World Press Freedom Day: The planet's in peril, but so too are the people who make sure you know about it

Today (3 May) is World Press Freedom Day, a day dedicated to remembering just how important the freedom of the press is in holding governments and big business to account. But journalists are facing more abuse and harassment than ever before, and as you read this, the important work they do is either completely or partially blocked in more than 70% of the world.

The director-general of the BBC himself has warned that the abuse and harassment journalists face “just for doing their job” has shot up in recent years, particularly online. It’s more frequent and intense, and for women working in journalism it’s particularly bad. The escalating threats and “coordinated campaigns” Mr Davie alludes to are all too real - I’ve seen these hateful online crusades and the devastating impact they have on colleague’s lives myself.

I know how this sounds - a journalist complaining about people being mean to us on the internet. Boo hoo, poor me. Suck it up/get a real job/stop being a government shill (or whatever the conspiracy theory of the day is) - you can take your pick really. The media can and should be scrutinised, but attacks on journalism are an insidious force. Journalists working for Britain’s national broadcaster have been branded “foreign agents” in Russia, met with resistance and intimidation at every turn. The BBC and Voice of America have been suspended altogether from reporting in Burkina Faso, for covering accusations against its army of mass killings.

For those working on the coalface of the climate crisis, today has revealed that the attacks they face can be deadly. A new UNESCO report has found more than 70% of the world’s environmental journalists have been attacked for their work since 2009. That equates to hundreds of individual reporters who have faced violence, the Guardian reports, and 44 who have tragically lost their lives - with just five convictions.

Good men and women, some of the world’s most fierce and passionate advocates for people and the planet, have been lost. Britain’s Dom Phillips - who wrote for esteemed publications like the Guardian and the Washington Post - and his Brazilian colleague Bruno Pereira, shot dead as they investigated who was bankrolling illegal fishing operations in the Amazon. Hang Serei Oudom, of Cambodia, killed with an axe while investigating illegal logging - and its connections to powerful officials. Gerardo Ortega, of the Philippines, who investigated the environmental impacts of mining and corruption in local government on his home island of Palawan, gunned down on the street. Thirteen years later, the man accused of orchestrating his death remains at large.

Environmental journalism is important, and climate change is one of the defining issues of our time. We’ve just experienced our warmest year on record - with experts already warning 2024 may be even hotter. Scientists are begging world leaders to ditch the creative accounting and urgently slash greenhouse gas emissions, particularly those from burning fossil fuels, to rein it in while we still can. Each fraction of a degree risks further destabilising the Earth’s climate, helping drive floods, fires, and ecological disasters that threaten nature, our livelihoods, and our very lives.

Whenever an environmental journalist dies suspiciously, or faces a fierce online campaign of murky origin to shut them and their work down, it always gives me pause to think. Who doesn’t want these stories told, and why? Who’s profiting in the short term, from issues that are going to harm us all in the long term?

The media should be scrutinised just like anyone else, and this includes reporting on environmental issues and climate change. But so too should the forces behind campaigns to discredit, censor or suppress their vital work - no matter how they go about it.