Understanding risks faced by journalists covering elections

Applying Tracker data to election risks for journalists

With just five days until the election, there’s no better time to talk about the risks journalists face in covering elections in the United States.

To understand those risks, we analyzed all Tracker data, beginning with the launch of the Tracker database in 2017 (and therefore capturing election protests around the inauguration of President Donald Trump). Since then, we’ve cataloged more than 120 election-related press freedom incidents using the tag “election.”

There are also cycle-specific tags, like “Election 2016,” “Election 2020” and “Election 2024,” which give a time-bound understanding of the threats to journalists.

Some of the key takeaways from an analysis in August 2024 are that most aggressions against the media take place at protests, as is also the case with nonelection violations, and that they tend to happen in presidential election cycles — like we’re in now — specifically November of election years and January of inauguration years.

This data helps us and our partners in the press freedom space understand how best to prepare journalists for the days ahead. And it underscores the need for the robust tracking in the database. To that end, if you are a journalist, or know of one, who has been assaulted, arrested or detained, or threatened with a legal order while reporting, submit it to the Tracker.

Other important takeaways from the election data:

More than half the incidents are assaults.

Overall, private individuals are responsible for 20% more assaults against journalists than law enforcement. So far in 2024, however, all election-related assaults were by law enforcement.

Press violations happen throughout the U.S., although there is a concentration in Washington, D.C., the nation’s capital.

Resources for journalists

Journalist safety kit: A guide to help newsrooms and journalists think about and manage physical and digital risk when it comes to covering the U.S. election, from the Committee to Protect Journalists.

The telltale mobile phone: Keeping your data safe when reporting from the field: Digital security experts discuss journalists’ constitutional rights in the event of device seizure, and how to plan ahead for reporting from the field, from Freedom of the Press Foundation, which operates the Tracker.

Election Legal Guide: An overview of legal issues that journalists may face while reporting on elections, from Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press

Politics and the press: A yearlong documentation of how candidates are treating media in the run-up to the election, from the Tracker team.

Also in the Tracker

Here are some other notable recent updates:

• On Oct. 16, Robert Telles, the former county official found guilty of the murder of Las Vegas Review-Journal investigative reporter Jeff German, was sentenced to 28 years to life in prison. The sentence was handed down by a Nevada judge more than two years after German was found fatally stabbed outside of his home.
• “To keep it simple for the State of Florida: it’s the First Amendment, stupid.” A to-the-point statement from a federal judge’s ruling Oct. 17 against the Florida surgeon general, who had threatened broadcasters with criminal charges for airing a campaign ad to overturn the state’s six-week abortion ban. The state’s Department of Health general counsel, the lawyer who had sent cease and desist letters to at least three local broadcast stations, later resigned. As he said, “A man is nothing without his conscience.”
• The Department of Justice indicted four men Oct. 17 for allegedly acting as co-conspirators in the attempted kidnapping and murder of independent journalist Masih Alinejad, a U.S. citizen from Iran living in New York. That brings to 13 the number of people indicted in connection with the plot since a federal indictment was unsealed in July 2021.