Thirty years after a landmark declaration of press freedom principles, journalists face threats that jeopardize democratic institutions around the world. Committee to Protect Journalists The international community salutes World Press Freedom Day on May 3 with...
Since 2007, I’ve been an official election observer. It’s grueling work but strengthens trust in democracy and keeps a lid on electoral fraud. A rally of the Ata Meken party in Jalal-Abad province, southern Kyrgyzstan, in 2015 (photo by Julian Nundy) It...
News Decoder is helping UNESCO promote press freedom with a global webinar on how threats to journalists’ safety imperil the public’s right to know. From the Committee to Protect Journalists The number of journalists murdered in retaliation for their work...
They are 8,000 miles from Myanmar, but Burmese in the U.S. are raising money in a fight for the restoration of democracy in the Asian nation. A recent protest against the military coup in Myanmar, in Indianapolis, Indiana (courtesy of Elaisa Vahnie) This story was a...
I was taught that Modern Colonialism was a force for global good. Later I learned it was a system of exploitation, oppression and enslavement. World empires and colonies in 1914, just before World War One (Wikimedia Commons). As the leaders of the Commonwealth of...
Inspired by Black Lives Matter protests, I offer a photo essay as a haunting reminder that the fight continues decades after the Civil Rights Movement. This story won a third prize in News Decoder’s Ninth Storytelling Contest. With my photography project, I...
The Black Lives Matter movement has stirred young people around the globe and raised hopes that racism and police brutality against Blacks can be curbed. For many elders, the hopes are tinged by nagging fears that a generation from now race relations will remain strained and injustices will persist. Lucy Bird, a 17-year-old student at Westover School, captures those worries in her haunting series of photos that juxtapose iconic images from the U.S. Civil Rights Movement with glimpses from BLM protests.
Exercise: Ask your students to apply their photo skills to create a visual essay that manipulates existing photographs to capture their concerns about the future.
The U.S. wants to end its longest war and withdraw from Afghanistan—called by some the graveyard of empires. But a May 1 deadline looks uncertain. U.S. military carry the casket of a soldier killed in Afghanistan, Dover, Delaware, 12 June 2017. (EPA-EFE/SCOTT SERIO)...
A civil war in Yemen marked by foreign meddling has created an unparalleled humanitarian disaster with no end in sight, even if a truce were agreed upon. A malnourished child waits to be fed at a hospital in Sana’a, Yemen, 21 March 2021. (EPA-EFE/YAHYA ARHAB) A...
News Decoder is backed by dozens of veteran correspondents who have covered many of the world’s biggest and most complicated stories of the past half-century. Mentors to students in our partner schools, the correspondents are experts in their own right in many of the world’s most intractable and consequential issues. Cutbacks in spending on foreign news means some big stories don’t receive the attention they deserve in mainstream Western media. But Alistair Lyon, a former Middle Eastern diplomatic correspondent for Reuters, won’t let News Decoder readers forget the humanitarian disaster underway in Yemen. Have your students read this article to learn about the complex conflict gripping Yemen and ask them to identify other ongoing humanitarian crises that are not grabbing headlines.
Emboldened by the COVID-19 pandemic, autocrats are strengthening their grip around the world as democracy steadily loses ground. Police arrest a pro-democracy protester in Hong Kong, China, 29 September 2019. (EPA-EFE/FAZRY ISMAIL) If you live in a country fully...
Allegations of incest in a prominent family are forcing France to come to terms with sexual misconduct that until recently was widely overlooked. A sign on a wall reads “Duhamel, and the others, you will never be in peace,” referring to prominent French...