This article published in The Washington Post is written by Kathy Kiely. Here is an excerpt:
At marquee events during his first 100 days in office, President Biden cast the challenge of our times in stark terms. When the history of this era is written, Biden said at his first White House news conference, it will be about “who succeeded: autocracy or democracy?” The president reiterated that theme during his first address to a joint session of Congress. It’s apropos, because three decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, a moment celebrated as the triumph of democratic capitalism and even “the end of history,” freedom of expression is under attack around the world, including in established democracies such as our own.
But even if Biden’s ambition to reestablish the White House as a champion of human rights is a welcome break from the Trump administration’s dictator-coddling, his efforts to pressure countries on freedom of expression are being systematically undermined in Washington, where some nations that are the worst offenders have powerful advocates. Representing those countries is a lucrative business here in the home of the First Amendment.
Sadly, there are far too many examples in the Justice Department’s foreign-agent registration database to present a complete list here. So my research assistant, Missouri journalism student Elise Mulligan, and I decided to focus on a few countries with pressing image problems when it comes to press freedoms.
Read the full article here.
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