Police protection and vital cybersecurity for journalists
Police protection is seen as one of the ways of dealing with the increasing levels of threats against journalists.
Speaking at the last conference of the Journalists Matter campaign in Strasbourg, Wim Hoonhout, team leader and coordinator of the Netherlands Central Police, called for more safeguards to protect journalists from threats – on and offline – which he said have increased over the last six years.
The Dutch police regularly met and cooperated with journalists, prioritising cases of threats against them and setting up protection measures, said Hoonhout.
Journalists, however, did not always seek police assistance. Brigadier Ernst Albrecht, from the Austrian Interior Ministry’s Special Police Operations, spoke about the sometimes “difficult relationship between police and journalists”, and called for more effective communication between media and police.
The conference, held on October 29-30, concluded the first thematic event of the Council of Europe’s Journalists Matter campaign – protection. Next year’s theme will be prosecution, with the campaign set to run until 2027, covering a different theme each year. In 2026 it will deal with prevention and in the final year with promotion of information, education and the raising of awareness.
At the October conference, participants heard the dramatic testimony of Ukrainian journalist Svitlana Zalizetska, who spoke about the challenges faced by reporters working in war zones. She described how Russian forces broke into her parents’ home, holding her father hostage and demanding that she stop her reporting.
Linked to her story was a photo exhibition, titled Executed Free Speech, by Ukrainian photographer Yevhen Zinchenko. Its aim was to raise awareness about Ukrainian journalists held captive by Russian forces. Participants were also shown the Oscar-winning documentary by Pulitzer Prize winning Ukrainian journalist Mstyslav Chernov, 20 Days in Mariupol, which tells the harrowing story of the last remaining journalists, trapped in the besieged city during the Russian offensive.
Practical advice was also provided for journalists who were reporting from a war zone, such as understanding different types of weapons they could encounter, how to avoid mines and other survival techniques, such as how to act in case of capture.
It is not only in war zones that reporters face threats. German journalist Clemens Lotze shared a film about his experience in Saxony, facing attacks by far-right demonstrators that were so frightening, the reporters could not rely on the police. Participants heard of the new approaches put in place by media organisations and civil society to help journalists deal with such situations.
Many threats faced by journalists are online. Journalist Pauline Ades-Mevel, a media safety trainer, provided practical tips, such as the need for access to legal counsel and protecting privacy online, encouraging journalists not to publish anything personal on their social networks.
Additional resources, such as online protection programmes, are offered by private sector actors like Cloudfare, a digital partner of the Council of Europe. Cloudflare believes that no organisation dedicated to improving the public interest should be silenced or forced to operate in fear of an impending cyberattack due to their lack of budget or technical expertise.
Cloudfare launched Project Galileo in 2014 to provide free cybersecurity services to at-risk organisations, particularly those working in vulnerable sectors such as human rights and journalism, and civil advocacy. Under the project, Cloudfare protects more than 2,600 internet properties in 111 countries with 21 per cent related to independent journalism and media.
Cloudflare’s data highlights a rise in cyberattacks targeting journalists, particularly following major geopolitical events like the invasion of Ukraine. Between May 1, 2023 and March 31, 2024, Cloudflare blocked 31.93 billion cyber threats against organisations protected under Project Galileo, an average of nearly 95.89 million cyberattacks per day. In March 2024, Cloudfare documented attacks against organisations in Ukraine, as it mitigated 912 million requests, a 1466 per cent increase from the previous months.
“Protecting independent journalism and media groups from cyberattack is critical to safeguarding democracy,” said Alissa Starzak, global head of policy at Cloudfare. “With the proliferation of online threats, from DDoS attacks, to phishing and ransomware, it is more important than ever that the cybersecurity industry collaborate with civil society organisations to help journalists.”
Meduza, the most prominent source of independent journalism covering stories in Russia and across Eastern Europe, has been protected under Project Galileo since the beginning of the full-scale invasion in Ukraine. In January 2023, Russia declared the news outlet an “undesirable organisation” in an attempt to stop the organisation’s reporting on the war in Ukraine. Since the beginning of the war, Meduza has been blocked in Russia.
On October 11, 2023, Cloudflare detected one of the largest attacks seen against Meduza and the largest seen against an organisation protected under Project Galileo. It identified an attack that peaked at seven million requests per second, with an attack duration of seven minutes. In total, 1.9 billion requests targeting the organisation were mitigated that day.
Meta also provides tools, training and best practices so that publishers and independent news creators to protect themselves while using Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp to reach their audiences. It has developed several products to protect safety and privacy of journalists.
