Helping Journalists in Crisis
ICFJ flourished under Joyce Barnathan’s presidency for 15 years. She laid the groundwork for our organization to grow and thrive in the years to come. In recognition of her transformational leadership and of her contributions to quality journalism worldwide, ICFJ established The Joyce Barnathan Emergency Fund for Journalists.
This initiative aligns with Joyce’s deep care and concern for the journalists in ICFJ’s network. The Fund gives ICFJ resources to help our colleagues in distress stay free and safe as they continue their important work. Recipients are ICFJ’s close partners who stand out for their excellent journalism. We deploy the Fund’s resources when we cannot wait to secure other institutional grants because lives are on the line.
Increasingly, journalists around the world are facing:
- Attacks and persecution by autocratic regimes
- Continuous threats of violence that endanger their personal safety and ability to do their work
The Joyce Barnathan Emergency Fund for Journalists covers items such as travel, immigration costs, legal fees, relocation expenses and anything else the recipients need to do their vital work and keep themselves and their families safe. This Fund gives us flexible resources to help journalists in our network when they need us the most.
Responding quickly to help our network provide accurate information
We awarded a grant to the news outlet Rubryka, our close partner in Ukraine founded by Anastasia Rudenko, to help them stay in business and do deep reporting on the long-term environmental impacts of the war, especially on possible nuclear station leaks.
Rudenko and her team developed a project called EcoSolutions, which addresses a largely ignored outcome of the war: environmental problems that could have lethal consequences and endure for decades. The online site provides Ukrainians with crucial information on water and air contamination, food security and the state of nuclear power plants through the use of a Telegram chatbot.
The chatbot provides step-by-step instructions for specific issues such as the ecological reconstruction of cities and how to prepare for recovery, what to do in case of a nuclear strike, and even how to resuscitate terrain damaged by shelling.
“The scale of (environmental) impact was colossal,” Rudenko says. “War reporting may be the number one priority, but … we feel it’s important to produce other kinds of stories that are useful to people and help them.”
Anastasia Rudenko, editor-in-chief of Rubryka, Ukraine
Supporting news outlets facing persecution
We aided Jose Rubén Zamora and his staff at elPeriódico, who face a major crackdown after reporting on corruption in the top ranks of the Guatemalan government. An ICFJ Knight International Journalism Award winner, Zamora, a frequent critic of the increasingly autocratic government of Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei, has dedicated his career to holding the powerful to account.
On July 29, 2022, officers arrested Zamora at his home in Guatemala City on trumped up charges. In the days after the arrest, authorities also froze the bank accounts of both Zamora and elPeriódico, threatening the paper’s ability to remain operational. Zamora now languishes in prison.
The Joyce Barnathan Emergency Fund for Journalists has helped pay salaries and legal costs so that the elPeriódico team can continue to produce hard-hitting stories
Guatemalan journalist Jose Rubén Zamora, former ICFJ Knight International Journalism Award winner
Helping our colleagues in peril
In 2021, we mobilized quickly to help Afghan journalist and 2012 ICFJ Knight Award winner Samiullah Mahdi to flee Kabul with his family three days before the Taliban took over.
“We are now looking at the ashes of what we created years ago, as the Taliban crack down with an iron fist on every free medium,” said Mahdi during a conversation about the state of Afghan media. “It is very hard to watch how things you loved or have worked a life on are being destroyed brutally.”
The Joyce Barnathan Emergency Fund for Journalists covered immigration fees and travel costs so Mahdi could safely settle in the U.S. Now, he is carrying on important work helping Afghan journalists and others as editor-in-chief of Amu TV, a digital news platform he co-founded in 2022 that brings together journalists from within and outside Afghanistan to provide independent reporting in Farsi and Pashto.
2012 ICFJ Knight Award winner Samiullah Mahdi with Joyce Barnathan