Investigative journalists face a range of threats — from physical attacks to legal challenges — and sometimes the toll becomes just too much. Hear from two reporters who took time out to rest, recover, and recoup.
Children’s fashion is riddled with gender stereotypes, according to an analysis by German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, which found that popular children’s clothing tended to be more revealing for girls, but comfortable and functional for boys. Also this week, analysis of the big earners in the healthcare industry, the tracking of post-pandemic recovery through sandwich sales, and Florence Nightingale’s contribution to graphic storytelling.
Sujag, a long-form digital investigative journalism platform in Pakistan, is committed to highlighting voices from the margins. With recent stories on child marriage, acid attacks, and why women from poor communities are finding it so difficult to access coronavirus vaccinations, Sujag’s editors proudly say their journalistic ethos prioritizes “siding with the marginalized” over neutrality.
Investigating the environment in developing countries can be a particularly dangerous game – far more so in the Global South than in North America and Europe. Journalists in the developing world are prime targets for powerful political and economic interests, operate in a hostile climate, and often lose their lives far from the Western media spotlight.
More than 130 journalists were killed in Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, and Honduras in the years between 2011 and 2020, many of them attacked while investigating political issues, corruption, and organized crime. RSF has analyzed the attacks and found that half of the journalists had received threats related to their work.
A group of Indian journalists have been calling out the government on social media over its opacity in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. The collaborative effort continues to press for official answers on overall health preparedness, such as drug availability, access to care, health inventory, and insurance schemes.
The 2020 World Press Freedom Index, compiled by Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF), shows that the coming decade will be decisive for the future of journalism, with the COVID-19 pandemic highlighting and amplifying the many crises that threaten the right to freely reported, independent, diverse, and reliable information.
Reporters Without Borders this week released its 2017 World Press Freedom Index of 180 countries, and the news is not good. The report found media freedoms falling in democracies and that “nothing seems to be checking that fall.” Nearly two thirds (62.2%) of countries measured had deteriorated freedoms, while the number of countries where the media freedom situation was “good” or “fairly good” fell by 2.3%.
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has released its World Press Freedom Index, ranking 180 countries according to the level of freedom available to journalists. “It is unfortunately clear that many of the world’s leaders are developing a form of paranoia about legitimate journalism,” wrote RSF secretary-general Christophe Deloire. The index showed a deep and disturbing decline in respect for press freedom, and a climate of fear and tension combined with increasing control over newsrooms by governments and private-sector interests.
