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The International Center for Journalists has named Cuban exiled journalist and El Toque co-founder José J. Nieves a recipient of its 2026 Knight International Journalism Award. Forced to leave Cuba in 2022, Nieves has continued reporting on the island from abroad, documenting repression and amplifying voices silenced at home.
Exile journalists in Europe are not safe from their authoritarian countries of origin: dictatorships persecute, threaten media workers critical of the regime beyond their own borders, even in states that are supposed to offer them protection. The EP adopted a resolution on transnational repression in the plenary on Tuesday, to which RSF contributed civil society expertise.
Today, the IPI and IMS are proud to announce this year’s recipients of the World Press Freedom Hero and Free Media Pioneer awards, who together demonstrate remarkable courage, ingenuity, and resilience amid an increasingly challenging environment for press freedom and independent journalism around the world.
RSF welcomes the court ruling on 10 June in the trial concerning the attempted assassination of Azerbaijani blogger Mahammad Mirzali. By handing down sentences of up to 30 years in prison, the French justice system has sent a clear message: transnational repression carried out by authoritarian regimes on European soil will not go unpunished.
Journalists who have fled authoritarian regimes and sought refuge in Germany are not automatically safe there either: an Egyptian journalist is attacked on a public street in Germany by a fellow Egyptian. A Russian reporter in Berlin is believed to have been the target of a poisoning attack. The family of an Iranian journalist is threatened because of his work in exile.
Transnational repression doesn’t just work through direct attacks. It also works by slowly making your life more complicated. By wearing you down. By forcing you to be constantly on guard. By making you perceive even everyday situations differently. An unknown caller. A message. Someone who suddenly asks too many questions.
Exile is no guarantee of safety for journalists fleeing authoritarian regimes. Experts and a UN Special Rapporteur warn that states increasingly misuse Interpol mechanisms — including Red Notices and Travel Document Alerts — to harass, restrict, and pressure regime critics abroad, even those granted asylum. Social media platforms, they add, offer far too little protection.
JX Fund, with support of The Fix Research and Advisory, has just published the first major cross-country overview of what they call Exiled Independent Media, or EXIM. Across eight countries studied in depth, researchers identified at least 280 verified outlets, although the real number is almost certainly much higher.
Exiled independent media face growing pressure to survive financially and structurally in an increasingly unstable global news ecosystem. This essay revisits lessons from the 1970s media landscape to explore how journalism can adapt to fragmentation, platform dependency and shrinking resources, offering reflections on sustainability models for exile outlets today.
Five years into Myanmar’s civil war, the journalists covering it are running out of money. After the 2021 coup wiped out domestic revenue, exiled newsrooms in Thailand became dependent on foreign aid — now slashed. Today, founders drive taxis, reporters run food stalls, and a million views on Facebook earns less than $50. A crisis is quietly silencing independent coverage of one of Asia’s bloodiest conflicts.
Press freedom is under unprecedented global pressure — and journalists are responding by building networks across borders. At the International Journalism Festival in Perugia, the taz panterstiftung launched its new panternetwork, uniting 500 journalists worldwide. Collaboration, they agree, is no longer optional: it’s the future of independent journalism.
Press freedom experts and a UN special rapporteur have warned that authoritarian governments continue to misuse Interpol mechanisms to target journalists living in exile, despite reforms aimed at preventing politically motivated cases. Several experts point to alleged abuses of Interpol mechanisms, particularly Red Notices and travel document alerts, which they said can severely restrict journalists’ movement and daily lives.
Freedom for Eurasia strongly condemns the defamation lawsuit brought by Gadzhi Gadzhiev against Natalia Sadykova before the courts of Ukraine — the country where Sadykova lives in exile and where her husband was assassinated.
In the aftermath of Myanmar’s February 2021 military takeover, independent journalist Linn soon fell foul of the regime’s crackdown on free expression. Having overthrown the elected government led by Aung San Suu Kyi, ending a decade of partial civilian rule, the junta – known as the Tatmadaw – quickly moved to clamp down on the media.
Turkey is slipping fast down the Reporters without Borders (RSF) ‘s World Press Freedom Index. The country is now ranked 159th out of 180. But while some journalists languish in prison, many more, have been forced to leave the country. Their destinations range from Greece and Switzerland to other European countries, as well as neighbouring regions such as Armenia and the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.
Founded in 2016 by young civil society members in Azerbaijan, Abzas Media was created to report on issues that are often ignored or suppressed in state-controlled media, including corruption, misuse of public resources, and human rights violations. Independent journalism in the country has been put under severe pressure, yet Abzas Media has continued reporting from exile, driven by the belief that independent journalism is as essential as ever.
This article explains how international journalism festivals have become important spaces for exiled journalists to connect, collaborate, and continue their work despite repression in their home countries. It argues that exile journalism is growing due to increasing threats to press freedom, while also creating new opportunities for global reach and cross-border reporting.
This paper draws on 68 interviews and a global survey of 177 media outlets and media support organizations to chart the financial, sectoral, and political impacts of terminating most U.S. support for independent media. We find the following: The sudden, ill-planned termination of U.S. governmental support caused harm and waste.