The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and 19 other organisations, experts and news leaders have urged Group of 20 leaders to ensure that journalists and news organisations freely cover deliberations by representatives of the world’s largest economies, whose decisions have broad ramifications around the world.

The letter follows the alarming news that the U.S. Treasury Department blocked several journalists from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg News, and the Asheville Watchdog from covering the most recent finance ministers’ meeting in Asheville, North Carolina.

To the members, “no single country or official should have the authority to limit or hand-pick which journalists or news organisations may cover the event. Press access is not a privilege to be granted to favored journalists. It is essential to the public’s right to know.”

Chief Global Affairs Officer at CPJ, Gypsy Guillén Kaiser, added, “we need policymakers to acknowledge that information moves markets — from the corner stalls to the stock exchanges — and that information must be accurate and timely. Journalists are vital to keeping investors and the general public informed, and they must be able to report freely.”

Reacting to the issue, Deputy Executive Director, Media Rights Agenda (MRA), Ayode Longe, said journalists are the purveyors of information, and information is their commodity of trade, so, they should be allowed access to information from every public institution and officials, subject only to the limited exemptions provided for by law and not anybody’s arbitrary whims.

According to him, “the media’s watchdog function means that they need access to information to perform at optimum and that is why Nigeria’s Freedom of Information Act provides that an applicant needs not demonstrate any specific interest in the information being applied for.”

He continued, “the media, therefore, needs to be granted full access to information in the public domain that public institutions actually hold in trust for citizens to enable them make informed decisions and understand the direction of government in all areas.

“When journalists are denied access to information, members the public are the ultimate victims as they are denied access to timely and accurate information. Now, citizens’ participation is a fundamental principle of democracy. When citizens are denied full access to information, they are also denied access to full participation in their democracy. On the other hand, when journalists are allowed accessed to complete information which they then use to write robust stories, citizens can thereby make better choices, engage in meaningful debates, and demand accountability,” he said.

CPJ observed that over the years, journalists face a multitude of threats and are increasingly being pushed into exile in response to their work.

Almost half of the journalists CPJ supported in 2024 are living in exile, and this number has grown in recent years.

And almost half of CPJ’s grant recipients are living in exile, often in a small number of countries that offer them limited safety and short-term prospects. This trend reveals the brutality of the repression in many journalists’ home countries and points to serious challenges for those who have to restart their lives abroad.

The letter was signed by members of the Media 20 initiative, an independent initiative working to ensure that the G20 supports a free, independent, and sustainable media ecosystem.

Members of the group that endorsed the letter include, Reporters Without Borders (RSF), Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), The African Editors Forum (TAEF), Free Press, Freedom of the Press Foundation, Joseph E. Stiglitz, 2021 Nobel laureate (Economics), Dr. Anya Schiffrin, Momentum Journalism and Tech Task Force, The Center for News Technology and Innovation, Moxii Africa, Siddharth Varadarajan, Founding Editor, The Wire International Press Institute.

Other members are, Global Forum for Media Development (GFMD), Churchill Otieno, Eastern Africa Editors Society (EAES), NMT Media Foundation, South African National Editors’ Forum (SANEF), Collaboration on International ICT Policy for East and Southern Africa (CIPESA), African Women in Media, Centre for Information Integrity in Africa (CINIA) and Press Council of South Africa (PCSA).