Support for Journalists

Our Mission

Reporters Without Borders provides administrative and financial assistance to journalists from all over the world who are facing repression or persecution because of their reporting. 

We focus on supporting journalists in the countries and regions where they carry out their work, but we also assist journalists who are forced to leave their homes because they are in acute danger there. Our aim is to protect them from persecution and enable them to continue or resume their journalistic work as soon as possible.

In addition, our fellowship programs offer committed journalists the opportunity to spend time in Berlin to expand their journalistic skills and networks in a safe environment. The goal is to ensure that they return to their country strengthened and equipped with new skills and resources.

History

In 2009 our mission to defend press freedom and freedom of information expanded to include direct assistance to journalists at risk. Since then, the assistance program of RSF’s German section has provided financial support to individual journalists in their own countries, as well as offered assistance with asylum procedures in Germany and referrals to temporary protection mechanisms in the journalists’ home regions. In this way we bolster the assistance work of our parent organisation in Paris. 

The initial focus of the Berlin section’s assistance efforts was directed towards journalists from countries of the former Soviet Union. With the geopolitical developments of recent years, we have had to constantly adjust this focal point: Iran and Turkey, Syria and Afghanistan have occupied our section at various times. 15 years after launching the German section’s assistance program, supporting journalists at risk whose work shows a strong connection to Germany remains an emphasis, as well.

Since the launch of our fellowship programs in 2015, we also offer temporary relocation and training opportunities to journalists from all over the world. Thanks to our long-standing collaboration with the taz Panter Foundation (Rest and Resilience Fellowship) and individual donors (Reporting Fellowship), as well as ongoing individual support for particularly threatened colleagues via our ad hoc protection program (Deyda Hydara Scholarship), we have been able to host 62 fellows to date (as of Fall 2025). The requests for assistance addressed to our organisation as well as the experiences of our fellows and alumni have highlighted the fact that digital threats pose an increasingly serious problem for journalists. Since 2018 a project funded by the Berlin Senate Department for Economic Affairs, Energy and Public Enterprises and designed to address this problem has provided training and empowerment in the field of digital security. As of 2025, 58 journalists have received in-depth digital security training through the Berlin Fellowship Program: Empowering Journalists in the Digital Field and are now able to pass on this knowledge to colleagues in their home countries. In total, our various fellowship programs have supported 120 media professionals from 52 countries.

The growing frequency of major crises in recent years has led to changes in our emergency assistance work. When entire media landscapes collapse and independent journalists are persecuted, imprisoned and murdered across a whole region, our assistance for individual cases reaches the limits of its capacity. However, thanks to successful collaborations with international partner organisations and German institutions, Reporters Without Borders has since 2016 repeatedly participated in major evacuation and humanitarian admission programs, including from Iran (2010 - 20212 and since 2022), Syria (2016 - 2021), Afghanistan (since 2021) and Russia (since 2022).

These crises pose a major challenge for our teams in Berlin and Paris, making close collaboration at the national and international level all the more vital. In view of the growing importance of exiled media, in April 2022 RSF Germany, together with the Schöpflin Foundation and the Rudolf Augstein Foundation, established the European Fund for Journalism in Exile (JX Fund). The JX Fund has already helped numerous media outlets from Afghanistan, Belarus, Ukraine and Russia to make a fresh start in exile. Programs for additional countries are also being rolled out.

Our Digital Security Lab (DSL), a digital forensics lab, has been analysing digital attacks (cyberattacks) on journalists across the globe since 2022. Unlike physical attacks, digital attacks often go unnoticed. Even experts can have problems verifying whether or not a device has been compromised by malware. As a result, digital attacks on journalists are rarely made public. We aim to uncover such attacks and help journalists to protect their sources, understand attack patterns, and make the attacks public if the victims choose to go this route. The DSL can check journalists' devices for evidence of malware, phishing attacks and malicious account takeovers.

Our team of experts also offers digital security guides, recommendations on safe tools and how to use them, an interactive formula for assessing individual threat levels, and online webinars on digital security.

Partnerships

RSF Germany’s assistance team is cooperating closely with the German aid organisation Journalisten helfen Journalisten e.V. and the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom (ECPMF). The taz Panter Foundation, the ZEIT STIFTUNG BUCERIUS, die Friede Springer Foundation, the Elisabeth-Selbert-Initiative, the Protestant Church in Germany (EKD) and  Berlin Senate Department for Economic Affairs, Energy and Public Enterprises have also been reliable partners over the years, especially in supporting our fellowship programs. 

Journalists at risk also receive support from the Hamburg Foundation for Politically Persecuted People and the Feuchtwanger Fellowship program (Villa Aurora & Thomas Mann House e.V.).

At the international level, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) is a member of the Journalists in Distress (JiD) network, a coalition of international human rights organisations that coordinate their assistance to media workers and share information on the safety of journalists. RSF also works with the European Union Temporary Relocation Platform (EUTRP) and the ACOS Alliance (A Culture of Safety Alliance).

Photo credit: © Anke Phoebe Peters / RSF