PARIS: Press freedom around the world is under threat from a triple whammy of US President Donald Trump, Russia and China’s bid to crush all dissent, a watchdog said yesterday, reports AFP.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) warned that a “climate of hatred and animosity” towards journalists combined with growing attempts to control the media pose a “threat to democracies”.

Its annual report said that reporters were the target of a growing wave of authoritarianism with leaders whipping up hostility against them.

The group accused the world’s three superpowers—the US, China and Russia—of leading the charge against press freedom, with Trump regularly launching personal attacks on reporters and Beijing exporting its “media control model” to strangle dissent elsewhere in Asia.

The slide towards “strongman” and populist politics in Europe, stoked by Moscow, was threatening freedoms in the region where they were once safest, it added, with Hungary, Slovakia and Poland setting off alarm bells.

Czech President Milos Zeman turned up at a press conference with a fake Kalashnikov inscribed with the words “for journalists” while Slovakia’s former leader Robert Fico called journalists “filthy anti-Slovak prostitutes” and “idiotic hyenas”.