When a defender is persecuted, what rights are left?
Everyone at some point has needed someone to stand up for them. These people shine in our memories for gestures or actions taken on our behalf, whether as children against the schoolyard bully or as adults in favor of a scholarly proposition or professional advance. But an especially powerful embodiment of an advocate is that…
CPJ at 30: Celebrating the struggle
CPJ founders and board members along with supporters and friends filed into Columbia University’s Italian Academy on Thursday for a series of events to mark the 30 years of CPJ’s existence. The celebration started with a 20-minute sneak peek at a feature-length documentary about CPJ that will be released later this year.
Thirty years on, CPJ gathers lessons and looks forward
Journalists rarely report on themselves. But in 1981, when two of them heard about a Paraguayan reporter who had been arrested and was facing a potential prison term simply for reporting the news, they were convinced that it was time to act. It was this desire to help a colleague under threat that was the…
Stand up for Iranian journalists and sign CPJ’s petition
Just before a new round of nuclear talks with Iran began on December 6, the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung interviewed a high-ranking Iranian official who indicated that two German journalists detained in Iran would possibly be allowed to spend the Christmas holiday with their families at the German Embassy.
At PEN, CPJ event, Mexico press crisis examined
The line of people at the stairs leading down to the Great Hall at Cooper Union in lower Manhattan formed early and turned into an audience of 500. They came to hear prominent Mexican and U.S. writers and free expression advocates assess, denounce, and seek solutions to the wave of violence wracking Mexican media.
PEN, CPJ call attention to Mexico press crisis
“Tell them not to kill me!” pleads a man in the opening lines of a fascinating tale of violence with the same title by one of Mexico’s most esteemed writers, Juan Rulfo. It is, sadly, the same cry for help that Mexican journalists are sending out to the world today. On Tuesday, October 19, prominent writers…