Qatar

On Thursday, I participated in a panel discussion about media in the Middle East at the United Nations to commemorate World Press Freedom Day. Other panellists included Alya Al-Thani, counsellor, Permanent Mission of Qatar to the United Nations; Abderrahim Foukara, chief of the Washington Bureau of Al-Jazeera; Ebtihal Mubarak, journalist for Saudi Arabia's English-language daily Arab News; and Ghassan Shabaneh, assistant professor of Middle East and International Studies at Marymount Manhattan College. I talked about the great obstacles to press freedom in the region...

Uneasy about satellite television coverage of civil strife and economic hardship, Arab governments are trying to reassert control over the medium. Will a new regional agreement halt the satellite revolution? By Joel Campagna

April 2007

News from the Committee to Protect Journalists

By Joel Campagna

UNITED STATES

An investigation into the leak of a CIA officer's identity erupted,
with one reporter compelled to testify about his confidential source, another jailed for 85 days before she testified, and a high-level White House aide indicted on federal charges of perjury, false statements, and obstruction of justice. Confidentiality of sources was under attack in a number of other U.S. cases as well. In New Orleans, authorities restricted media access and harassed journalists in several incidents in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. And in Washington, D.C., federal auditors concluded that the Bush administration had broken the law by disseminating "covert propaganda."

13 Confirmed cases of journalists killed in Iraq by U.S. Forces (March 2003-August 2005)