A district judge last week barred police from accessing electronic devices used by Las Vegas Review-Journal reporter Jeff German before his fatal stabbing in September – but only for a while. The measure was a preliminary injunction against searching German’s cellphone, hard drive, and computers, but a further ruling expected this week could authorize a…
In May, editors at the pro-abortion rights news website Rewire took the extraordinary step of removing reporters’ biographies from the web site. The move was a safety precaution: After the leak of a draft of a majority Supreme Court opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization to overturn the constitutional right to abortion, reporters at Rewire grew concerned about…
After novelist Salman Rushdie, the target of an Iranian fatwa, was stabbed in western New York last week, Iranian American journalist Masih Alinejad said she saw messages on social media saying she should be punished next. Alinejad, who has extensively covered human rights in Iran and campaigns against the country’s compulsory hijab rule, is no…
False narratives, threats of arrest, and a biker group blocking access. These are just a few of the challenges journalists have faced while covering the aftermath of the May 24 shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. Threats to press freedom are hardly the main story in Uvalde, where police failed to stop the…
On a recent April morning in Warsaw, Joanna Krawczyk was sitting inside a café in the city center, her phone pinging nonstop. The head of Wyborcza Foundation, a Polish media support initiative, Krawczyk was fielding messages from colleagues coordinating the passage of a truckload of reporting equipment from Poland to Ukraine. “It’s like a rotating menu…
When reporters flee their home countries, many are forced to leave the profession after finding few opportunities in journalism and facing other pressures in exile. CPJ recently spoke with a Pakistani refugee reporter who not only stayed in journalism, but saved a local newspaper in his adopted country, Canada. In 2002, Mohsin Abbas was a…
Last week, Taisia Bekbulatova, chief editor of Russian independent news site Holod, began frantically looking for plane tickets. Bekbulatova, who is based in Georgia, wanted to evacuate her Russia-based staff after the country passed legislation threatening up to 15 years in prison for the publication of “fake” information about the invasion of Ukraine. “It was apparent that the law was…
As the Russian military continues its invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin is also fighting a different kind of battle at home in its attempts to quash independent news coverage and dissenting narratives about the attack it launched on February 24. Across Russia, journalists have been detained and their outlets investigated, blocked, and restricted from using social media. On…
Updated March 8, 2022 More than two million Ukrainians have fled as Russia continues missile and artillery attacks on Ukraine’s cities. At least one Ukrainian journalist has been killed in the fighting, as the Ukrainian media reports amid rockets, misinformation, and the threat of online attacks. CPJ rounded up some of the most poignant commentary…
On February 11, 2022, the Committee to Protect Journalists submitted comments to the United States Department of Justice concerning problems presented by labeling media organizations as “foreign agents” under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. The comments were submitted to the Justice Department in response to a public request from the department for feedback on proposed…