JX Fund – European Fund for Journalism in Exile

As global crises, authoritarianism, and threats to press freedom escalate, more journalists are forced to flee their home countries, making independent journalism one of the most dangerous professions today. The recently published study by Körber Stiftung sheds light on the growing scale and challenges of exiled journalism in Germany.

In Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, where news reporting has been transformed from a process of awakening and raising awareness—crucial for the development of critical knowledge in society—into a dreary, unbearable exercise in censorship and propaganda, the only hope for citizens lies in social networks and media outlets that reject the Taliban’s order and operate from outside the country.

In this episode of “Survive and Thrive”, Zahra Nader, founder and editor-in-chief of the award-winning Zan Times, talks about journalism as a form of resistance and the struggle to stay afloat reporting on women and LGBTQI+ people in Afghanistan.

Journalists in exile from Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela continue to resist authoritarian censorship despite extreme repression. Awarded the IAPA’s Grand Prize for Press Freedom, they highlight the challenges and innovations necessary to sustain independent journalism amid growing threats.

Taliban laws and restrictions make journalism in Afghanistan increasingly challenging. But media in exile are ensuring that voices of women and others are still being amplified.

Can Dündar, a Turkish journalist and author living in exile, has uncovered shady relations between the deep state and politicians in Turkey based on the narratives from a series of videos released by notorious Turkish mafia boss Sedat Peker in 2021.

In Spring 2024, a delegation from the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom (ECPMF) conducted a press freedom fact-finding mission to Tbilisi, Georgia as part of a project funded by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). Today, ECPMF publishes a report detailing the findings of the mission, which paint a picture of independent media in the midst of an existential crisis.

This report covers the period from 2021 to 2023, during which almost 70% of all attacks on media workers in Russia have been recorded since monitoring began in 2017. The attacks of the Russian authorities on journalists and bloggers over the past three years have taken on an unprecedented scale.

A new report just published from the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) shows that most “OECD DAC members are aware of the importance of the integrity of information environments to achieve their development and foreign policy objectives, and of the central role played by public interest media”. But even as autocratisation has risen, disinformation has surged and the financial threats confronting independent media have become existential, they have with just a few exceptions proved unable to increase their support for the sector.

Since 1993, Eritrea’s regime has suppressed media and freedom of expression. Exiled journalists defy censorship to inform their fellow citizens and keep independent reporting alive. IJNet puts some of them in the spotlight.

‘A Dangerous Assignment’: Roberto Deniz and Juan Ravell spoke with FRONTLINE about the risks of reporting on Venezuela, tracing a corruption scandal that reached into the Venezuelan government and spanned continents, and the price that journalists pay for investigating the powerful in Maduro’s government.

The Afghanistan Journalists Support Organization (AJSO) has published its findings from a survey in which 310 Afghan journalists, both in Afghanistan and in exile, participated. The new report mainly focuses on the needs of journalists in capacity building.

Today, Human Rights Watch and its partners announced the recipients of the 2024 Human Rights Press Awards for outstanding reporting on human rights issues across Asia. For the first time, this year’s awards included the category of “newsrooms in exile.”

In the present report, the Special Rapporteur (Irene Khan) on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression focuses on journalists in exile who face a variety of physical, digital and legal threats. She analyses the responses of States and companies to these threats and challenges.

Today, 71 percent of people live in countries that are considered autocratic. That’s up from 48 percent just a decade ago. In the most oppressive autocracies, freedom of expression, freedom of association, free and fair elections and other democratic values are absent. In others, they may be present in part but insufficient.

For decades, Iran’s brutal repression of independent journalism at home has been accompanied by the systematic targeting of journalists reporting on Iran from abroad, in an effort to silence them. This new report from Reporters Without Borders (RSF) shows that the level of transnational threat to Iranian journalists is unprecedented and comes at enormous professional and personal cost.