Freedom of the Press Foundation Releases its 2019 Impact Report

Louise Black

VP of Development and Operations

It’s no secret that press freedom is under threat both in the U.S. and around the world. Worse yet, journalists are increasingly attacked by authoritarians who refuse to bow to public pressure.

At Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF), we’re not just advocating for press freedom rights—we are also building technology to protect journalists and whistleblowers where lawmakers refuse to help. If politicians won’t protect the rights of journalists, we will.

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And without our supporters, our donors, and the brave journalists and whistleblowers who put their lives on the line, none of our work would be possible. You can help us sustain this important work with a donation by clicking here!

Here’s a few highlights of what we accomplished in 2019:

  • SecureDrop: In 2019, SecureDrop was adopted or reinstated by NBC News, ABC (Australia), The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, The Dallas Morning News, Harvard University, Global Witness, Slate, Sueddeutsche Zeitung (Germany), ProPublica, Business Insider, and several smaller organizations.

We also continued our work on the next generation of SecureDrop, the SecureDrop Workstation, which will offer journalists a more chat-like experience for interacting with anonymous sources, while maintaining critical security protections for journalists and sources.

  • Digital Security Trainings: Over the course of 2019, our Digital Security Training team trained over 1,000 journalists, academics, filmmakers, and members of civil society, and published more digital security resources for journalists than any previous year.

We also partnered with USC’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism to incorporate digital security practices into the curricula of their journalism school. Read more about this partnership, here.

  • The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Since the launch of the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker in late 2017, FPF has documented over 400 individual press freedom violations involving journalists and reporters. Information about or from the Tracker was cited by other media outlets and organizations nearly 100 times in 2019.

The role of journalism in our democracy matters now more than ever and we are grateful for your support of our important work. Below is our 2019 Impact Report, outlining the work we’ve accomplished in the past year, an overview of our major projects and initiatives, and how we will be expanding on our work in 2020.

Download the full report (PDF) or view it below:

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