The plight of journalists.

Last year proved to be a particularly fraught one for American journalists. Kirstin McCudden of the Columbia Journalism Review reports: “While we did not see the scope of national social-justice protests of 2020 -- a year in which journalists were arrested or assaulted on average more than once a day -- 2021 still outpaced the years before it for press-freedom violations.” Removing 2020 from the equation, McCudden says, 2021 saw “more than 140 assaults of journalists in 2021 ... outpaces assaults from 2017 to 2019 combined.”

There is some encouraging news in other categories, though; according to McCudden, “For the first time in five years of documentation, the number of publicly-known subpoenas or other legal orders has decreased rather than increase,” likely the result of the Biden DOJ’s June 2021 decision to stop seizing journalist records in leak investigations. Read more here.

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