RSF - Reporters sans frontières

11/13/2025 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 11/14/2025 04:09

For its 40th anniversary, RSF transfers its archives to specialist history centre La Contemporaine to aid research

To celebrate its 40th anniversary, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) is transferring its archives to La Contemporaine, a library, archive and museum of 20th and 21st century history, based in a suburb to the west of Paris. The archives, which have been amassed over forty years, will enable researchers from around the world to study the history of both RSF and press freedom in the years to come.

In 1985, four journalists founded Reporters Without Borders (RSF) in Montpellier, a city in the south of France. Since then, RSF has become one of the world's leading NGOs for defending press freedom and protecting journalists, and is one of the only international NGOs of French origin. This history is now reflected in several metres of archives, currently being transferred to the La Contemporaine history centre in Nanterre, a suburb west of Paris.

"RSF's 40th anniversary is not just a time to celebrate it's accomplishments. It's also an invitation to revisit the history of journalism and put media history into perspective. That is why transferring our archives at this particular moment was an obvious choice. Looking back on the victories, iconic campaigns, the trials and errors, developments, and the occasional heated debates that have shaped the NGO is a way for the RSF team to understand the present and guide our actions going forward. By transferring these archives - a mine of valuable information about the press on every continent - RSF is also affirming its commitment to transparency.

Thibaut Bruttin
RSF Director General

The upcoming opening of the RSF archives to researchers will shed light on some relatively unknown aspects of the NGO's history - its changes in leadership and strategy, its major wins and its eighty photo albums - as well as on the relationships between the media, in the broadest sense of the term, the various powers that be, and the organisations that defend human rights - and press freedom in particular - around the world.

RSF would like to warmly thank the teams at La Contemporaine in the library, archives, and museum for their support in the transferral process.

An academic conferenceon the history of press freedom was held from 13 to 14 October 2025 at the Sorbonne Nouvelle university in Paris.

Published on13.11.2025
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