Press Freedom & Safety Archive

Shelby Rose, a correspondent for KATV news, was in the middle of a live broadcast in Little Rock, Arkansas, when someone in the crowd smashed an object on her head. It was May 30, less than a week after the killing of George Floyd by a white police officer in Minneapolis, and the first night of protests against the incident in Little Rock. Rose and her crew had set up near the state capitol. She recounted that they were swarmed by angry people who screamed at them. “I didn’t understand,” Rose said. “It was the first night of protests, so […]

Michael Pack, the new head of the U.S. Agency for Global Media, is coming under scrutiny for purging the directors and advisory boards of several U.S. government-funded media outlets. A conservative documentary filmmaker, Pack was confirmed by the Senate last month after being nominated for the position by President Donald Trump in 2018. One of Pack’s first moves after taking office was to fire or demote the chiefs of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, the Middle East Broadcasting Network and the Open Technology Fund. The directors of Voice of America, USAGM’s flagship global news network, had already resigned following his confirmation. […]

It was a “Wednesday night massacre,” as one former U.S. official told CNN, when an appointee of President Donald Trump fired the heads of multiple government-funded media outlets. Conservative documentary filmmaker Michael Pack took over last month as the head of the U.S. Agency for Global Media after a two-year confirmation process in the Senate, and one of his first actions after taking office was to sweep out the directors and advisory boards of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia, the Middle East Broadcasting Networks, and the Open Technology Fund. The two directors of the USAGM’s flagship network, Voice […]