Journalist Security: January 2012 Archives - Committee to Protect Journalists

CPJ Journalist Security Blog

January 2012 Archives

Journalist Security Blog | China, Colombia, Mexico, USA

For journalists, cyber-security training slow to take hold

By Frank Smyth/CPJ Senior Adviser for Journalist Security

For centuries, journalists have been willing to go to prison to protect their sources. Back in 1848, New York Herald correspondent John Nugent spent a month in jail for refusing to tell a U.S. Senate committee his source for a leak exposing the secret approval of a treaty with Mexico. In a digital age, however, journalists need more than steadfast conviction to keep themselves and their sources safe. Government intelligence agencies, terrorist groups, and criminal syndicates are using electronic surveillance to learn what journalists are doing and who their sources are. It seems many journalists are not keeping pace.

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Journalist Security Blog

Can't an aspiring war correspondent get some fresh advice?

By Frank Smyth/Senior Adviser for Journalist Security

My role has changed. Over the past decade, I handled both Washington advocacy and journalist security issues for CPJ. Now I focus exclusively on the latter. Today's entry is the first in what will be a regular look at the dangers journalists face worldwide and the resources available to address those risks. How to Avoid Being Killed in a War Zone is one such resource, a war correspondent's survival guide published in 2011 that offers fresh, reported, and at times irreverent advice.

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