How the European Journalism Centre is working with Facebook on journalist safety

Adam Thomas
European Journalism Centre
3 min readJun 23, 2017

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For 25 years, the European Journalism Centre has been training and protecting journalists worldwide.

Facebook, as one of the world’s largest social platforms, now plays a central role in the sourcing and distribution of news. Helping journalists to navigate, understand and remain secure on digital platforms is a core part of the European Journalism Centre’s work, and we’re excited today to announce a new collaboration with Facebook to do just that.

As part of the Facebook Journalism Project’s goal to provide training and tools for journalists, Facebook and the European Journalism Centre are working closely together, along with organisations like the Committee to Protect Journalists, ConnectSafely, Inter American Press Association (IAPA) and the James W. Foley Legacy Foundation, on Facebook Safety for Journalists.

This new initiative launches today with resources created specifically for journalists to help protect their accounts and themselves on Facebook. The European Journalism Centre has created three animated instructional videos which focus on safety best practices on Facebook.

You can find the videos on the Facebook for Journalists site.

We have covered topics such as:

  • two-factor authentication
  • privacy settings
  • ways to moderate comments and manage harassment
  • control location sharing
  • protect communications
  • report abusive content and impersonation
  • how to respond to being hacked

We have also worked with Facebook to create a Facebook Safety for Journalists Guide on these topics, which will be available in multiple languages, including French, German, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Chinese, Spanish, and Arabic.

For a journalist, remaining safe whilst using digital platforms and technologies, no matter where you are or what you are working on, is essential. The European Journalism Centre is committed to continuing our work in building resources and partnerships to help this happen.

To learn more about Facebook Journalist Safety, please visit facebook.com/journalists. To get additional resources about Facebook’s policies and tools, visit the Facebook Safety Center at facebook.com/safety.

To find out more about what the European Journalism Centre is working on this year, check out our 2017 strategy.

For other free tutorials and training videos, visit our Learno video platform.

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Adam Thomas
European Journalism Centre

Technology & journalism. Director @ejcnet. Formerly @Storyful @Sourcefabric @transmediale. Don’t panic.