Feature image via freepress.net.
Every year on May 3, the world celebrates World Press Freedom Day. The aim of this day is to highlight the violations of press freedom in the world, to share awareness about the fundamentals of press freedom, to praise journalists who lost their lives while doing their job, and to remind governments to respect their commitments toward press freedom.
World Press Freedom Day, this year, focuses on three main themes: freedom of information and sustainable development, protecting press freedom from censorship and surveillance overreach, and ensuring online and offline safety for journalists.
Based on our support for the freedom of press and expression, the importance of providing protection for journalists and the need to ensure a free and independent media environment, the Tasharuk team chose “Press Freedom” as May’s theme. Currently, Tasharuk includes more than 50 English resources and 70 Arabic resources produced by many organizations such as International Journalists’ Network, UNESCO, Arab Citizen Media, International Center for Journalists, Reporters Without Border, and others.
These resources include guides and kits on digital safety tools for journalists, indexes on press freedom in Arab world, fundamentals of press freedom, apps and tools that help journalists in their work, and ways of saving journalists while doing their profession. The team will work on promoting these resources and on adding more new resources especially on news verification as fact checking is one of the basics of free and transparent press.
We ask people and organizations who are interested to join us in supporting press freedom by signing up into Tasharuk and then sharing their relevant resources. Follow us on @tasharuk and tweet with us using the hashtags #pressfreedom and #AttacksOnPress. On World Press Freedom Day, let’s use #WPFD2016.