"This chapter discusses the monitoring of violations of the right to life and safety of journalists. The safety of journalists is a prerequisite for the provision of access to reliable information to the public, but journalists worldwide face risks as a result of their work. Monitoring violations he
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lps to get an overview of these risks and to create effective intervention strategies and policies accordingly. However, comprehensive, harmonized data about violations beyond the number of killed journalists are missing, making it difficult to make analyses and compare data across countries. State institutions often lack the willingness to respond to data on threats to journalists gathered by civil society. This results in an alarming statistic of impunity for crimes committed against journalists showing a failure of states to protect journalists. Better and more comprehensive data collection, and better systematic categorization and comparability of data are believed to contribute to more urgency of states to act to end impunity." (Abstract)
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"This article analyses how international advocacy campaigns approach and define media freedom, and what influences this process. It does this through a two-year case study of the Media Freedom Coalition—an intergovernmental partnership of over 50 countries—that included 55 interviews with key st
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akeholders, observations, and document analysis. This revelatory case sheds light on how norms of media freedom are constructed and contested on the international stage, and their implications for journalists, media freedom and geo-politics. We show that the Coalition adopted a state-centric, accountability-focused, and negative understanding of media freedom. This discourse legitimized a narrow, reactive, and “resource-light” approach to supporting media freedom, focused on “other” countries. We argue that critical norm research provides a helpful prism for understanding this Coalition’s operations, and the global politics of media freedom more generally. These findings have important implications for understandings of “norm entrepreneurship,” “media imperialism,” and “media freedom” itself." (Abstract)
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"Killings, as the most extreme form of violence against journalists, receive considerable attention, but journalists experience a variety of threats from surveillance to gendered cyber targeting and hate speech, or even the intentional deprivation of their financial basis. This article provides a co
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mprehensive, interdisciplinary framework of journalists’ safety, summarized in a conceptual model. The aim is to advance the study of journalists’ safety and improve safety practices, journalism education, advocacy, and policy making - vital as press freedom and fundamental human rights face multifaceted challenges, compromising journalists’ ability to serve their societies. Journalists’ occupational safety comprises personal (physical, psychological) and infrastructural (digital, financial) dimensions. Safety can be objective and subjective by operating on material and perceptional levels. It is moderated by individual (micro), organizational/institutional (meso), and systemic (macro) risk factors, rooted in power dynamics defining boundaries for journalists’ work, which, if crossed, result in threats and create work-related stress. Stress requires coping, ideally resulting in resilience and resistance, and manifested in journalists’ continued role performance with autonomy. Compromised safety has personal and social consequences as threats might affect role performance and even lead to an exit from the profession, thus also affecting journalism’s wider function as a key institution." (Abstract)
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"The protection of journalists' rights is critical for the preservation of freedom of expression, the rule of law, and democracy. International organizations play a crucial role in ensuring the safety and well-being of journalists worldwide. This article examines the international legal framework th
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at governs the protection of journalists, as well as the role of international organizations in promoting and enforcing these protections. It analyzes the work of organizations such as the United Nations, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, and the International Federation of Journalists in advancing the rights of journalists and combating impunity for crimes against them. The article also highlights the challenges faced by these organizations in a rapidly changing media landscape and the need for increased collaboration and coordination to address these challenges." (Abstract)
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"The decrease in journalist safety and media freedom has a negative impact on the rule of law because journalists cannot act as public watchdogs. Its deterioration in Europe during the last decade is a worrying trend for society as a whole. The Council of Europe has tried to fight against it through
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the creation of a public Internet-based Platform for the protection of journalism and the safety of journalists. The Platform receives alerts from non-governmental organisations such as journalist associations and this serves as an early warning mechanism for the Council of Europe. Non-governmental organisations act as partners of this International Organisation and in that way they protect the rule of law from below. A simple search of the Platform permits to see the many threats journalists face in Europe every day. This paper assesses how the Platform works. It is a positive initiative to co-operate with civil society that still has to improve its results mainly through a more effective engagement of the Member States of the Council of Europe." (Abstract)
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"Why do state authorities murder journalists? We show that the majority of journalists are killed in democracies and present an argument that focuses on institutional differences between democratic states. In democracies, journalists will most likely be targeted by local state authorities that have
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limited options to generally restrict press freedom. Where local governments are elected, negative reporting could mean that local politicians lose power and influence, especially if they are involved in corrupt practices. Analyzing new global data on journalist killings that identify the perpetrator and visibility of the journalist, we show that local-level elections carry an inherent risk, particularly for less visible journalists. Killings perpetrated by criminal groups follow a similar pattern to those by state authorities, pointing to possible connections between these groups. Our study shows that without effective monitoring and accountability, national democratic institutions alone are unable to effectively protect journalists from any perpetrator." (Abstract)
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"This article details the role of collaborative journalism during the process of rebuilding investigative journalism at its core thus assuring enduring investment in its quality. We will start by characterizing the concepts of investigative journalism and collaborative journalism, using leading scho
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lars in both of these complementary areas; we will, then, identify the pressures that constrains investigative journalism, and analyse how journalistic collaboration has a potential for resistance that can protect both investigative journalism and the journalists who practice it. Our article path will be complemented with the case study of the "Daphne Project", the first project of the consortium "Forbidden Stories", the international platform created by Laurent Richard. This project will be characterized through a documentary analysis and with interviews we conducted with both its founder, Laurent Richard, and Mathew Caruana Galizia, the son of Daphne Caruana Galizia, the Maltese journalist murdered on October 16th 2017, during her investigations. The Daphne Project was created for the purpose of keeping alive stories of journalists who have been killed, imprisoned or, for some reason, were unable to pursue their investigations. Not only does collaborative journalism protect investigative journalism and investigative journalists, but cross-borders collaboration also allows "sharing the risk across a wide range of international players" (Sambrook, 2017). If the absolute exposure of the lonely investigative journalist turns him/her into a target in territories where freedom of speech is threatened, the murder of this Maltese journalist, followed by the murder of Slovakian Ján Kuciak, in 2018, placed Europe as an unlikely set on the risk map. While acknowledging the problems caused by international consortium of journalists, this research highlights, above all, how these partnerships, anchored in "radical sharing" (Guevara, 2016)1, are contributing to enhance investigative journalism." (Abstract)
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"This article highlights the potential for increased and more standardised monitoring of a range of aspects of the safety of journalists. This is in the light of a specific indicator that has been agreed by the UN as part of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The indicator concerned treats th
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e safety of journalists as a benchmark for tracking progress on SDG target 16.10, which specifies "public access to information and fundamental freedoms" (UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, n.d.), as a development aspiration. Inclusion of this indicator in the SDGs provides a universally legitimated framework with strong catalytic potential. All this holds a promise of improved, more comparative, and increased research output, as compared to the previous situation. The results of new research stimulated by this development, particularly at country level, could have real impact on the safety of journalists." (Abstract)
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"Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) indicator 16.10.1 proposes an important monitoring agenda for the global recording of a range of violations against journalists as a means to prevent attacks on the communicative functions of journalism. However, the need for extensive collection of data on violat
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ions against journalists raises a number of methodological challenges. Our research shows the following issues must be addressed: the lack of conceptual consistency; the lack of methodological transparency; the need for sophisticated data categorisation and disaggregation to enable data to be merged from different sources; the need to establish links to understand causal and temporal relations between people and events; the need to explore and utilize previously untapped data sources. If we are to strengthen the monitoring of SDG 16.10.1, we propose to develop a robust and reliable events-based methodology and a set of tools which can facilitate the monitoring of the full range of proposed 16.10.1 categories of violations, reconcile data from multiple sources in order to adhere to the established 16.10.1 category definitions, and to further disaggregate the proposed 16.10.1 categories to provide more in-depth information on each instance of a violations. This, we argue, will ultimately contribute towards better understanding of the contextual circumstances and processes producing aggressions against journalists." (Abstract)
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"This chapter investigates the relationship between civic networking coalitions and public interest communication, and an opportunity to explore how the coalitions produce 'public interest-forming practices'. It examines the ability of civic networking coalitions to act and, next, to investigate whi
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ch elements need to be in place in order for them to succeed. The chapter provides a theoretical foundation for our analytical framework. It examines the safety of journalists within the Mexican context and presents an examination of two civic networking coalitions, developed in response to the position of journalists in Mexico. The chapter draws some conclusions about the relationship between these civic forming coalitions, journalism and public interest-forming practices. It shows how media movements in the form of civic networking coalitions can successfully use public interest-forming practices, such as campaigning, community-advocacy journalism and media activism, both off- and online in order to disrupt the public space, set the agenda and enhance civic collaborative efforts." (Abstract)
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"The effectiveness of any measures taken to address the problems of journalism safety ultimately depends on our ability to understand the complex nature and dynamics of risk to journalists. Mapping the scale of the problem through the systematic collection of data on threats over time is therefore a
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crucial step toward establishing an empirical evidence base that can serve to tailor interventions aimed at safeguarding journalists and their work. Doing so requires us to examine the occurrence of a wide range of threats to a diverse community of journalists within a varied set of hostile environments. Importantly, it challenges us to explore how the multidimensional nature of risk to journalists should be measured." (Abstract)
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"More journalists are being killed and threatened around the world than at any time before. How do we account for these disturbing trends and why do journalists increasingly put themselves in harm’s way? This chapter argues that if we are to better understand the motivations of journalists and the
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mobilisation of journalism as a communicative and collective enterprise, one that is now capable of both reporting on and recognising the human plight of others in violent, uncivil places, it is important to understand how journalism is caught up in the vortices of history and the globalising present. The discussion develops on the important work of Jeffrey Alexander (2006), reconceiving journalism in and through the prism of the ‘Civil Sphere’, and inflected here both historically and globally. In a world of globalized communications, journalism’s capacity to report from uncivil places, I argue, has become geographically expanded, culturally deepened and, in important respects, historically and normatively compelled." (Abstract)
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"Violence against journalists has emerged as a global human rights issue as the number of those killed in the profession has steadily risen in the new millennium. This research utilized a collective action framework, applying an adapted qualitative network model to examine organizational mobilizatio
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n, transnational and domestic engagement, normative appeals, information dissemination, lobbying, and prospects for institutional and societal change. Through the Mexico case model application, the study found that instrumental change occurred through adoption of legal and policy institutions. Future research should expand upon social change measurements utilized in this study. We conclude the model can be adapted and utilized in other country cases or in cross-national research." (Abstract)
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"At a UNESCO research conference on the safety of journalists during the celebrations of World Press Freedom Day in Helsinki, Finland on 3 and 4 May 2016, UNESCO declared “that the Safety of Journalists paved the way for academic research cooperation”. To advance such cooperation the Centre for
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Freedom of the Media (CFOM), University of Sheffield, UK, supported by UNESCO, announced the launch of a journalism safety research network (JSRN). The network is hosted by CFOM (http://www.cfom.org.uk) and scholars, media workers and others have been invited to sign up for future academic networking opportunities and to the prospect for greater research communication and collaboration in the area of journalism safety." (Abstract)
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"Journalists around the world are being killed and threatened for doing their work. This is a serious hindrance to freedom of expression and the safe practice of journalism. UN and UNESCO have led the process to create the UN Plan of Action on the Safety of Journalists and the Issue of Impunity to i
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mprove the safety of journalists. As a part of the UN Plan, UNESCO also developed the Journalists’ Safety Indicators (JSI) assessment, which enables evaluation of the safety of journalists in a given country. Based on the first JSI assessments in Pakistan, Guatemala, Honduras, Nepal and Kenya in 2013-2015, but also following the recent developments in the practice of journalism, this article argues that in order to protect journalists and those practicing journalism properly, the concept of ‘journalist’ needs to be defined broadly. Furthermore, special attention needs to be paid to digital safety issues, women journalists, and wide-based cooperation on the safety of journalists." (Abstract)
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