International Women’s Day: 60% of journalists report cyberharassment against those who cover women’s rights

The good news is that since the #MeToo movement was triggered in 2017 by investigations from The New York Times and The New Yorker, topics relating to women’s rights and gender-based violence have been more widely covered, and specialised media outlets and support networks have emerged. The bad news is that despite all this, investigating stories about women’s rights and gender-based violence remains risky — and sometimes downright dangerous.

Nearly 60 per cent of the journalists from over 110 countries surveyed by RSF in the report “Journalism in the #MeToo Era” know at least one journalist who has been a victim of cyberharassment due to their work on these topics. As the Director General of the International Network of Journalists with a Gender Perspective (RIPVG) told RSF, "The most frequent forms of violence against feminist journalists are threats and digital attacks, which can often pass from virtual to real life, affecting their safety, freedom of expression, mental health and even the health of their families.”."

This was certainly the case for Nigerian journalist Kiki Mordi, who was subjected to cyberharassment following the publication of her 2019 investigation into sexual harassment in higher education in Nigeria and Ghana. She was forced to relocate and pause most of her journalistic activities. More recently, in September last year, Bulgarian investigative journalist for NOVA TV, Marieta Nikolaeva, was a victim of a pornographic deepfake, an AI-generated image making her appear nude. French journalist Salomé Saqué, who has experienced similar harassment, described its effects to RSF:  "Cyber-harassment has a big impact on my work as a journalist,” she says. I take this risk into account as I go about my work. There are certain subjects I refuse to cover at certain times because I don’t have the strength. In India, where the National Women Journalists’ Conclave recently called on the government to act against the cyberharassment of women journalists, journalist Rana Ayyub has become a symbol of victims of harassment, both online and physical. In Latin America, journalists covering reproductive rights are targeted by violent cyber campaigns. Jovanna Mariám Garcón, a Guatamalan journalist for the feminist online outlet Ruda at the time of the events, received anonymous threats, including rape threats, on social media after covering International Safe Abortion Day.

Ninety-three per cent of RSF survey respondents said they were not aware of any perpetrators being convicted of an attack against a journalist working on women’s rights, gender issues and/or gender-based violence. To combat this persistent impunity, RSF has issued several policy recommendations to law enforcement, judicial authorities, digital platforms, newsrooms, and national governments worldwide to help end these targeted attacks.

RSF RECOMMENDATIONS

For national governments:

• Guarantee, in the name of press freedom and the right to information, the protection of journalists working on women's rights topics, as well as the media professionals who assist them.
• Introduce the criminalisation of certain forms of cyber-harassment into criminal law, with aggravating circumstances for the perpetrators and those responsible for these offences when they target women journalists and gender minorities. EU member states should transpose Directive (EU) 2024/1385 of 14 May 2024 on combating violence against women and domestic violence, particularly Article 11, which recognises that attacks on women journalists constitute an aggravating circumstance in cases of cyberharassment.
• Ensure the protection of journalists covering gender-based violence, particularly in asylum and residency permit procedures.
• Encourage media organisations, including through public funding, to equip themselves with tools for counting and measuring the place of women and gender minorities, and to implement a charter of commitment to gender equality within their structures, as well as training tools to raise their teams’ awareness of parity and equality.

For law enforcement and judicial authorities:

• Create national committees for the safety of these specialised journalists, which would include legal, police and journalists’ associations representatives, to maintain a regular dialogue.
• Appoint liaison officers within the police force to collect testimonies from victims of physical or online attacks.
• Document, with the help of the newsrooms concerned, attacks on journalists working on subjects related to women’s rights and gender violence, in order to measure the scale of these attacks.

For digital platforms:

• Raise awareness among the general public by distributing, free of charge, communication campaigns on violence against journalists specialising in gender-based violence.
• Prioritise reports from journalists who are victims of cyber-harassment and support civil society organisations acting on their behalf, as soon as a report is received.
• Respond without delay to injunctions from legal authorities investigating cases of violence against journalists.
• Combat anonymous threats and coordinated and repeated harassment campaigns by “troll factories,” by implementing all the measures for removing content and suspending accounts prescribed by the applicable law, and by dedicating appropriate resources to human moderation.

For newsrooms:

• Encourage the creation of gender editor roles.
• Encourage journalists to participate in transmedia and international investigative networks.
• Train journalists on the issue of cyber-harassment so that they can adopt the right reflexes and behaviour when faced with this type of situation (See our report: Online harassment of journalists: the trolls attack, available here (pages 34-35)).
• Protect journalists specialising in these issues, including sources, and set up internal emergency arrangements to support them, as well as physical and psychological safety training.
• Develop financial aid schemes to better support investigative work on gender-based violence, for example in the form of dedicated grants.