Brian Leddin (Limerick City, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I am thankful for the opportunity to speak. Much too often we take for granted this opportunity to voice our ideas and opinions freely and without repercussions. It is not a luxury afforded to politicians in many other countries around the world and it is even less likely that the people reporting on the business of politics, state affairs and international conflicts would be given the same assurances.

Our discourse in this House can be biased, ideological and charged but the message of a journalist is not a personal story or subjective thought. Instead, journalists act as conduits, narrating a story based on their observations and discoveries. Being objective in the face of traditional state-run propaganda is more than just a challenge to reporters; it is very often a question of life and death.

In our collective memory, there are numerous records of the enormous sacrifices made by journalists reporting on the Troubles. This is not something of the past. Lyra McKee was shot dead just three years ago. She was a woman and someone's partner and child. She was a reporter of truth and hers was a life forever lost to a cowardly hand that could not tolerate the truth.

Trustworthy news contributes to the protection of civilians and brings the reality of conflict to the attention of the international community while exposing violations of human rights and international humanitarian law. As I am speaking, we are witnessing the Russian state propaganda machine broadcasting the successes of the "special military operation" in Ukraine while Ukrainian and western media rightly call the invasion a war. A few weeks after Putin's invasion of Ukraine began, a law was enacted in Russia making it a criminal offence to publicly transmit, including by means of social networks, any "deliberately false information about the deployment of the military forces of the Russian Federation". That includes reporting on casualty figures that depart from officially approved numbers and using the word "war".

Misinformation and propaganda are no longer the domain of the traditional media in totalitarian regimes. There is now an even greater threat of misinformation and manipulation masquerading as first-hand information and independent reporting through social media platforms. Most of it is never subject to any form of scrutiny and far removed from what is objective reporting.

In 1990, the International Federation of Journalists published its first list of journalists killed. In the 30 years since, a further 2,658 journalists have been killed, with approximately two journalists or media workers dying every week. As colleagues mentioned, most journalists are murdered in reprisal for what they write as opposed to being killed by the hazards of reporting from combat zones. According to the International Federation of Journalists, nearly 75% of journalists killed around the world did not step on a landmine, get shot in crossfire or die in a suicide bombing but were instead murdered outright, such as being killed by a gunman escaping on the back of a motorcycle, being shot or stabbed to death near their home or office or being found dead having been abducted and tortured.

Daniel Pearl, Anna Politkovskya, Pavel Sheremet, Daphne Caruana Galizia, Lyra McKee, Pierre Zakrzewski and Shireen Abu Akleh are the names we might recognise of too many who have died while working as journalists in the past 20 years. However, the risk to local journalists, whose names do not resonate in the media, have an impact beyond incidents. This sends a signal to countless others that they or members of their family could be next. These names are more than that; they are sons and daughters, mothers and fathers, friends and colleagues. They have dedicated their lives and paid the ultimate price for their work as journalists for exercising freedom of expression and holding governments and groups to account. It is not enough simply to remember them and speak in their honour. Their murderers must be brought to justice.

There are journalists reporting from around the world today and providing the public with accurate and timely information. We must provide a safe and enabling environment for freedom of expression and guarantee freedom of the media to ensure these people can effectively perform their professional duties, especially in times of crisis.

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