One of the newest members of GIJN, the Jordanian investigative site 7iber, began as a blog in 2007 but has since matured into an online magazine bravely covering issues in a hostile press environment.
GIJN spoke with International Symposium on Online Journalism founder, Rosental Alves, about the growing backlash against independent media in Latin America.
Many autocracy-displaced media have managed to navigate surviving outside their home country with varying degrees of success. In a series of interviews with GIJN, exiled news leaders from around the world offer some best practices and lessons learned from their own experiences.
Senegal’s first publicly-funded, independent media site — La Maison des Reporters — was launched after a young journalist, Moussa Ngom, grew frustrated with his country’s mainstream news.
Meduza, one of Russia’s last remaining independent news sites, lost 30,000 donors after the government cut off subscriber payments from the country due to unflinching coverage of the war. In less than a week, two German reporters organized a crowdfunding campaign to replace those funds to try to save Meduza.
Launched in 2008 with an innovative but untested business model, Mediapart has become a pillar of France’s media landscape and given a new lease of life to investigative journalism in the country. GIJN’s French editor Marthe Rubio explores how the site made a name for itself and how it managed to achieve economic independence.
In the aftermath of the repressive Taliban regime’s takeover of Afghanistan, some newsrooms fully relocated abroad — but some reporters remained behind, and leak critical stories about the government to their partners in exile.
DOSSIER, an Austrian outlet that is a member center of the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, has been able to offset the financial challenges experienced by many media outlets in Austria — and combat a series of vexatious lawsuits — thanks to its membership program.
Press freedom – as exercised by independent news organizations free from the control of governments, political parties and other partisan interests – is fundamental to the development of peaceful, just and democratic societies. These organizations foster dialogue, respect for individual rights and good governance.
Researchers have found evidence that attacks on press freedom — such as jailing journalists, raiding their homes, shutting down printing presses, and using libel laws to thwart reporters — have measurable effects on a nation’s economic growth.
