The cases of Julian Assange and Jamal Khashoggi illustrate examples across the Regime Spectrum of countries persecuting journalists to keep their secrets and malfeasance confidential. Existing literature on this topic focuses heavily on autocratic regimes, and this tends to make the repression of the press in democratic states negligible. Thus, it is important for citizens to be aware of the imminent threat of press repression and persecution throughout the world, especially within modern democracies. This paper seeks to answer the question: how does press repression and persecution differ between autocratic and democratic regimes? When the cases were analyzed, differences were found in tactics used by different regimes, as well as what factors lead to repression across regime types. This paper concludes that press repression and persecution is prevalent throughout the Regime Spectrum, and the undermining of the press’ roles is of great danger to civil rights, democratic institutions, and global press freedom. democratic institutions and global press freedom.

Thus, the insights of this paper seek to provide practical application by suggesting:

• Assessing conceptualizations of press freedom so that governments can be held accountable to their standards domestically and internationally.
• That policymakers may consider including the roles of the press in domestic policies based on the tactics used to repress.

​Keywords: global press freedom, policy making, civil rights

Citation: Bendiner, S. O. (2021). Press Repression Across the Regime Spectrum: Comparing the cases of Julian Assange and Jamal Khashoggi. Public Note, 8.

Sebastián Bendiner

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