Locking Arms When Press Freedom is Under Attack
As we celebrated #WorldPressFreedomDay, we thank all of you who stand up for journalists who are under attack for pursuing the truth.
Dear Reader,
I’m back in Atlanta after a whirlwind week in Tempe, Arizona for the Society of Environmental Journalists annual conference!
While we enjoyed our first in-person newsroom gathering in person with snacks from all around Asia, much of the conference revolved about somber discussions of declining press freedom in the United States. From the Trump administration defunding public broadcasters to institutional sources refusing to be in the same room as reporters due to fear of retribution, these are existential threats to our work that we don’t have any solutions to.
As I shared in multiple off-the-record discussions with newsroom leaders, this is personal: On Friday, Reporters Without Borders released its annual Press Freedom Index, one day before World Press Freedom Day. My hometown of Hong Kong (also The Xylom’s hub in East Asia, with contributors Crystal Chow and Selena Liang holding down the fort), is now down to 140th place out of 180 countries and regions surveyed. In 2002, we were ranked 18th!
“We have never seen such a sharp and rapid deterioration in the press freedom record of any country or territory,”
— Aleksandra Bielakowska, Reporters Without Borders, speaking to Hong Kong Free Press.
Much of what The Xylom does revolves around supporting Asian (American) journalists, be they stateside, in exile, or taking considerable risk getting the story out to a global audience from the ground. We are at the intersection of some of the least covered issues and groups in the Western world, which also makes them some of the most resource-intensive to cover.
While donations through our monthly sustainership has increased sixfold year-over-year, we still haven’t secured enough funding in terms of reader donations and major gifts to meet our FY2025 budget. However, here’s a chance for you to make an impact, by participating in #GiveInMay to support our summer newsroom intern Jinger Zhang, who will start work in the first week of June!
Thank you so much for standing with us as we approach our seventh anniversary in a week.
Yours sincerely,
Alex Ip
Publisher and Editor
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THINGS YOU SHOULD READ
✨ NEWS BEHIND THE NEWS
🌏 Alex made an appearance on the Consider This Next Podcast, produced by the Civic Science Media Lab. Take a listen!
🔥 The USC Annenberg Center for Climate Journalism and Communication recently published its Temperature Check, spearheaded by Rhysea. Here’s a quote from Alex:
“It will be significantly harder to get climate data and have governmental sources talk to us. The anti-climate stances of the new administration will exacerbate impacts of climate change, disproportionately affecting poor, Black, and Brown people.”
💰 Thank you, an anonymous new sustainer!
📱 ICYMI: We’re piloting a WhatsApp channel, which would help reach users who stay off social media, and curb misinformation at the source (share it with your immigrant parents, aunties, or uncles!)
🍑 A SOUTHERN FLAIR
LOUISIANA — GOP support of carbon capture fractures in Louisiana, nationally (Terry L. Jones, Floodlight)
Environmentalists have long questioned the cost, risks and effectiveness of CCS. But now their critique is being echoed by fossil-fuel friendly Republicans, who increasingly are pressed by homeowners around Louisiana’s Lake Maurepas and elsewhere to stop the roughly 30 CCS projects planned for the state.
HOMEWOOD, Ala. — For Alabama’s Spotted Salamanders, a Win and a Warning (Lee Hedgepeth, Inside Climate News)
“I expected this would be an uphill battle that would end in disappointment. But this is a rare win for the environment.”
— Megan Gibbons, biologist, University of Alabama at Birmingham
🗺️ WHAT ELSE WE'RE READING
TANINTHARYI, Myanmar — Armed groups and junta profit as toxic mines devour southern Myanmar (Dawei Watch, via Mongabay)
Mining has become so pervasive in Tanintharyi that one site now hugs the back fence of the police station in the Kanbauk village tract in Ye Phyu township.
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — Decades After Nike Promised Sweatshop Reforms, Workers in This Factory Were Still Fainting (Rob Davis, ProPublica and The Oregonian/OregonLive)
If employees fell unconscious, they went to the hospital, the medical worker said. Otherwise, they were given calcium pills and allowed to rest on a thin mat spread on a metal cot.
Then, she said, they typically went back to work.FARMINGTON, N.M. — Oil companies expected a big business boom under Trump. Now they're worried (Kirk Siegler, NPR)
"You know, drill baby drill and lower oil prices are not simpatico," says George Sharpe, investment manager for Merrion Oil and Gas, one of the San Juan Basin's oldest drillers.
In other words, Sharpe says, if Trump tanks the economy and oil prices hover at or below the cost of production, you can remove all the regulatory barriers you want, but companies will be wary of drilling new wells.
"I think the whole tariff thing is going to backfire on Trump," Sharpe says.
(SOME OF) THE XYLOM’S RECENT STORIES
🇿🇲 Six Decades Later, Zambians Ask, “Were Chinese Mining Infrastructure Investments Worth It?”
Zambia is the world's largest raw copper exporter, one of many critical minerals for the global energy transition. Maintaining a mutually beneficial but delicate resource extraction relationship requires navigating longstanding suspicions on Chinese investors and workers, as our Editor-at-Large Kang-Chun Cheng would find out herself.
Reporting for this story is supported by the Pulitzer Center.
🌱 Jakarta's Urban Farms Come To The Rescue Of Food-Insecure Residents
Community-led urban farming is not only a solution for citizens to reclaim food sovereignty, but it also increases the Indonesian megacity's climate resiliency.