New NPC Press Freedom Center puts in place structure to provide for imperiled journalists' aid now, in future

The National Press Club's new Press Freedom Center will provide a structure to help journalists in need for decades to come instead of its previous ad hoc, or spur of the moment, approach.

The center officially launched with an event at the Club on Monday, Nov. 25. The center will be led by Bill McCarren, the Club's previous executive director with vast experience in press freedom, and Jason Rezaian, The Washington Post's director of press freedom initiatives who spent 18 months imprisoned in Iran for his journalism. Rezaian will chair the center's advisory board.

NPC President Emily Wilkins, a CNBC Washington correspondent, said the Club for years has helped incarcerated and exiled reporters, but this was in response to their needs for help and the Club “answering the call.”

The new center would build upon this foundation and put something in place for journalists in the future, she said.

“What does a journalist who might be detained five to 10- years down the road [need that we can] implement now to make that process easier for them,” Wilkins said. “What can we put in place, so when they come here, we can already get them, say, housing, transportation or food?”

Rezaian said he didn't have a home, mental health care or any guidance on what to do when he was freed in 2016. While he said the Post was supportive, there were many issues facing newly freed formerly incarcerated journalists that their employers can't solve for them. McCarren helped Rezaian and his wife Yegi as the recovered and made a home in Washington. McCarren and Rezaian aim to replicate that model to help other exiled and newly freed journalists.

The center also will focus on the needs of domestic reporters who face increasing hostility from the public and lawmakers. Wilkins cited the lawsuit against Mississippi Today from former Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant, who sued the news outlet after he was implicated in a welfare fraud scheme in 2022. The PFC, she said, will move nimbly and respond in a concentrated manner so that it is ready when domestic journalists are in trouble.

The Club is providing a $500,000 gift to start the PFC, while the NPC Journalism Institute is providing $100,000. The gift is coming out of the Club's reserve cash account in two $250,000 payments. The Club isn't tapping the Rockwell fund or its long-term investments for this gift.

The Club's gift is critical to the center in a variety of ways, McCarren said. It allows the center to better assist exiled journalists by helping them obtain housing or transportation and assist with unexpected legal filings. It also allows the center to pay for services as part of its work. It also makes it easier to request financial help from others, he said.

“It shows other funders that the Club is serious,” McCarren said. “If your own place isn't going to stand up for you, that's an issue.”

McCarren and Rezaian have a major effort underway during the remaining of this year. The entire family of Austin Tice, a freelance journalist kidnapped in Syria in 2012, will be in Washington for the first time in early December for a series of events put together by McCarren and Rezaian. There is a satellite media tour the day before a scheduled meeting at the White House. A press conference will take place at the Club on Friday, Dec. 6, following the White House meeting.

Additionally, a strategy session will take place at Georgetown University with the heads of the law school and the Walsh School of Foreign Service and other subject matter experts to brainstorm the plan to free Tice.

President-elect Donald Trump, who takes office for the second time on Jan. 20, has promised a mass deportation of migrants and “sealing” the border. The center is ready if he comes after exiled journalists. McCarren said exiled journalists in the U.S. have an advantage to asylum if journalists are considered a protected class in their home countries, as they are in Mexico. He said this is often not the case in places like Iran.

“The [U.S.] government has already gone out on a ledge saying that journalists are a protected class,” McCarren said. “It's incumbent upon us to raise that issue with [exiled journalists in the U.S.] who are put into question here.”