COVID-19 has been dom­i­nat­ing the news cy­cle around the world since that day more than a year ago when alarms were first raised about a high­ly in­fec­tious res­pi­ra­to­ry ill­ness that had emerged from Wuhan, Chi­na.

On the eve of World Press Free­dom Day 2021, the all-con­sum­ing pan­dem­ic re­mains one of the biggest news sto­ries of our life­times, dom­i­nat­ing glob­al head­lines.

In T&T the theme for this year’s ob­ser­vance, In­for­ma­tion as a Pub­lic Good, has a par­tic­u­lar res­o­nance. This coun­try is grap­pling with an alarm­ing up­surge in cas­es and a vac­ci­na­tion pro­gramme that is mired in un­cer­tain­ty due to the un­avail­abil­i­ty of suf­fi­cient dos­es to cov­er the pop­u­la­tion.

That is why up­hold­ing in­for­ma­tion as a pub­lic good and work­ing to im­prove the pro­duc­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion of news in the in­ter­est of trans­paren­cy and em­pow­er­ment re­mains a top pri­or­i­ty for Guardian Me­dia Lim­it­ed.

There is al­so the recog­ni­tion that COVID-19 has com­pound­ed the is­sues fac­ing jour­nal­ists who have the chal­leng­ing task of gath­er­ing and dis­trib­ut­ing ac­cu­rate in­for­ma­tion. It is a role that has come un­der greater scruti­ny in the pan­dem­ic.

The thrice-week­ly Min­istry of Health me­dia brief­in­gs has placed jour­nal­ists in the spot­light as con­duits for com­mu­ni­ca­tions from pub­lic health of­fi­cials. Re­lay­ing in­for­ma­tion that can in­flu­ence the pub­lic’s de­ci­sion-mak­ing in a cri­sis is a crit­i­cal but mis­un­der­stood role.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, as pin­point­ed by the World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (WHO), facts about the pan­dem­ic are gen­er­al­ly shroud­ed in an ‘in­fo­dem­ic’ of mis­in­for­ma­tion, dis­in­for­ma­tion, and ru­mours that can spread quick­ly and wide­ly.

The lat­est edi­tion of the World Press Free­dom In­dex, an an­nu­al re­port com­piled by Re­porters With­out Bor­ders, shows that there has been a dra­mat­ic de­te­ri­o­ra­tion in ac­cess to in­for­ma­tion and an in­crease in ob­sta­cles to news cov­er­age.

Over the past year, with the world in the grips of the pan­dem­ic, jour­nal­ism has been to­tal­ly blocked or se­ri­ous­ly im­ped­ed in 73 coun­tries. COVID-19 has been used to block jour­nal­ists’ ac­cess to in­for­ma­tion in many parts of the world.

Re­porters With­out Bor­ders sec­re­tary-gen­er­al Christophe De­loire as­sessed the sit­u­a­tion this way: “Jour­nal­ism is the best vac­cine against dis­in­for­ma­tion. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, its pro­duc­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion are too of­ten blocked by po­lit­i­cal, eco­nom­ic, tech­no­log­i­cal and, some­times, even cul­tur­al fac­tors.

“In re­sponse to the vi­ral­i­ty of dis­in­for­ma­tion across bor­ders, on dig­i­tal plat­forms and via so­cial me­dia, jour­nal­ism pro­vides the most ef­fec­tive means of en­sur­ing that pub­lic de­bate is based on a di­verse range of es­tab­lished facts.”

That is a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty that weighs heav­i­ly on me­dia prac­ti­tion­ers here, even with the good news that T&T has im­proved its rank­ing in the World Press Free­dom In­dex, mov­ing up five notch­es to 31 among 180 coun­tries and re­gions.

This im­prove­ment is due in part to a Supreme Court rul­ing ear­li­er this year that struck down the use of po­lice search war­rants to gain ac­cess to the home and of­fice of a jour­nal­ist.

How­ev­er, even with that vic­to­ry, there is still a need for vig­i­lance to de­fend free­dom of the press. The pan­dem­ic has shown the ex­tent to which it re­mains con­stant­ly un­der threat.