In April 2019 the Committee to Protect Journalists reported from Addis Ababa that Ethiopian media were enjoying unprecedented room to publish, with new papers on the street and formerly banned outlets sitting beside state reporters at briefings.
Journalists still complained about weak access to officials. CPJ warned that legal reform, security-force habits, and hate-speech politics could reverse the opening if Abiy Ahmed’s government treated press freedom as a temporary gift rather than a right.
The honeymoon framing aged badly. Later years brought internet blackouts, arrests, and wartime information control that made the 2019 CPJ caution read less like worry and more like early diagnosis.
As media-rights reference, the CPJ assessment remains a dated baseline for measuring how far Abiy Ahmed’s regime drifted from its own reform slogans.
Sources: CPJ