Global Investigative Journalism Network (https://archive.gijn.org/tag/legal-harassment/)
To confront the ongoing legal threats to independent media around the world, the Vance Center and OCCRP are launching Reporters Shield, a multi-million dollar legal support program and defense fund for investigative journalism and newsrooms.
On World Press Freedom Day 2022, journalists around the world, many of them now in exile, are pushing back against a growing crackdown on a free press.
Journalists across southern Africa face a variety of obstacles to investigative reporting — from funding struggles to state censorship to legal intimidation — but are still innovating and collaborating to persevere.
British lawyer Elizabeth Wiggin has defended investigative journalists from legal challenges in the UK courts and she describes the legal threats, humiliation, and financial ruin that reporters can face while covering stories the rich and powerful do not want published.
Among the most frequently used forms of legal coercion against investigative journalists are SLAPPs (“strategic litigation against public participation”), which aim to intimidate reporters into abandoning their investigations. The practice of abusing legal systems by those in power to silence critics has reached global proportions. Its damage is far-reaching and curbing it is an imperative for democracy and maintaining peace.