Press freedoms can slip away

In a series of letters, journalists from around the world working under threat of censorship, abuse and more, shared advice for their American counterparts on how to push back against the increasing erosion of press freedoms.

“In the U.S., the press operates under vastly different conditions — safer, more protected. But freedom here, too, is vulnerable,” wrote Tanya Kozyreva, an investigative reporter based in Kyiv, Ukraine, who was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for international reporting. “Rarely do threats arrive all at once. They slip in quietly: an accreditation that never comes through, a source too frightened to speak, a records request endlessly delayed, an editor who shelves a story for being ‘too political.’ … We cannot afford to ignore the first cracks. Silence begins slowly — and spreads fast.”

Unfortunately, that’s exactly what’s happening — here and around the world.