CPJ

What we have learned from fighting impunity

Press freedom groups worldwide are banding together today, the International Day to End Impunity, to demand justice for hundreds of journalists murdered for their work. On this day, the Committee to Protect Journalists and dozens of other members of the International Freedom of Information Exchange are remembering journalists killed, and urging governments to take action against those responsible for their deaths. We are also looking for lessons learned in past fights–like the one led by a group of journalists from the San Francisco Bay area, who battled tirelessly to ensure that justice was served in the slaying of their colleague Chauncey Bailey.

An unknown assailant shot and killed Bailey, the editor of the Oakland Post, on August 2, 2007 on a street in Oakland, California. The shooter was immediately apprehended and charged. But Bailey’s colleagues, convinced that a lone gunman was not solely responsible for the killing, decided to band together and run their own investigation. Using journalistic tools, the group that became The Chauncey Bailey Project uncovered not only the mastermind and another accomplice, but also corruption inside the Oakland Police Department.

CPJ’s video telling the story of The Chauncey Bailey Project and its fight against impunity is part of a series to be posted on daytoendimpunity.org as tools for other journalists and groups seeking justice for media murders worldwide.