This World Press Freedom Day ARTICLE 19, together with Global Affairs Canada and with support from the Association of European Journalists Belgium and Media Freedom Rapid Response, hosted a discussion focused on practical solutions to the compounding threats faced by women journalists and media workers – and how the solutions and measures that affect them must be co-created with women journalists themselves.
The event, part of the #EquallySafe project, brought together journalists from Bangladesh, Brazil and Croatia, each sharing with the audience their unique experience of what it means to be a woman journalist today. The picture emerging from the discussion is one of profound challenges, also documented in ARTICLE 19’s global research. From violence and attacks by the state, inequality in the newsrooms to gendered online harassment, women journalists face compounding risks due to sexism, social stereotypes and discrimination.
A one size fits all approach won’t be enough to address those challenges, just like there can’t be a one single ‘feminist approach’ to the safety of women journalists. For any responses to be truly intersectional, they will need to draw on multiple feminisms and centre the lived experiences of women journalists, who need to play an active role in designing any solutions that affect them.
Self-organisation in the face of state harassment
We live in a democratic country but there is no democracy when it comes to freedom of expression. There’s no equality of access and no equality for community journalists and no support for women journalists facing attacks and harassment. Because of that, it’s hard to call our country truly democratic.
Gizele Martins, social communicator and activist from the Favela da Maré in Rio de Janeiro, spoke powerfully about the ongoing violence her community continues to suffer at the hands of a whole host of actors, from drug gangs to the state police. The police routinely attack those living and working in the favelas, and those attacks have a distinct gender component, as women communicators face sexual harassment and intimindation. Even though Gizele continues to speak out and denounce the attacks, the state fails in its response to the violence and to offer protection to grassroots communities and women journalists working in the favelas.
When we speak about violence against women journalists, we need to speak about black, lesbian and trans journalists. If we don’t involve them, any protection mechanisms developed risk aggregating the violence they already suffer daily.
Despite the constant violence and attacks, Gizele finds strength in the way that the favela community comes together with other groups to resist and develop their own strategies for protection. At times when police violence escalates, the groups mobilise on Signal and WhatsApp, with lawyers supporting those detained by the police or human rights organisations speaking out to put pressure on the state. This matters not just for journalists and other activists but also for their families who continue to face the brunt of the attacks.
Challenging the status quo in the newsroom
The media owners are there to make profit – issues like safety and security of female journalists come very late on their list of priorities. Musharrat Mahera
Musharrat Mahera, Deputy Director of Bangladeshi advocacy organisation VOICE, spoke about the interaction between systematic inequality and the lack of institutional support for women journalists. From harassment in the workplace to poor childcare support, issues raised by women journalists are constantly ignored and not taken seriously, by media houses and policymakers alike.
What is job security when women can be fired for speaking out against harassment in the workplace? Farhana Haque Nila
For Farhana Haque Nila, Staff Reporter at sarabangla.net in Bangladesh, those challenges are all too real. Fired from her job for reporting a senior editor for sexual harassment, she took her newsroom to court – only to face online and offline intimidation intended to silence her and pressure her to drop the case. For five years, she struggled to find a journalism job, as no newsroom would hire someone perceived to be outspoken and ‘difficult’. Driven by her passion for journalism, she persevered, finding journalism fellowships and opportunities abroad, able to lean on her family support in the meantime. Yet too many women journalists in Bangladesh, without those support networks, are driven out of the profession.
Musharrat highlighted the window of opportunity for improving the safety of women journalists in Bangladesh following last year’s July uprising. Civil society has been engaging with the Media Reform Commission, calling for new measures that would address the gaps in protecting and supporting female journalists. Despite limited resources, Bangladeshi civil society is making progress in ensuring safety and security of women journalists continues to be on the agenda – in a way that’s intersectional, and co-created with the journalists themselves.
Standing up to online harassment
The challenges of coordinated online harassment campaigns and populist gendered disinformation targeting women working in the media are not Croatia, or Asia, or South America specific. They are global.
Ana Brakus, who runs Faktograf, a media and fact-checking outlet in Croatia, spoke honestly about the barrage of online harassment she and her female colleagues receive on a regular basis. In 2023, Faktograf’s research into online harassment against fact checkers in the European Union found that women – overrepresented in fact checking newsrooms – are disproportionately targeted by harassment campaigns, with sexist and misogynist attacks and hate speech used to undermine their work.
Cases reported to the police tend to fall on deaf ears and dangerous threats ranging from online harassment to physical intimidation are typically ignored. Policies, protocols and regulations created by the Croatian government and at the EU level too often don’t work, given the lack of political will to fully and meaningfully implement them. In a concentrated media ecosystem driven by concerns about the bottom line, there is also little space for discussions about the safety of women journalists and little care for public interest journalism or information integrity.
In the Balkans, the state apparatus is often the perpetrator of attacks against journalists. Milica Vojinović, from Serbian investigative outlet KRIK, highlighted how Serbian government officials employ a range of tactics to intimidate and harass independent journalists – from using security agencies to surveil communications to smearing reporters as foreign agents in an effort to discredit them. Those attacks often have a gendered element: state security agencies have been found to use sexually explicit material to blackmail and discredit women journalists.
Fighting challenges from SLAPPs to coordinated online harassment campaigns is draining, mentally and financially. It takes away resources that journalists want to spend doing important public interest work.
With populist disinformation campaigns targeting fact-checkers on the rise globally, more needs to be done to support those who battle those challenges every day. Alongside combating a culture of impunity for attacks against journalists, newsrooms must have the resources to provide safe workplaces for journalists, which includes providing mental health resources to those targeted by the attacks. As Ana candidly said, to do this effectively, more money must be invested in this type of support – only then will the journalists be able to carry on their vital work.
Learning from resilience
A key intervention from the audience, made by Charlene Nagae, a Brazilian lawyer working with Schirlei Alvez, a journalist sentenced to prison in a criminal SLAPP case, highlighted a difficult truth: once targeted by attacks, too often women journalists are reduced to retelling the story of the abuse and violence they suffered rather than being given support to continue their work and a platform to spotlight their journalistic achievements.
Despite the challenges they face on a daily basis, each panelist demonstrated remarkable resilience, courage and, above all, determination to continue their public interest work. It is key that they are involved in designing mechanisms and protection strategies – only when we learn from their experiences, creativity and resilience in the face of structural inequalities can we ensure safety of all women journalists, everywhere.