Freedom of the Press Foundation

FPF operates a growing team of digital security trainers based in New York City, who regularly go inside newsrooms to provide journalists important training on how to protect themselves and their sources online. We promote the use of digital security tools and offer them the best available technologies to protect themselves and their sources. These trainings include how to lock down your accounts to prevent hacking, how to protect your anonymity online, how to mitigate potential harassment or doxing, and how to encrypt a variety of communications methods such as text messages, phone calls, and emails. In 2018, over 1,200 journalists attended at least one of our digital security trainings. See https://freedom.press/training/.

FPF launched the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker in 2017, a website that monitors virtually all press freedom violations in the United States, ​including the number of journalists arrested, attacked, subpoenaed, and stopped at the border​. This nonpartisan news website is the first to provide reliable, easy-to-access information on the number of press freedom violations in the United States—from journalists facing arrest to those stopped at the US border or physically attacked while on the job.​ Since its launch, we have reported on over 250 press freedom violations in the United States and the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker was cited in over 70 news outlets reporting on press freedom issues.

Secure the News tracks the adoption of HTTPS encryption, including associated best practices, by news organizations around the world. The adoption of HTTPS by news sites provides important protections to readers. Visiting a news site without an encrypted connection means that attackers, ISPs or network operators can see what you’re reading and even swap out real stories with fake ones. We also maintain complete archival copies of news websites threatened by wealthy buyers pushing an agenda or litigants with deep pockets through our Archive the News project. As examples like Gawker Media or Gothamist demonstrate, these risks are very real, especially for edgy outlets that pursue adversarial stories about business leaders. Our archive collection protects the work of these outlets and acts as a disincentive against attempts to silence inconvenient reporting through lawsuits or shutdowns.

FPF engages in public and legal advocacy around critical press freedom issues, including excessive government secrecy, the protection of whistleblowers, the surveillance of journalists, the Freedom of Information Act, and reporter’s privilege. We continue to be very active around important advocacy issues affecting journalists. We have a robust social media following of almost 300,000 supporters and we regularly tweet and write blog posts about a variety of issues, including government transparency, the threat of subpoenas to journalists, the targeting of news outlets with libel lawsuits, the abuse of the Espionage Act to go after whistleblowers, and other overreach by the federal government.