorities have repeatedly targeted critical outlets with investigations and raids; in Serbia, the ruling party has combined opaque media ownership, politicised advertising and SLAPP-style lawsuits to tilt the information space in its favour. Across Europe, OSCE and EU watchdogs highlight legal harassment and vexatious litigation as a growing threat to watchdog journalism.
Globally, Reporters Without Borders notes a “worrying decline” in respect for media autonomy, while its 2025 index classifies the overall state of press freedom as a “difficult situation” for the first time. International IDEA likewise records the sharpest fall in press freedom for half a century, tightly bound up with wider democratic backsliding. The pattern is clear: from Seoul to Belgrade, Washington to Warsaw, it is often elected governments, not coups, that are quietly rewriting the rules to keep the press in check.
Conclusions
From Washington to Jerusalem, from Seoul to Belgrade, assaults on media freedom rarely involve tanks at TV stations. Democratically elected leaders invoke security, patriotism or “fake news” to harass, sue and intimidate critical journalists while claiming to defend democracy itself. Levitsky and Ziblatt warned that modern autocrats kill democracies by legal means. Even when lawsuits or shutdown threats are not carried through, the prospect of ruinous damages chills newsrooms into self-censorship. The steady erosion of independent journalism is not collateral damage, it is the point. The more normal this becomes, the closer we edge to the cliff.
Author’s Bio
Dr Massimo D’Angelo is a Lecturer at the University of Greenwich and a Research Fellow at Loughborough University London. His research focuses on European politics, democratisation and processes of authoritarian rule. Specifically, his current work examines how elected governments can erode democratic checks in Europe and beyond.