Global Investigative Journalism Network (https://gijn.org/tag/press-freedom-2/)
Journalism has taken Bektour Iskender through revolutions, death threats and even a crowdfunded space venture. Along the way, he’s trained dozens of teenage investigative journalists in Kyrgyzstan.
Freedom House’s 2018 Freedom in the World report, which was just released this week, signals an alarming trend: Democracy is in retreat. There were media freedom reversals in many countries spanning across regions, including long-standing democracies such as the United States and consolidated authoritarian regimes such as China and Russia.
More than 450 journalists gathered at the 11th Annual Forum of the Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism in Jordan earlier this month. The gathering took place just two months after journalist Jamal Khashoggi was brutally murdered at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, as new details of his assassination continued to surface.
This year’s Armenian Revolution saw thousands take to the streets for almost two weeks to protest then-prime minister Serzh Sargsyan and his government. Journalists in the country say that it wasn’t one story that triggered the people’s ire against Sargsyan’s rule but the cumulative investigative coverage over the years.
For there to be real justice in the case of Jamal Khashoggi, the penalty the Saudis pay must transcend time, place and person, and positively advance the cause of journalism and rights of free speech for generations to come, not just achieve criminal convictions, visa restrictions and economic sanctions. Citizen activist Chuck Fall proposes how that might look.
Journalists at the Third Asian Investigative Journalism Conference today strongly endorsed a call for governments worldwide to free imprisoned journalists. In particular, they urged the government of Myanmar and its civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi to immediately and unconditionally release two Reuters reporters Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo.
The ever-evolving threats to media freedom and independence worldwide is challenging journalism to redefine itself and find ways to survive. Open Society Foundations’ Maria Teresa Ronderos talks about how journalism needs to reinvent itself and maintain its relevance in today’s society.
Following editorials in some 350 newspapers across the United States Thursday calling for an end to attacks on the press by President Donald Trump, the US Senate unanimously passed a resolution reaffirming the vital and indispensable role of the free press.
Join journalists across the US who are asking the public to stand up for their rights to free speech and an open government. While the effort started as a campaign by the Boston Globe to ask the President of the United States to stop attacking the news media, Donald Trump’s attacks on the press aren’t ultimately about the press. It’s about the people.
The increasing lack of credibility and growing political meddling in Romanian mainstream media in recent years has resulted in many journalists leaving these outlets and starting their own independent sites. Some of these initiatives support themselves by relying on crowdfunding. But is it viable in the long term?
