Features & Analysis

Lusaka, August 14, 2025—When a South African solar panel company last month dropped its legal battle over a gag order preventing journalist Bongani Hans from reporting on allegations of misleading clients, Hans told the Committee to Protect Journalists that he saw it as “a victory for media and press freedom.” But for Hans and others…

New York, August 13, 2025—In four years, the Taliban have annihilated Afghanistan’s independent media sector and supplanted it with their own propaganda empire and sophisticated digital bots that flood social media with pro-Taliban content. CPJ interviewed 10 Afghan journalists, inside and outside the country, who said that  independent media, which used to reach millions of…

For over two decades, Bolivian journalists have endured intimidation, legal harassment, and violence from political actors intent on silencing dissent. Now, journalists fear those attacks may intensify as the country races toward a hotly contested presidential election, in which no clear frontrunner has emerged. “We’re not choosing between democracy and authoritarianism” said reporter Rodrigo Fernández from Radio Erbol, one of…

Journalists in southern Syria are being chased, detained and intimidated by live fire by members of the Israeli Defense Forces, according to reporters who spoke to the Committee to Protect Journalists. The months-long escalation of harassment raises concerns about press freedom and has sometimes forced journalists to play a dangerous game of hide-and-seek to protect…

Peruvian journalist Gastón Medina Sotomayor did not hold back in his last TV news broadcast before he was shot dead this year. Addressing the viewers of Cadena Sur, his TV and radio station in the south-central city of Ica, Medina called local authorities “scoundrels” for buying defective garbage trucks. He criticized cost overruns for a…

Berlin, July 3, 2025—After almost 14 years of civil war, the lightning overthrow of Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad in December has unleashed the possibility of returning home for hundreds of exiled journalists. For Ahmad Primo, who was arrested by the government for reporting that the 2011 protests were a revolution and then jailed by Islamic…

New York, June 30, 2025—Hong Kong, an international financial hub and once a beacon of free media, is now in the grip of a rapid decline in press freedom that threatens the city’s status as a global financial information center. Three journalists told CPJ that investigative reporting on major economic events, a cornerstone of Hong…

As protests over U.S. immigration enforcement raids began throughout the country last week, journalists rushed to cover the rapidly evolving story. Focus turned to Los Angeles, California, as President Donald Trump deployed the National Guard and Marines, notably without California Governor Gavin Newsom’s consent.  Journalists on the ground in LA quickly became part of the…

Journalists at El Faro knew the risks when they published a series of interviews with gang members alleging long-standing ties between Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele and criminal groups. They didn’t know how quickly the crackdown would escalate. Within days of publication last month, sources close to El Salvador’s attorney general’s office warned that arrest warrants…

New York, May 30, 2025—A punishing spate of laws targeting foreign-funded media will dramatically curb Georgia’s independent voices and force many news outlets to shutter or shift their business operations, say Georgian journalists and press freedom advocates. Georgia’s populist ruling Georgian Dream party has pushed through its new Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA)—called an “exact copy” of the U.S. Foreign…