Governments across Southeast Asia have a history of using laws and the judiciary to curb press freedoms — now, they have found a handy crutch to lean on as they intensify clampdowns: U.S. President Donald Trump's "fake news" mantra.
Most worrying to media rights advocates is that several countries are promoting new legislation or expanding existing regulations to make publishing fake news an offense. The fear is that, rather than focusing on false stories published on social media, authoritarian leaders will use the new laws to target legitimate news outlets that are critical of them.
"When the leadership of the United States consistently targets legitimate media reporting as fake, it opens the way for leaders the world over to do the same," said Shawn Crispin, who represents the Committee to Protect Journalists in the region. "It's a dangerous trend that is giving authoritarian and democratic regimes alike justification for targeting or shutting down reporting they don't like."