Events
A Night to Celebrate Courage in Journalism
2024 CJFE Gala: A Night to Celebrate Courage in Journalism
Wednesday, October 23, 2024
The Ritz-Carlton Toronto, ON
We invite you to join us at the 2024 CJFE Fundraising Gala as we honour individuals from Canada and abroad who have risked their jobs, their freedom or even their lives to bring us the truth.
In these fraught political times, the need to recognize and support those working in the name of free expression has never been more urgent.
Proceeds from the Gala directly support CJFE’s critical work. This includes:
- The Journalists in Distress fund for emergency medical fees, temporary housing, relocation expenses and more to media workers whose lives are threatened because of their work.
- Through our Canadian Issues Committee, advocating for stronger free expression rights and policies in Canada and abroad.
- Leading international campaigns to free unjustly detained journalists and free expression advocates around the world.
- Monitoring the state of free expression in Canada.
Please join Canada's leading journalists - along with community, business and academic leaders - in supporting our mission for free expression around the world. The Gala evening includes a cocktail reception and dinner, award presentations, art exhibit sales, special guest appearances and video presentations on press freedom around the world.
The 2024 Gala Chair is journalist and author Carol Off, the former co-host of CBC's As It Happens and a long time supporter of CJFE.
War Child Canada and CFJE Present:
Navigating a Troubled World: Responsible Foreign Aid and International Reporting
On its 25th anniversary, War Child's Founder and President sits down with two veteran reporters from Canadian Journalists for Free Expression to talk about the triumphs and the failures of international aid and foreign reporting. At a time when war, mass migration and climate change impact the lives of millions, how can aid workers and reporters truly help? What are their responsibilities to the people whose needs and numbers are growing?
Join Dr. Samantha Nutt as she sits down with journalists Carol Off and Michelle Shephard for an enlightening conversation about the troubled world we live in and how we might make it better.
Nobel Laureate Maria Ressa on How to Stand Up to a Dictator
Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema
Monday, Mar 27, 2023 7:00 PM
At a time when a free press has never been more under attack, no one globally has done more to speak truth to power than Maria Ressa, the winner of the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize. As a journalist in the Philippines, a reporter for CNN and the founder of Rappler, an innovative online news organization that harnesses the emerging power of social media, Ressa has challenged corruption, malfeasance and tyranny in her native country and around the world.
Now, in her new memoir, How to Stand Up to A Dictator, Ressa offers an impassioned and inspiring account of these heroic efforts—and a clear-eyed look at a new adversary: the growing role of social media companies in aiding and abetting authoritarianism.
Discussing this timely new book with Toronto audiences for the first time, Ressa will reveal a network of disinformation that extends from Duterte’s drug wars to America's Capitol Hill, from Russian cyber-warfare to Facebook and Silicon Valley—and what we can all do, through our own clicks and votes, to defend democratic freedoms before it is too late.
Moderated by award-winning journalist, filmmaker and CJFE Board Member Michelle Shephard
Featuring an introduction with broadcast journalist and author Carol Off
Speaking Truth to Power
February 23, 2021
Hosted by CBC News Senior Correspondent Adrienne Arsenault, Speaking Truth to Power brought together leading U.S. and Canadian journalists to discuss Donald Trump’s “war on the media” and assess its legacy. The hour-long discussion featured stories from front-line journalists who covered the Jan. 6, 2021 demonstrations, rallies and the insurrection that sought to overturn the democratic outcome of the 2020 U.S. presidential election; first-hand accounts of the Trump administration’s behind-the-scenes efforts to suppress the media – and the truth; and debate about the future of free speech in an era when social media companies decide who should and should not have a voice.
Sponsors and Partners
