Prgramme For Promoting Digital And Physical Safety Of Journalists
Project Period: 2020 –2021
Funded by: Internews
Journalists across the world are facing pressure and threats while covering news on conflict sensitive issues. Journalists and media actors in Bangladesh are also not immune. They are facing threats and risks from hackers, criminal groups and religious extremists. Compounding this increasingly hostile operational environment is a sector influenced by corporate ownership and political allegiances, resulting in self-censorship at the individual journalist and editorial levels.
The attack on freedom of expression has escalated recently with introduction of digital security act which is being used indiscriminately to harass journalists and other media activists.
The rise of hacking risks, violence by extremist groups and heightened state surveillance on journalists and bloggers have created a sense of urgency for greater digital, physical, psychosocial and legal security among journalists, bloggers and human rights defenders.
To face the challenges News Network, with support from Internews, has launched a project in April, 2020 in five divisions in Bangladesh with a view to strengthening the digital safety and physical security for journalists and access to resources.
The project activities includes Training of Journalists’ Trainers (ToT) and field level training workshops for media people, working for local and national print and electronic media on digital and physical safety of journalists, aims to foster media independence in Bangladesh by strengthening investigative journalism capacity focusing on building skills in digital and physical security, reducing self-censorship, and addressing lack of media freedoms.
The programmes will take place in the capital city Dhaka and four other divisional headquarters of Chattogram, Sylhet, Khulna and Barisal. More than one hundred journalists will be benefited from the project as well as they will share their experience and learnings from the programme among their colleagues with multiple effects.