New York, February 6, 2007—Three staff members of Akuna, a bimonthly trade union newspaper, were seized on Monday from the suburbs of Colombo, according to news reports. The men, who are also trade union activists, may be in government custody. “We fear for the safety of the three missing newspaper staff members, and we call…
Michelle Nichols Reuters News February 5, 2007 NEW YORK, Feb 4 (Reuters) – The rise of popularly elected “democratators” in Venezuela and Russia is an alarming new model for government control of the press, the U.S.-based Committee to Protect Journalists warned on Sunday.
PrefaceBy Anderson Cooper Introduction By Joel Simon AFRICA ANALYSIS African Union fails to defend press freedom By Julia Crawford AMERICAS ANALYSIS Leftists lean on the Latin American media By Carlos Lauría ASIA ANALYSIS Afghan-Pakistani border off-limits to most journalists By Bob Dietz EUROPE AND CENTRAL ASIA ANALYSIS: Getting away with murder in the former Soviet…
By Anderson CooperSilence. When a journalist is killed, more often than not, there is silence. In Russia, someone followed Anna Politkovskaya home and quietly shot her to death in her apartment building. The killer muffled the sound of the gun with a silencer. Her murder made headlines around the world in October, but from the…
New York, February 5, 2008—On Friday, police in the southern Russian city of Togliatti raided the newsroom of an independent weekly, confiscating all 20 of its computers, newspaper staff told CPJ. Special agents from the police department for high-tech crimes told the staff of Tolyatinskoye Obozreniye (Togliatti Review) that they were confiscating the…
By Joel SimonAs Venezuelan elections approached in November, President Hugo Chávez accused news broadcasters of engaging in a “psychological war to divide, weaken, and destroy the nation.” Their broadcast licenses, he said, could be pulled–no idle threat in a country where a vague 2004 media law allows the government to shut down stations for work…
African Union fails to defend press freedom By Julia Crawford When African heads of state gathered in July in the Gambia’s sleepy seaside capital, Banjul, their host had just shut down a leading private newspaper, jailed journalists, and halted a planned freedom of expression forum on the fringes of the summit. At the summit, the…
ALGERIA: 2 Djamel Eddine Fahassi, Alger Chaîne III IMPRISONED: May 6, 1995 Fahassi, a reporter for the state-run radio station Alger Chaîne III and a contributor to several Algerian newspapers, including the now-banned weekly of the Islamic Salvation Front, Al-Forqane, was abducted near his home in the al-Harrache suburb of the capital, Algiers, by four…
Leftists Lean on the Latin American MediaBy Carlos Lauría Latin America’s new leftist leaders may try to portray themselves as good news for the press, using the rhetoric of liberal democracy. But political and media analysts say these recently installed left-wing administrations are deeply rooted in the region’s longstanding culture of authoritarianism.
Afghan-Pakistani border off-limits to most journalists By Bob Dietz The Afghanistan-Pakistan border is a critical front in the most challenging news story in the world: the confrontation between U.S.-led Western countries and militant Islamists. Yet access to the border region has become increasingly restricted, and the Pakistani government continues to do everything in its power…