17/07/2025
When covering the story becomes the story.
What happens when your camera makes you a target?
When encrypted messages get flagged?
When telling the truth is considered a threat?
Across the world, journalism is being criminalized, quietly, strategically, and at scale.
Reporters are being detained under vague “disinformation” laws.
Protest coverage is blacked out in real time or never allowed in the first place.
Entire newsrooms are labeled as national security threats.
Spyware tracks source conversations, even on encrypted platforms.
This isn’t hypothetical. It’s happening right now in democracies and dictatorships alike.
And it’s forcing journalists to make impossible choices:
Do you capture what’s happening or protect yourself and your crew?
Do you report in real time or risk being digitally traced?
Do you publish the full story or redact it to survive another day?
Because the truth is, conflict doesn’t pause for censorship.
And the public still needs to know.
But we need to ask:
How do you report under growing restrictions?
What are you doing to stay safe — and still get the story out?
Where do you draw the line between protecting your sources and pushing for transparency?
This isn’t just a journalism issue.
It’s a public issue.
It’s a democracy issue.
It’s a human rights issue.
Let’s open the conversation. Let’s protect each other. Let’s keep reporting.
Your turn:
Have you covered conflict or crisis under surveillance or censorship?
What worked and what didn’t?
Drop your insights, your questions, your warnings.
