End of Year Update

Dear Friends:

With threats to press freedom and journalism safety mounting it will surprise no one that this has been an eventful year for the Journalism Protection Initiative.

It began in January with the 2025 Safety Summit. We gathered newsroom leaders and other experts to assess emerging threats under the second Trump administration. We produced a comprehensive risk assessment and a series of Press Freedom Briefings examining how small news organizations can create basic safety infrastructure and providing guidance for the boards of nonprofit news organizations.

I also wrote about the specific risks that journalists and media organizations face in an increasingly authoritarian environment, and how they can best prepare for the onslaught. And we announced the development of JESS, an AI-driven journalism safety chatbot, in partnership with the ACOS Alliance and the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation.

Here’s what’s been keeping us busy in the final months of 2025.

Safety for Students

The JPI has an outward-facing mission – we conduct research and host convenings to support press freedom and media safety. But we also play an inward-facing role, helping to ensure that Newmark J-School students can work safely and that they are prepared to succeed in a more adversarial environment.

Since our founding three years ago, we have worked with the faculty and administration to strengthen safety education for Newmark J-School students and created resources, guidance, and training. Much of this work is being led by Kate Parkinson, who joined the JPI in September.

In a few short months, Kate has lectured in the Law, Ethics, and Safety classes on preparing risk assessment and building resilience. She has organized safety workshops for our international students, and provided bespoke individualized support for students with specific concerns. She will be leading safety workshops during the upcoming January Academy and is beginning work on a new resource with best practices for student journalists.

Safety Series

This year’s fall Safety Series focused on several emerging threats, including the challenges faced by non-citizen journalists working in the US. In an October panel we heard from lawyers Esha Bhandari of the ACLU and Dana Green from The New York Times, along with Mazin Sidahmed from Documented and Alfredo Corchado, from Puente News Collaborative in El Paso, Texas. They described a world in which the law and the lived reality are completely at odds. While non-citizens have First Amendment protections, they operate in an environment of fear and intimidation in which reporting on sensitive issues or crossing the border can have serious consequences.

For news organizations looking for guidance on how to project non-citizen journalists on their staff, please consult the JPI’s Press Freedom Briefing, written by Yemile Bucay.

We hosted a separate panel on the US as a safe haven for journalists under threat, featuring journalists from around the world who have been supported as Knight Press Freedom Fellows, a program that the JPI established in 2024 with backing from the Knight Foundation. A separate roundtable discussion with participation from my Newmark J-School colleagues Gina Chua and M. Gessen looked at the safety challenges faced by trans journalists. You can find the JPI’s Press Freedom Briefing on the topic here. It was produced in partnership with the Trans Journalists Association.

Finally in November we hosted the safety bootcamp for documentary filmmakers with my colleague Yoruba Richen, who directs the Newmark J-School’s documentary program, and the International Documentary Association, whose board I joined earlier this year. The one day intensive brought together about two dozen filmmakers to share experiences and develop best practices. It was a demanding but productive day.

We are grateful for support from the Golden Globe Foundation which helped support these events.

Public Media and Democracy

For the last six months I’ve been working on a new book called News For Free that examines the relationship between public media and democracy in the US and around the world. The book, to be published by Columbia Global Reports, explores how public investment in media can help meet the challenges of market failure, technological disruption and rising authoritarianism.

This is my third book with Columbia Global Reports, and I am excited to work again with Nick Lemann, Jimmy So and the whole CGR team. As part of my research, I’ve been following developments at the BBC, both their efforts to expand their presence in the US, and the threatened libel suit from President Trump. I devoted two CJR columns to the topic on The British Broadcaster Is Coming and How Donald Trump Blew Up the BBC.

As I told Brian Stelter and Reliable Sources, Trump’s attacks on the BBC are ultimately “about the future of public media as an institution at a time when the concept has been under fierce attack in the US.” The defunding of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting last summer is a huge blow, but also an opportunity to reimagine and reconsider what US public media can look like. I look forward to my ongoing research.

Final Thoughts for 2025

As the year closes, I want to thank all of those who have supported the work of the JPI, especially my friends and colleagues at the Newmark J-School.

On behalf of Kate Parkinson and myself, we’d like to wish everyone all the best for the holidays, and for all you journalists out there, a safe and free 2026.

Joel