‘Journalists can serve democracy but they can’t save it’: Joel Simon

The press freedom advocate speaks about the need for journalists to focus on their essential role amid challenges posed by digital disruption and AI.

In times when governments and political actors worldwide are weaponising the law against journalists, it has become critical to put in place institutional safeguards in order to protect media freedoms. Joel Simon—American journalist, author, and a renowned advocate of press freedom—believes one way that both journalists and media institutions in democratic countries can prevent the erosion of those freedoms is by never losing sight of their essential role: empowering citizens with the information they need to participate in a democracy.

Joel Simon is the Founding Director of the Journalism Protection Initiative at the Craig Newmark School of Journalism at the City University of New York. An alumnus of Amherst College and Stanford University, he has written extensively on subjects such as press freedom, journalists’ safety, human rights, and global policy for various publications over a career spanning more than three decades. He also served as Executive Director at the Committee to Protect Journalists between 2006 and 2021 and was a Fellow at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at the Columbia University, New York.

Read the interview here.