"US to cover costs for journalists under legal pressure," 4 Nov. 2021

The United States will devote funding to help journalists overseas survive frivolous lawsuits meant to silence them, USAID chief Samantha Power announced... .

... "We will offer the coverage to survive defamation claims or deter autocrats and oligarchs from trying to sue them out of business in the first place," she said at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service. Power said her talks with international journalists showed that autocratic regimes were increasingly using the "crude but effective tactic" of filing lawsuits to bankrupt news outlets and kill stories they do not like. "As autocrats grow savvier in their attempts to control and manipulate people, we need to help support a free and fair global press to hold leaders to account," she said.

... [Power] did not outline how the fund would work or whether it would support journalists in countries allied with the United States.