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Journalism News

Author and journalist Ali Abunimah arrested in Switzarland

Palestinian-American author and journalist Ali Abunimah was arrested by Swiss police in Zurich on January 25, where he was to hold a speaking tour.

Co-founder and executive director of The Electronic Intifada, an independent not-for-profit media organization, Abunimah was flying to Switzerland to deliver a lecture at an event organized by the Palestine Committee of Zurich. According to EI, when he arrived at the Zurich airport, “Abunimah was questioned by police for an hour before being allowed to enter the country”. He was arrested a day after arriving to Zurich and is still detained.

According to the press release by the Zurich police, Abunimah was arrested due to an “entry ban in Zurich’s District 10” and “taken to a police station for further clarification”.

The arrest was condemned by Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, which called it a “concerning and dangerous development that reflects a growing trend in Western governments to censor free speech and target journalists and activists who document the suffering of victims and stand up for Palestinian rights”.

UN Special Rapporteurs Irene Khan and Francesca Albanese have condemned the arrest and called for a prompt investigation into this matter.

In October 2024, another associate of Electronic Intifada – Asa Winstanley – was targeted by the police, when British counter-terrorism unit raided his home in London. He was not charged with a crime, but the police seized several of his devices, which contained journalistic material. 

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Journalism News

Multnomah County drops charge against Alissa Azar

Trespass charges against journalist Alissa Azar have been dropped by the Multnomah County District Attorney. As we wrote yesterday, the charges were an affront to the First Amendment and capped more than a year of harassment by Oregon authorities on Azar’s right to cover pro-Palestine protests in Portland. 

Thanks to those who took action writing to the DA and called for charges to be dropped.

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Call to Action Journalism Palestine

Tell the County DA: Drop charges against Alissa Azar!

Update, Jan. 24: Great news! Charges against Azar have been dropped in Multnomah County.

Journalist Alissa Azer was arrested while filming a pro-Palestine protest at Portland State University in Portland, Oregon in May 2024 and subsequently charged with criminal trespassing.  

Prism recounts Azar’s ongoing dealings with Oregon authorities, who she says have targeted her specifically for her antifascist journalism. Last year, she was prosecuted for using pepper spray in self-defense against Proud Boys, some of whom later pled guilty to disorderly conduct and harassment. In court, prosecutors attempted to argue that Azar is an activist, not a reporter. And now the trespassing charge is the latest attempt to silence Azar’s journalism:  

Azar’s case has brought to light a complex history of harassment, violence, and abuse of power by local law enforcement and reveals a landmark legal condemnation against social media journalists and press freedom in the U.S. Her identities as a self-taught movement journalist, Arab, and antifascist woman puts her at the speartip of state repression—an apparent consequence of going against the status quo and daring to report a counternarrative. In an era when newsrooms are rapidly shuttering and political dissent amounts to “terrorism,” Azar’s supporters say her arrests, jail time, and legal harassment mark a clear erosion of both journalistic and free speech protections. Her mistreatment is a harbinger that should concern all reporters, they say, and especially movement journalists staring down at a second Trump presidency. 

Azar is scheduled to go on trial in Oregon on Monday, January 27. The charges against her are an affront to the First Amendment right to a free press and should be dropped immediately. Defending Rights and Dissent has created an advocacy tool so you can easily write a letter urging the Multnomah County District Attorney to drop the case at once.

Sign your name today!

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Journalism Legislation News

Senate fails to pass PRESS Act

After passing the Republican-led House of Representatives with unanimous support in January, the PRESS Act failed to pass in the Senate on unanimous consent, with Republican Senators blocking an effort by Democrats to get the legislation signed into law – just days after President-elect Donald Trump announced he opposed the bill.

The Protect Reporters from Exploitive State Spying (PRESS) Act would protect journalists against government surveillance and the forced disclosure of their confidential sources.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer spoke in support of the PRESS Act, calling the provisions “common sense” and “more important now than ever before,” and Democratic Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon called for unanimous consent to pass it. The attempt was immediately blocked by Republican Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas, who said that the bill threatened U.S. national security and its passage would turn the Senate “into the active accomplice of deep-state leakers, traitors and criminals, along with the America-hating and fame-hungry journalists who help them out.”

All major free press advocacy groups, including Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF), Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press (RCFP), Defending Rights & Dissent (DRaD), and others, support the bill and have redoubled their efforts to pass it before the end of the lame-duck session.

In the wake of the failed vote, FPF has called out the Democrats saying they have had all year to pass the bill, and called on them to use the opportunity to build momentum for more meaningful action and pass it, even by cutting their holidays short. Commenting on an investigation that revealed the DOJ’s failure to comply with the internal guidelines restricting its use of investigative tools to seize journalists’ records, RCFP’s executive director Bruce D. Brown, said that a “reasonable, common-sense law to protect reporters and their sources” is needed “to prevent government interference with the free flow of information to the public.”

It is still possible to pass the PRESS Act through the Senate with just 60 votes.

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Call to Action Journalism Legislation News Whistleblowing

Trump’s re-election and the war on journalism

Donald Trump is poised to return to the White House as the 47th president of the United States, and press freedom groups are sounding the alarm early about what his election means for the state of journalism in the U.S. and around the world. Courage joins these groups in standing up for truthtellers, for journalists’ right to publish, and for your right to know, regardless of which party is in power.

Trump’s record on media freedom in his first term was infamously bleak. Beyond calling the press “the enemy of the people,” Trump viciously attacked news outlets and individual journalists whose coverage he didn’t like and weaponized the state in an effort to silence them. He surveilled reporters, banned outlets from press briefings, and persecuted leakers. In 2017, Trump called on the Federal Communications Commission to revoke the licenses of ABC, NBC, and other news stations, a threat he renewed in the 2024 campaign. 

And of course the biggest assault on press freedom at least since the 1972 Pentagon Papers was the Trump Administration’s indictment of WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange. In 2019, Trump’s Justice Department levied 17 counts under the Espionage Act against Assange, including charges for soliciting, possessing, and publishing classified documents in the public interest, escalating the Obama Administration’s war on whistleblowers to a full-blown war on journalism.

Campaign threats foreshadow dangerous second term

It appears we can expect more of the same in Trump’s second stint in office. Defending Rights & Dissent writes about the policy plans of Trump and his associates:

 “[Trump’s] close supporters have put together a plan to crack down on pro-Palestine protesters, surveil journalists, and jail whistleblowers. And Trump has made clear he wants to violate the First Amendment by criminalizing flag burning and deporting activists.

They have declared their intent to abuse laws like RICO to silence those who support Palestinian rights and hire more FBI counterintelligence agents to spy on journalists so the government can unmask and imprison whistleblowers.”

When Trump’s CIA went so far as to draw up plans to kidnap and even assassinate Assange while he was detained in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, Mike Pompeo was at the helm. Trump brought Pompeo along for several major rallies at the close of the 2024 campaign, and initial reports suggested his name was floated for another cabinet position. Just days after being reelected, however, Trump announced preemptively that Pompeo (as well as fellow neocon and former Ambassador Nikki Haley) will not be in his new administration — though he praised Pompeo’s work in Trump’s first term.

More explicitly, Reporters Without Borders found that Trump has verbally threatened the press more than 100 times on the campaign trail, including suggesting he wouldn’t mind if journalists at his rally were shot.

The Committee for the Protection of Journalists, reporting on the massive increase in attacks on the press in the last year, “found that the hostile media climate fostered during Donald Trump’s presidency has left a legacy that poses great risks to media inside and outside the country.”

While the Biden Administration has made some important changes in the intervening years, including Attorney General Merrick Garland’s revision of the DOJ’s policies to prohibit subpoenas for journalists (with narrow exceptions), they have done nothing to truly protect sources and journalists more permanently. The Assange case ended in a plea deal under Biden and Garland, rather than a dropped indictment, instilling a chilling effect on investigative journalists around the world, and the Espionage Act remains at Trump’s disposal, with no public interest defense available to protect defendants in court.

Furthermore, both administrations fully support funding and arming the ongoing killing of Palestinian journalists at an unprecedented rate amid Israeli’s assault on Gaza and Lebanon.

Biden could still pass the PRESS Act

Biden’s lame-duck Congress could still enact policy changes to protect reporters. Chief among them is getting the Senate to pass the Protect Reporters from Exploitative State Spying (PRESS) Act, which passed in the House unanimously and which would severely curtail the government’s ability to surveil reporters. The Freedom of the Press Foundation’s Trevor Timm said,

“The Senate should immediately pass, and President Biden should sign, the bipartisan PRESS Act to stop Trump from spying on journalists, as he repeatedly did in his first term, and from throwing them in jail for refusing to reveal their sources, as he has threatened in the most disgusting terms.

Congress must make good on promises to fix dangerous and sloppily drafted mass surveillance legislation passed earlier this year that gives the U.S. government extraordinary power to spy on its own citizens.

And lawmakers must take a vocal stand against abusing anti-terrorism laws to punish free speech. It’s imperative the White House reverses its spineless position on Israel’s unprecedented attacks on press freedom and pressure its ally to stop using U.S. weapons to kill journalists.”

Support press freedom and those defending it

Whether the Biden Administration and the outgoing Congress pass these protections or not, press freedom groups will continue to fight back in the war on journalism throughout Trump’s second term. Courage has been partnering with many of these groups on a range of issues — from the prosecution of Julian Assange to the widespread killing of Palestinian journalists — in an effort to speak out en masse, our collective voices louder than each of us on our own. We encourage you to support these organizations as you’re able, as the need for solidarity will only grow.

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Espionage Act Journalism Julian Assange News

“Journalists must be activists for the truth” — Julian Assange testifies before the Council of Europe

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Espionage Act Journalism Julian Assange News

Assange to address Council of Europe human rights hearing

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Espionage Act Journalism Julian Assange News

Press freedom groups call on Biden DOJ to drop Assange charges

Press freedom groups call on Biden DOJ to drop Assange charges

Two dozen major human rights and press freedom organizations are calling on the new Department of Justice to drop the charges against Julian Assange. The cosigners have written to Acting Attorney General Monty Wilkinson in a letter warning that “the proceedings against Mr. Assange jeopardize journalism that is crucial to democracy.”

The letter was organized by the Freedom of the Press Foundation and signed by leading rights groups including Amnesty International, the American Civil Liberties Union, Human Rights Watch, and PEN America.

The cosigners write,

“The indictment of Mr. Assange threatens press freedom because much of the conduct described in the indictment is conduct that journalists engage in routinely—and that they must engage in in order to do the work the public needs them to do. Journalists at major news publications regularly speak with sources, ask for clarification or more documentation, and receive and publish documents the government considers secret. In our view, such a precedent in this case could effectively criminalize these common journalistic practices.”

The letter comes just days before the United States’ deadline to appeal the ruling in Julian Assange’s extradition hearing. On January 4, British Judge Vanessa Baraitser blocked Assange’s extradition last month on medical grounds, and the U.S. announced its intent to appeal that decision. It has until February 12 to file its appeal.

The New York Times’ Charlie Savage writes, “The litigation deadline may force the new administration to confront a decision: whether to press on with the Trump-era approach to Mr. Assange, or to instead drop the matter.”

Then-President Trump’s Department of Justice requested Assange’s extradition and indicted him on unprecedented charges for the 2010 publication of the Iraq and Afghan war logs, the State Department cables, and Guantanamo Bay Detainee Assessment Briefs. The indictment threatens Assange with 175 years in prison, and it would mark the end of the First Amendment’s protection of the right to publish.

But Trump’s outgoing prosecutor Zachary Terwilliger said he wasn’t sure if his successors in President Biden’s Department of Justice would keep up the prosecution. Biden’s nomination for Attorney General, Merrick Garland, is a longtime federal judge who has taken strong positions in favor of robust press freedom. Garland’s confirmation hearing has been delayed.

If the U.S. submits its appeal application in the UK this Friday, a High Court judge will review the submission, decide whether to grant the appeal, and then schedule oral arguments. The rights groups’ write,

“We urge you to drop the appeal of the decision by Judge Vanessa Baraitser of the Westminster Magistrates’ Court to reject the Trump administration’s extradition request. We also urge you to dismiss the underlying indictment.”

The Obama-Biden Justice Department looked into charging Assange back in 2013 for the same publications, but decided against doing so due to the dangers such a prosecution would pose to press freedom.

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Espionage Act Journalism Julian Assange News

Defend Media Freedom: Julian Assange on #HumanRightsDay

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Espionage Act Journalism Julian Assange News

World Press Freedom Day: The Prosecution of Julian Assange