Five years since the launching of the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker

Five years ago, on this day, the United States launched the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, a joint project of the Press Foundation and the Committee to Protect Journalists.

In six years of documentation, this database for press freedom violations in the United States has documented nearly 1000 assaults on journalists and 300 arrests or detainments, above 50 border stops, and 250 reports of damaged equipment. More than 100 analyses regarding press freedom issues were published.

This year, the site went through a major redesign. It has new data visualization capabilities and increased speeds for downloading data. The Tracker gives both live views of aggression against the media while capturing trends over time. That is how the Tracker can give information that by the time former president Trump was banned from Twitter, he posted 2520 tweets degrading journalists and the media.

With Tracker as a press freedom watchdog, the state of press freedom in the U.S. will be monitored and served more easily in the future.