Twitter
Facebook
Email Lists
DonateA fellow newspaper photographer phoned him and said he had to get right over to his parents' home because something very bad had happened. When Miguel Angel López remembers seeing when he got there was "just blood. You can't understand that much hatred." He was talking about the murders of his mother, his father--a senior editor at the state's most important newspaper--and his brother, a photographer at the paper. The killings turned out to be the beginning of a war on journalists.
Committee to Protect Journalists
CPJ Blog
Press Freedom News and Views
It was well past mid-day in Eastleigh, a shanty district on the east side of Nairobi, Kenya. The billows of dust rising from the rock-scarred road showed a government that had long lost interest in the neighborhood. A young man, struggling with horribly dry conditions, was fighting with his patrons. "Welahi, today's khat is so small. I need more," a Somali customer was complaining. "Pole, hakuna unvua" ("Sorry, no rain"). "Khat is getting expensive in these days," the young man tried to convince him in Kiswahili and English. Few knew that the young peddler was once a journalist in Ethiopia. They cared neither about his profession nor the reasons he had fled his home country. For them, he was just a dealer of khat, the mildly addictive green leaf that is chewed in East Africa. It was as simple as that.
I have always been convinced that journalism is an instrument that transforms people and realities. I believe in this profession as a means of change, even if this implies some risk. I've been beaten almost to death and at another time have had to move to another city because I went to the limit of my possibilities in search of the truth in which I believe. But nothing is sadder than the psychological terror imposed by an omniscient and omnipresent enemy. An invisible enemy that hides in anonymity and is able to take away the ability to live with one's family and freedom of movement.
Among the more 200,000 Pakistanis living in London is Altaf Hussain, leader of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement. This powerful political party is widely thought to be behind the murder of reporter Wali Khan Babar, a rising star at Geo TV who was shot dead in Karachi in 2011. His coverage focused on politically sensitive topics such as extortion, targeted killings, electricity thefts, land-grabbing, and riots.
Diplomats are charged with promoting cordial and constructive ties between nations. But Chinese embassy officials in France and Thailand appear bent on fostering fear and disgust with recent efforts to harass and intimidate France 24 reporter Cyril Payen.
The Police Service of Northern Ireland has informed a Belfast-based reporter that dissident republican groups, opposed to the peace process, have issued a death threat against her, the British National Union of Journalists said this week. The threat came after the journalist published a story in a local Sunday newspaper claiming an Irish republican group was protecting two alleged pedophiles in its ranks, according to the Guardian. The National Union of Journalists has demanded the death threat to be withdrawn.
As growing sectarian violence across Iraq renews fears of civil war, journalists gathered in New York this week to talk about their experiences reporting in the country over the past decade.
Some authoritarian governments try to hide their targeting of the press, but not the Islamic Republic of Iran. Officials there brag about it. Ahead of Iran's presidential election Friday, they have much to brag about.
The rapid growth of revenue-hungry Indian media and recent scandals involving news outlets have prompted growing calls for external regulation, raising concerns about independence of the press.
News coverage of the Kenyan Parliament elected in March 2013 is off to a rocky start. The press last week was kicked out of the media center in the National Assembly, and although the speaker tried to make assurances that overall access won't be affected, journalists are wary.
Subscribe
