> I admittedly haven't read the article yet (...), but does it take into account that we've had a lot more unrest than usual this year?

If you have more unrest than usual (and it shouldn't be usual at all to have unrest) it's even more important to have more journalists circulating freely and writing/publishing freely: that's how you get to see and understand what's actually going on.

If you don't have journalists doing their job freely, you only have the state propaganda to listen to.