Global Investigative Journalism Network (https://archive.gijn.org/series/doc-of-the-day/)
The 2023 World Press Freedom Index highlights the increasingly perilous situation for reporters on every continent, as journalists face political, social, and technological threats and a “fake content industry” that undermines trust in the press.
The 2023 edition of the Freedom in the World report, produced by US nonprofit Freedom House, was released today. This is the 50th year of the study, which tracks global trends and compiles individual country reports on political rights and liberties.
GIJN’s Document of the Day: The 2022 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) from Transparency International concludes that 95% of countries have made little to no progress fighting corruption since 2017, and notes the link between corruption and increased violence around the world.
To mark the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) released its annual report on the state of justice for attacks on the press around the world. It found that no one has been held accountable for 80% of all journalist murders in the past decade.
US-based nonprofit Freedom House released its latest annual study of global internet freedom yesterday, titled Freedom on the Net 2022: Countering an Authoritarian Overhaul of the Internet.
The US Department of Justice unsealed two federal indictments charging government employees of Russia’s Ministry of Defense and Federal Security Service with hacking campaigns that infiltrated the global energy sector, including a US nuclear power plant.
The Biden White House spotlighted its support for investigative journalism as part of a new strategy for fighting corruption around the world. To strengthen the investigative capacity of journalists, it is funding the USAID’s PROSAFE project, helping to “create a regional clearinghouse for investigative journalism that provides a publishing outlet for stories too dangerous to be published with an individual byline, and providing an umbrella organization for security, mentoring, and collaboration among journalists.”
State-embedded actors are the most dominant criminal actor type in the world. The degree to which criminality permeates state institutions varies, from low-level corruption to full state capture, but across the spectrum this involvement has implications for countries’ capacity to respond to organized crime.
The US Justice Department indicted five Iranian intelligence officials last week, alleging they were part of a plot to surveil and eventually abduct an Iranian-American investigative journalist living in the US. Read the indictment.
Freedom House, which released its annual report Freedom in the World this week, has documented the 15th consecutive year of decline in global freedom, finding less than a fifth of the world’s population living in what it considers “free” countries.