Investigative reporting is getting harder and harder as autocratic governments crack down on media and government-friendly oligarchs use the courts to silence independent voices. The Philippine online news organization Rappler and its CEO and Executive Editor Maria Ressa are experiencing this firsthand, as Ressa was convicted last week on baseless “cyber libel” charges.
The Global Investigative Journalism Network is outraged and alarmed by the conviction of our colleagues Maria Ressa and Reynaldo Santos for cyberlibel in a Philippines regional court. Maria Ressa, the founder and executive editor of Rappler, was the keynote speaker at the 2019 conference of GIJN, which represents 184 nonprofit investigative journalism organizations in 77 countries. She is a journalist of unquestioned integrity, representing the best of her nation’s long tradition of investigative reporting.
The COVID-19 pandemic has reshaped the way journalists work, not least because many authorities have cited the contagion as a reason to crack down on the news media. Certain dangers will subside with time but some of the measures put into place that restrict press freedom – whether intended or not — could continue well into the future.
The Global Investigative Journalism Network condemns attacks by law enforcement on journalists in the US covering protests of the police killing of George Floyd. “The attacks on, and intimidation of, journalists legitimately covering protests and social unrest in the US are unconstitutional and unlawful,” stated the executive committee of the GIJN Board of Directors. “These attacks… threaten the very core of a free and democratic society.”
Here’s a guide to understanding how the government in China regulates and controls the media. Jin Ding explains the relationship between Chinese news publications and the state’s ruling Chinese Communist Party, the methods of censorship, media funding, and notable publications to follow.
Reporters Sans Frontieres published, for the first time, a list of press freedom’s 20 worst digital predators in 2020. Whether state offshoots, private-sector companies, or informal entities, they reflect a reality of power at the end of the 21st century’s second decade, in which investigative reporters and other journalists who cause displeasure risk being the targets of predatory activity by often hidden actors.
A small but violent American neo-Nazi group targeted journalists who covered their activities by sending threatening messages to their homes and making fake calls to law enforcement. The harassment and intimidation campaigns were detailed by prosecutors in charges against five men announced last week.
Following the major corruption investigation “Azerbaijani Laundromat,” Paul Radu, co-founder of the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, was sued for libel in the United Kingdom by an Azerbaijani politician. Radu explains what he learned while fighting the case, which ended in a favorable settlement.
Investigative journalist Ignace Sossou was sentenced to 18 months in prison and fined $338 for “harassment ” by a court in Benin. His crime? Sossou posted three tweets quoting the country’s public prosecutor, who had been speaking candidly about digital regulations.
Mexican journalist Miroslava Breach had been investigating the alleged relationship between drug traffickers and politicians in northern Mexico for years when she was shot eight times in front of her home in 2016. However, several of her colleagues would not be silenced and, more than two years after her murder, published a series of reports on the case and the loose ends left by the official investigation of the crime.
