TBIJ journalists explain how they got around SLAPP suits by having UK Members of Parliament — shielded by legal privilege — read in the House of Commons previously silenced stories.
Launching as a digital outlet 25 years ago gave Malaysiakini’s founders the freedom to report on stories that others feared to cover.
Clothilde Redfern, executive director of Reporters Shield, details the group’s efforts to help investigative outlets combat SLAPPs and legal harassment.
To confront the ongoing legal threats to independent media around the world, the Vance Center and OCCRP are launching Reporters Shield, a multi-million dollar legal support program and defense fund for investigative journalism and newsrooms.
On World Press Freedom Day 2022, journalists around the world, many of them now in exile, are pushing back against a growing crackdown on a free press.
British lawyer Elizabeth Wiggin has defended investigative journalists from legal challenges in the UK courts and she describes the legal threats, humiliation, and financial ruin that reporters can face while covering stories the rich and powerful do not want published.
Journalists across southern Africa face a variety of obstacles to investigative reporting — from funding struggles to state censorship to legal intimidation — but are still innovating and collaborating to persevere.
Among the most frequently used forms of legal coercion against investigative journalists are SLAPPs (“strategic litigation against public participation”), which aim to intimidate reporters into abandoning their investigations. The practice of abusing legal systems by those in power to silence critics has reached global proportions. Its damage is far-reaching and curbing it is an imperative for democracy and maintaining peace.
