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(CNN) - According to a press freedom group, technology companies could be doing more to help ensure the safety of journalists facing threats and harassment online.
Many journalists, especially female and unconventional gender reporters, are familiar with receiving angry messages, threats and teasing online in response to their reports. Online harassment is the biggest security concern many women journalists face, according to Courtney Radsch, director of defense for the Committee to Protect Journalists. Social media companies have a role to play in monitoring their platforms to mitigate this type of behavior, he told Brian Stelter of CNN this Sunday on "Reliable Sources."
"We don't want journalists to be afraid to report problems," Radsch said. "It is not enough to silence or block someone, it is necessary to know if these threats are coming and we need more proactive responses from technology platforms."
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Radsch's comments come after the publication of a new survey by the Committee for the Protection of Journalists about the perception that women journalists have of their own security and freedom in the United States and Canada. The report highlights the risks journalists face in both countries that are not usually considered dangerous for the press, but where 85% of respondents said they feel less safe than five years ago.
Respondents said they faced worse harassment for covering key issues such as local or national politics, or extremism. That harassment of online readers and trolls ranged from unsolicited sexual messages to threats of violence, rape or death, and also included the online publication of private reporter information.
"If journalists feel they are going to retaliate, attack or threaten, because of the reports they are making, that could have a chilling and silencing effect," Radsch said.
A group of journalists in Washington, United States.
And that harassment does not always remain online, according to the survey. He cited a respondent, a journalist who covers extremism and far-right technology, who said the men associated with a large group of white supremacists once said on a radio show that if they attended an upcoming demonstration, they would leave a "body bag".
The last two years have been dangerous for journalists in the United States. In June 2018, five copywriters were shot dead at Gapital Gazzette, in Annapolis, Maryland, and another journalist was killed earlier that year in Chicago. Before 2018, the last time a journalist was killed for his work in the United States was in 2007. Already this year, the United States Press Freedom Tracker sets the number of attacks against journalists working in the United States in 28. A report by Reporters Without Borders found that more journalists were killed worldwide in 2018 than in any other year registered.
Respondents also said they feel that President Donald Trump's rhetoric against the press and his administration contribute to the threats journalists face.
Suzy Pietras-Smith, a 20-year-old journalism veteran, said in the survey that the biggest threat to her security is that "the Trump administration agrees to harass us."
The survey results reflect the research of other nonprofit organizations, including Amnesty International and the International Women's Media Foundation, on the dangers faced by women journalists online. The Committee for the Protection of Journalists has updated its safety guidelines for journalists in response to the survey.
CyberbullyingFeminismFreedom of ExpressionJournalists