“The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) today announced it will honor journalists from Colombia, Eritrea, El Salvador, Hungary, Lebanon, and Myanmar at the 36th annual International Press Freedom Awards in New York on Thursday, November 19, 2026.
Carlos Dada, the Salvadoran journalist who in 1998 co-founded El Faro, the first digital newspaper in Central America, will receive the 2026 Gwen Ifill Press Freedom Award. The award is presented annually by CPJ’s board of directors in recognition of an individual’s sustained commitment to press freedom.
'For decades, Carlos Dada’s ingenuity and perseverance has seen El Faro’s journalism hold power to account in El Salvador and throughout Latin America,' said CPJ Board Chair Jacob Weisberg. 'Today, Carlos leads a newsroom in exile from Costa Rica. Under his leadership, El Faro continues to deliver incisive reporting amid the erosion of press freedom under President Bukele’s administration.'
[…]
Estefany Rodríguez is a Spanish-language reporter for the local Tennessee news outlet Nashville Noticias. On March 4, 2026, she was detained by federal agents and held in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody in Alabama and Louisiana despite being in the United States legally. Rodríguez was in a car marked with “Nashville Notícias” branding and in the company of her husband, a U.S. citizen, when she was arrested.
Leading up to her detention, Rodríguez had reported on immigration enforcement operations in Nashville. She came to the United States in 2021 from her native Colombia, after receiving death threats in connection with her reporting. She arrived on a tourist visa and then sought asylum. Rodríguez’s case is emblematic of the way in which immigration authorities have increasingly been used to chill speech that is critical of the Trump administration and its policies."
