For the second year in a row Pakistan has topped the CPJ Killed List, making it a more dangerous place to be a journalist in 2011 than the active war zones of Libya or Iraq and Afghanistan. Senior Asia program coordinator Bob Dietz explains that Pakistani journalists are under extreme pressure from both state and…
Sami al-Haj has now returned to Al Jazeera, an organization he previously worked for a decade ago as a cameraman covering the then nascent war in Afghanistan. While on assignment in December 2001 he was delayed by a passport problem during a routine over land crossing into the country from Pakistan. Quickly named an ‘enemy combatant’ by the U.S.…
A quick pointer to a statement issued by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan on Monday: It said, in part, that “The HRCP is alarmed at reports of threats received by journalists on account of their work.” The commission asked the government to ensure that threats to journalists end and that risks associated with practicing…
On January 8, 1912, South African intellectuals–including pioneering black newspaper publishers Pixley ka Isaka Seme, editor of Abantu-Batho, and John Langalibalele Dube, editor of Ilanga lase Natal–formed Africa’s oldest liberation movement, the African National Congress (ANC), in the Wesleyan Church in Bloemfontein.
For Sri Lankan journalists, January might be the cruelest month. In January 2011, Sonali Samarasinghe wrote about the death of her husband Lasantha Wickramatunga two years earlier on January 8, 2009. In January 2010 I reported in “Sri Lanka: A year later, still failing to fight media attacks” about the government’s inactivity in investigating Wickramatunga’s…
The African media community lost a central voice this week with the passing of Samuel Kiendrebeogo, the veteran host of weekly media magazine Médias d’Afrique et D’Ailleurs on Voice of America’s French service. Sam, as he was known, died while vacationing in his native Burkina Faso. He was 63.