CORONAVIRUS : We need reliable news more than ever – act now!
Amid all the anxiety caused by the global pandemic, our need for fast and reliable news reporting is greater than ever. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) is launching a special donation appeal to support journalists that are under attack for their COVID19 coverage.
Support RSF during the pandemic.Make a donationJournalists all over the world are doing a remarkable job to keep us informed day in day out, despite all the logistic restrictions, the danger of catching Covid-19, and the threat of reprisals in some countries. This is the case in China, the origin of the pandemic, where massive censorship mechanisms have been put in place and where whistleblowers and journalists nonetheless continue to courageously denounce the shortcomings of the regime’s measure to combat the virus, although many colleagues have disappeared.
Many authoritarian governments are using the coronavirus pandemic to
impose measures that would be impossible in normal times, taking
advantage of the fact that politics are on hold, the public is
stunned and the
possibility of protests is limited. At the same time, it is becoming
harder and harder for journalists to operate. When
journalists face barriers to freely and reliably report about the
global pandemic, the consequences are deadly.
In response to this emergency, RSF created Tracker-19 to shed light
on all the obstacles to press freedom linked to Covid-19. Tracker-19
directly documents all cases of harassment of journalists and
whistleblowers covering coronavirus-related news worldwide. It draws
attention to all serious cases of state censorship and deliberate
disinformation, and their impact on the right to reliable news and
information. And it makes recommendations on how to keep helping the
journalists who are covering the pandemic.
>> Use Tracker-19 to directly follow all the Covid-19 news
Help us now to pursue all our work in support of the journalists who
continue to fight, sometimes at risk to their lives, to keep us
informed at this difficult time. In the constantly evolving news
cycle, they fulfil an essential and vital social function. We need
fact-based
journalism
to
combat the spread of the virus.