{"id":201520,"date":"2025-07-03T13:53:56","date_gmt":"2025-07-03T11:53:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/southern-africa\/botswana\/botswana-batswana-support-press-freedom-and-medias-watchdog-role\/"},"modified":"2025-07-03T13:53:56","modified_gmt":"2025-07-03T11:53:56","slug":"botswana-batswana-support-press-freedom-and-medias-watchdog-role","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/southern-africa\/botswana\/botswana-batswana-support-press-freedom-and-medias-watchdog-role\/","title":{"rendered":"Botswana: Batswana Support Press Freedom and Media&#8217;s Watchdog Role"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"story-body-text\" data-para-word-count=\"15\">But four in 10 citizens say the country&#8217;s media is not free of government interference.<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text\" data-para-word-count=\"2\">Key findings<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Three-fourths (74%) of Batswana say they are &#8220;somewhat free&#8221; or &#8220;completely free&#8221; to say what they think, although 24% disagree. o The share who feel free to speak their minds is up by 6 percentage points since 2022 (68%) but remains below the historic high of 93% in 2008. o Botswana ranks above average on perceived freedom of expression among seven Southern African countries.<\/li>\n<li>Three-fourths (76%)&#8230;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/allafrica.com\/stories\/202507030007.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Read more on AllAfrica.com<\/a><br \/>\n<br \/>South Africa Today Africa \u2013 Southern Africa <a title=\"Botswana\" href=\"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/category\/southern-africa\/botswana\/\">Botswana<\/a> News<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>But four in 10 citizens say the country&#8217;s media is not free of government interference. Key findings Three-fourths (74%) of Batswana say they are &#8220;somewhat free&#8221; or &#8220;completely free&#8221; to say what they think, although 24% disagree. o The share who feel free to speak their minds is up by 6 percentage points since 2022 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":201521,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cdn.allafrica.com\/static\/images\/structure\/aa-logo-rgba-no-text-square.png","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2461],"tags":[258,256,7917,4718,2462,7636,42358,257,6010,8225,254,6096,22038],"class_list":["post-201520","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-botswana","tag-africa","tag-africa-news","tag-batswana","tag-botswana","tag-botswana-news","tag-freedom","tag-medias","tag-news","tag-press","tag-role","tag-south-africa-today","tag-support","tag-watchdog"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cdn.allafrica.com\/static\/images\/structure\/aa-logo-rgba-no-text-square.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201520","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=201520"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201520\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/201521"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=201520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=201520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=201520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}