Press freedom in the news 9/9/08

The San Francisco-based Web site Indy Media has posted another article about the arrests of journalists at the GOP Convention last week, with specific attention paid to the case of Democracy Now! reporter Amy Goodman. CPJ reported on the arrest of Goodman and other journalists covering the RNC last week, and posted videos of the arrests here.

Reuters has coverage of the release of Iraqi cameraman Omar Hisham, who was detained by the U.S. military on Thursday. The story quotes our reporting on the release: “We welcome the release of Omar Hisham, but worry about the apparent uptick in journalist detentions,” said CPJ’s executive director Joel Simon. A second Iraqi journalist, Ibrahim Jassam, a freelance photographer for Reuters, was arrested last week during a raid at his home and is still in U.S. custody.

Also this morning, The Associated Press is running a story about the attempted bombing of an Arab TV correspondent’s vehicle in Baghdad yesterday. The bomb was detected on the car as it waited to pick up Arab TV’s chief correspondent Juwad al-Hattab, the apparent target of the foiled attack.