Inspired by Colleagues Around the World, the Pulitzer Center Will Hold the Line

As the U.S. election results sink in, I have been thinking about my colleagues in places like India, Venezuela, Hungary, Philippines, and even Argentina, my own birth country, who have a thing or two to teach us about how to produce world-changing journalism amid insults, persecution, harassment, and worse.

It’s hard to predict exactly how much press freedom will deteriorate in the U.S. in a second Trump presidency, but the fact that we are even contemplating and bracing ourselves for such a scenario shows how profoundly abnormal and dangerous this moment is.

Might the legal definition of libel change in U.S. courts to open the door to frivolous lawsuits against journalists who hold powerful individuals and organizations to account?

Might TV broadcasters lose their licenses lest they provide favorable coverage to those in power?

Will reporters covering demonstrations and other events be thrown into jail for threatening public order?

Might partisan outlets masquerading as journalism be legitimized or even subsidized with public funds?

Will freedom of information laws that guarantee citizens’ fundamental right to learn how government business is conducted be crippled and made useless?

Well, all of this is already happening in many countries around the world as autocratic regimes—to the right and the left—settle in or perpetuate themselves in power. But in each of those countries and dire contexts, I have journalists to look up to and learn from.

From my Russian colleague Roman Anin and my Venezuelan colleague Joseph Poliszuk, both journalists in exile, I learn the importance of holding to account the businessmen and corporations that thrive in an authoritarian regime. Oligarchs are proxies of those in power, and they are allies in the corrupt enterprise. The investigative spotlight should shine relentlessly upon them.

From journalists around the world who have chosen to collaborate rather than compete with colleagues in their own countries and across borders, I am reminded that we need a network to fight a network. It is not just organized crime that we are covering but meticulously organized disinformation syndicates, coordinated environmental destruction, and legalized predatory financial flows protected by tax haven secrecy. No reporter can untangle these corrupt practices in isolation.

From my colleague Sukanya Shantha in India, a shrinking democracy, I learn that even in an unforgiving context, rigorous and independent journalism can upend an entire unjust system. Shantha’s reporting on caste-based labor in Indian prisons for The Wire recently resulted in a historic ruling by India’s Supreme Court that banned the centuries-old practice across the country. The head judge thanked the reporter for her work.

Maria Ressa, a Nobel laureate and Filipina journalist, has been warning us for years that what happens in the Philippines has a way of making it sooner or later to the U.S. She gave us the warnings—democracy death by a thousand cuts, remember?—as she and her outlet Rappler battled multiple court cases on invented charges initiated by a government led by strongman Rodrigo Duterte. Ressa also personally endured cruel and dehumanizing insults and attacks magnified by organized disinformation networks.

From Ressa we learn to hold the line, as she often called us to do. Not as heroes or crusading members of the resistance but as journalists who work in the public interest.

At the Pulitzer Center we will hold the line by doubling down on our commitment to support and enable courageous and independent journalism in the United States and globally. Our mission is even deeper than that as we work interdisciplinarily with educators, students, civic leaders, and artists to meet audiences where they are. Ressa calls it building communities of action, with each sector playing its unique role. That’s how we heal, that’s how we make a lasting difference. 

Onward.

Marina Walker Guevara 
Executive Editor 
Pulitzer Center