Research

Jodi Huisentruit, a 27-year-old news anchor for KIMT (Iowa Minnesota Television) in Mason City, Iowa, vanished on June 27, 1995, while en route to work. Initially considered a missing person case, authorities soon suspected foul play after discovering her items scattered near her car and signs of a struggle at the scene. Despite extensive investigations, numerous leads, and public appeals, Huisentruit was never found, and no arrests were made. In 2001, she was declared legally dead at age 32. A new three-part docuseries, Her Last Broadcast: The Abduction of Jodi Huisentruit, premiered on Hulu on...

In the first half of 2025, 86 journalists were killed worldwide, marking a 16% increase from the same period last year, according to a report by the Press Emblem Campaign (PEC). This alarming rise is largely driven by the ongoing conflict in Gaza, where Israeli forces killed 31 Palestinian journalists. Since October 2023, nearly 200 journalists have been killed in Gaza alone. Other deadly countries for journalists this year include Sudan, Mexico, and the Ukraine-Russia conflict zone, each recording 6 deaths. Iran followed with 4 journalists killed in Israeli airstrikes in June. In South Asia,...

The Global Investigative Journalism Network (GIJN) has released a new chapter in its Reporter’s Guide to Investigating War Crimes, focusing on the deliberate use of starvation in armed conflict. Written by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Maggie Michael, the chapter explores how starvation is increasingly being deployed not as a side effect of war but as a calculated method of warfare, one that qualifies as a war crime under international law. The guide outlines how legal frameworks such as the Rome Statute and Geneva Conventions define starvation as a violation when food, water, medicine, or humanitarian aid...

Diana Turbay’s life and tragic death remain one of the most haunting chapters in Colombia’s turbulent history of drug violence and political terror. As a prominent journalist and television news director, Turbay dedicated her career to reporting with integrity during a time when Colombia was held hostage by powerful drug cartels, most notably Pablo Escobar’s Medellín Cartel. Born in 1950, Diana Turbay was the daughter of former Colombian President Julio César Turbay Ayala. Despite her privileged background, she chose a demanding path in journalism, committed to uncovering truths in one of the world’s most dangerous...

The UNESCO report titled “The Misuse of Financial Laws to Pressure, Silence and Intimidate Journalists and Media Outlets” highlights a concerning global trend: the weaponization of financial legislation to suppress press freedom. Authored by Edward Pittman and Elisa Juega, the report is part of UNESCO’s World Trends in Freedom of Expression and Media Development series. The report identifies eight categories of legal threats commonly employed against journalists, including allegations of tax evasion, money laundering, extortion, blackmail, terrorism financing, fraud, embezzlement, and illegally receiving foreign funds. These charges are often levied without a direct connection to...

A new UNESCO report titled Press and Planet in Danger reveals a disturbing rise in violence, harassment, and repression targeting journalists who cover environmental issues worldwide. The report, released in 2024, documents how reporters investigating climate change, pollution, illegal mining, deforestation, and land disputes are increasingly threatened, censored, or even killed for their work. Between 2009 and 2023, at least 749 attacks were recorded against environmental journalists, including murders, arbitrary detentions, legal harassment, and digital surveillance. Alarmingly, 44 journalists were killed during this period in connection with their ecological reporting, often in regions rich in...

India's recently launched Operation Sindoor has reverberated far beyond the borders of South Asia. Framed as a counter-terrorism response to the April 22 massacre in Pahalgam, where 26 Hindu pilgrims were brutally killed, this military operation has now taken on deeper symbolic meaning: a long-delayed act of justice for American journalist Daniel Pearl, who was kidnapped and murdered in Pakistan over two decades ago. On May 8, India carried out coordinated airstrikes targeting terrorist infrastructure in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir. Among the key sites was the Markaz Subhan Allah seminary in Bahawalpur, a known stronghold...

The 2025 RSF World Press Freedom Index shows a historic decline in global press freedom, driven mainly by worsening economic conditions. Financial instability, ownership concentration, shrinking ad revenue, and opaque public funding are threatening editorial independence worldwide. The economic indicator has reached its lowest point, pushing the global situation into a “difficult” category for the first time. Media outlets are shutting down in nearly a third of countries, including democracies like the U.S., where local journalism is collapsing. Tech giants dominate ad revenue, while media ownership concentration and editorial interference are rising across regions. All...

The plan for the Saxony Budget 2025/2026 reduces financial support for the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom (ECPMF) by two-thirds. This poses a significant threat to the stability of the only European civil society organisation operating within the state. The ECPMF acknowledges the difficulty of navigating a state budget amid economic uncertainty. However, in times when public interest journalism and democratic discourse are under severe pressure – facing economic constraints, pressures, disinformation campaigns, a reduced readership, and attacks from the far-right – a strong protection mechanism and unwavering support for press and media freedom in Saxony, Germany, and...

After 18 months of war, photojournalist Abdul Raouf Shaath thought he had seen everything. Mr. Shaath was taking a nap in a tent encampment near Khan Yunis’ Nasser Hospital April 6 after a long day documenting missile strikes, when an Israeli airstrike shook the ground and sent shrapnel flying. He rushed outside to find a local news outlet’s tent in flames.   Why We Wrote This A story focused on Courage Gaza journalists continue to don their press vests and report – even as Israel blurs the line between media workers and military targets and...

The number of people held in immigration detention by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) essentially flatlined this month. The total detained population — counted as beds occupied at midnight on a single day — barely increased from 47,892 to 47,928 between March 23 and April 16, an increase of 36. There’s more than meets the eye, however. Journalists should not interpret this as evidence that ICE is not arresting and detaining people. In fact, this gives us an opportunity to level up our understanding of detention data. Let’s dive into it. While the decline...

Joakim Medin, special correspondent for the Swedish media Dagens ETC, has been held since 30 March in the high-security Marmara prison in the Silivri district of Istanbul and will appear in court on 30 April. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) calls on the authorities to release the journalist, who specialises in Kurdish issues, and to end the crackdown on news professionals.  Arrested on 27 March upon his arrival in Istanbul, Joakim Medin has been accused of “insulting the president,” Recep Tayyip Erdogan, “belonging to an armed terrorist organisation,” and “spreading terrorist propaganda.” The charges are linked to his...

Artificial intelligence is already affecting the way news is produced and received in the United States. But Americans are pessimistic about its long-term effect on the news people get and on the already-embattled journalism profession. Roughly half of U.S. adults say that AI will have a very (24%) or somewhat (26%) negative impact on the news people get in the U.S. over the next 20 years. Just 10% say it will have a very (2%) or somewhat (8%) positive effect, according to a summer 2024 Pew Research Center survey. About a quarter (23%) say AI’s impact in this area will be...

Today marks the 20th anniversary since the abduction and murder of Tamil journalist Dharmeratnam Sivaram. Sivaram, popularly known under his nom-de-plume Taraki, was abducted in front of Bambalipitiya police station in Colombo on April 28 and was found dead several hours later in a high security zone in Sri Lanka's capital, which at the time had a heavy police and military presence due to the ongoing conflict. His killers, highly suspected to be linked to the government of then-president Chandrika Kumaratunga, were never caught. Read his last article, written just days before he was murdered here....

Source: Reuters Institute -   6.1 Introduction This chapter outlines our findings concerning the safety threats that UK journalists1 experienced, from surveillance and hate speech to legal threats and sexual harassment. Firstly, we explain why this topic was introduced into the survey for the first time, and how it was approached and measured. Secondly, we report how frequently UK journalists said they experienced various safety threats and felt stressed at work. Thirdly, we describe how worried they were about their physical, emotional, and mental well-being. Next, we highlight how gender, the medium, and journalists’ seniority affected their experience of safety...

The role of journalists has been changing for some time now. Due to the rise of social media, journalists no longer hold the monopoly on informing the public and holding the powerful to account. Nor do they keep their role as exclusive gatekeepers for news. And many readers find that algorithms do a better job of selecting news than human editors. For a new report on the state of the journalism profession in the UK in the 2020s, my colleagues and I asked journalists what they think their role in society should be today. Facing a world of rising authoritarianism, war in...

April 22, 2025 - Source: The Copenhagen Post -  “I reported on corruption. Now I’m paying the price,” Azerbaijani journalist Avaz Zeynalli, editor-in-chief of Xural, tells us from behind bars. Thousands of kilometers away in Denmark, Bernardo Basillici Menini, the editor-in-chief of The Copenhagen Post, reflects on a very different reality: “Here, journalism doesn’t need to fight to be heard.” These aren’t just personal anecdotes—they point to something deeper and measurable. Our research explores the connection between press freedom and corruption, using both the Press Freedom Index and the Corruption Perception Index across ten years of global...

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), at least 165 Palestinian journalists have been killed since the Israel-Hamas war began in October 2023. In fact, according to CPJ, last year was the deadliest year for journalists worldwide since they began documenting deaths in 1992. Gathering aerial footage of Gaza is a dangerous task, and Bellingcat along with our partners at Forbidden Stories, Le Monde, Die Zeit, Der Standard, Paper Trail Media, Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism (ARIJ) and RFI identified several cases where drone journalists were killed or injured shortly after capturing aerial images. The...

“Protecting those who inform us is protecting the truth.” – Thibaut Bruttin, Reporters Without Borders’ Director General According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, 114 journalists were killed in 2024, the majority through crossfire, dangerous assignments, and murder. As of December 2024, 361 journalists are imprisoned worldwide. International humanitarian law distinguishes journalists and war correspondents when delegating protections to media workers. War correspondents accompany the armed forces of a state and are entitled to prisoner-of-war status upon capture, according to the Third Geneva Convention. Under Article 82 of the convention, it states that “no prisoner of war may be tried...

April 21, 2025 - Source: Mission Local -  In the last month, Luz Mely Reyes, a reporter at the International Center for Journalists, has been advised to avoid international travel, close her social media account, and scrub information from her phone. It’s the same advice that she used to follow before she moved to the United States in 2020 — back in the days when she was living in her home country of Venezuela, covering human rights and politics. Now, it’s becoming the new normal Stateside. “Some people are very worried about the consequences of speaking up...

Legally, know your rights According to UN declarations, the legal protection of journalists at work in conflict zones is adequate in theory, but it is not respected in reality. According to IFEX, in nine out of ten cases of journalist murder, the perpetrators of these crimes are never prosecuted, although targeting journalists based on their social function should be regarded as an aggravating circumstance. FPU fight against impunity   International mechanisms Although UNESCO adopted the UN Plan of Action on Safety of Journalists and the Issue of Impunity in April 2012, data show that unless governments are willing...

Journalists are continually subject to harm or the threat of harm during their reporting in foreign wars. The US based Committee to Protect Journalists states that at least 24 journalists have been murdered in 2022 so far globally. The surge in armed groups such as Islamic State and Al Qaeda after September 11, 2001, have also led to the increased targeting of war correspondents with corresponding unsafe conditions. Journalist for the Wall Street Journal Daniel Pearl was beheaded whilst reporting on the deteriorating situation in Pakistan in 2002. Many media staff have also been deliberately targeted. According to...

I. Protection of Journalists and Media Professionals in Time of Armed Conflict The number of journalists killed in the world in 2003 – 42 – is the highest since 1995. This figure can be largely explained by the recent military campaign in Iraq, which inflicted a proportionally higher number of casualties on journalists than on members of the coalition’s armed forces: 14 journalists and media personnel lost their lives, two went missing and a dozen or so were wounded while covering the conflict and its aftermath. In recent years, one might also mention the deliberate...

April 18, 2025 - Source: Counter Punch -  Recall those feverish days leading up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq when Colin Powell presented his dubious evidence to the United Nations Security Council, claiming Saddam Hussein possessed WMDs. The result of those bogus lies was The Iraq Resolution, which authorized the use of force against the sovereign state, and passed the Senate by a decisive 77-23 margin, with only 23 dissenting votes. Support crossed party lines as Hillary Clinton and many other prominent Democrats consistently reached into George W. Bush’s basket of lies, repeating the neocons’ WMD propaganda. The New York Times, fulfilling...

April 18, 2025 - Source: Freedom of the Press Foundation -  A series to spotlight public-records-based local journalism A major reason why politicians are able to attack the press without much resistance is that the public distrusts the media. And one of the reasons for that distrust is that when people think “journalist,” they often think of partisan cable news pundits rather than the thousands of local investigative reporters serving communities across the country. We’re hoping to play a small part in changing that by profiling local journalists who use public records laws to hold...