COVID-19 Impact on Freedom of Speech

Freedom of speech is a universal human right. Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights mentions our right to “receive and impart information through any media regardless of frontiers”, which makes this article rather remarkable not only due its subtle reference to our fundamental right to express opinions, but also the right to be informed about them. Furthermore,, freedom of speech also epitomizes democracy, the best form of government for this right to be enjoyed, in which the members of the society are regularly updated around the given issue and are granted with the opportunity to have their voices heard about it. In this process, the role of the national and international media and press, as well as the alternative media is undeniably crucial. Meanwhile, the key role of freedom of speech for pursuance of the democracies has been further highlighted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Why so? There are two aspects to the answer of this question.

The first aspect to be considered is the role of freedom of speech in democracies in general. Freedom of speech is not important only for the individuals forming a society, but also for the authority that governs this society. The freedom of speech benefits those who govern a given country because it provides them with the data needed in order to be more attentive to the opinions and needs of the citizens.

In the World Economic Forum 2018, historian Yuval Noah Harari argued that democracies are more successful thanks to this attentiveness, saying, “In the 20th century, democracy generally outperformed dictatorship because democracy was better at processing data and making decisions”. Therefore, consensual collection of data on the opinions of the citizens plays a crucial role in the victory of democracy, as well as for the decision-making process, and this data could not possibly have been collected without freedom of speech. This fundamental freedom and its most primary medium, the press, are not any less important in the times of crisis, if not even more important, and it can be clearly observed during the COVID-19 epidemic. Indeed, this right has become even more vital during the worst pandemic of the 21st century, which brought about a world where people are confused and scared. How has the press, the watchdog of freedom of speech, been holding up in this process?

This question leads us to the second aspect of the answer to the question raised at the beginning: the role of freedom of speech in times of crisis. The freedom of speech is crucial both during a crisis and in its aftermath. In the context of COVID-19 epidemic, the informative function of the press have become even more significant, firstly because of the fact that most of the population in many countries are under voluntary or mandatory quarantine, and they rely on the information and experts’ opinions regarding many issues, such as the level of contagion, the number of people infected by the virus or lethality level, the precautions taken by the state to fight the epidemic, the normalization process, the impact of the pandemic on economy, etc. It also serves as a medium in which public opinions regarding the pandemic process and its afterwards are conveyed within the frame of freedom of speech, which can be regarded as the data Harari emphasizes. However, the most recent World Press Freedom Index prepared by Reporters without Borders (RSF), and countless news articles from highly-reputable news agencies suggest a contrary trend around the world in terms of press freedom. The RSF report points out that the number of countries where the situation of press freedom is in a ‘problematic situation’ is more than the combination of the countries in which the latter is in ‘good’ and ‘satisfactory’ state, whereas the situation of press freedom in more than 73% of countries around the world is ‘problematic’, ‘difficult’, or ‘very serious’. The Index reports a negative trend of the press freedom in the democracies as well, and associates these results with the Coronavirus epidemic.

Therefore, it is evident that although it is in the very essence of the idea of democracy, the freedom of speech and its extension, press freedom, has become one of the things suffering from the Coronavirus epidemic in democratic countries. Times are tough; we are fighting a big war against a very small invisible enemy, and it is apparent that the world is likely to become a relatively and significantly a different place after the epidemic. However, we should not allow this war to be fought at the expense of the most important tenets of democracy, and the change to take place at the expense of characteristics that makes democracy the best and the most citizen-friendly way of the Governance.