The Torch is a weekly newsletter from the Committee to Protect Journalists that brings you the latest press freedom and journalist safety news from around the world. Subscribe here.
India recently banned the social media app TikTok, and President Donald Trump has issued an order saying the U.S. will follow suit should the app remain Chinese-owned. CPJ’s consultant technology editor, Madeline Earp, analyzed how the move could have implications for press freedom, particularly by normalizing bans with far more direct consequences for the news media.
Journalists in Algeria spoke to CPJ about their fears of a growing crackdown on the press under the new president, Abdelmadjid Tebboune.
In Belarus, some journalists have quit their jobs at state-owned media outlets because of what they see as their employers’ failure to accurately cover protests. CPJ Russia and Belarus Correspondent Valentinas Mite spoke to Belarusian photographer Tatsiana Tkachova about her decision to quit her state-owned newspaper, and what this moment means for state media.
Global press freedom updates
- CPJ welcomes sentence in Miroslava Breach murder case, urges further investigation
- Demonstrators attack and obstruct journalists covering German protests against COVID-19 lockdown
- Iraqi Kurdistan regional government files suit against broadcaster NRT for protest coverage and shutters its offices in Erbil and Duhok
- Two Iranian journalists convicted on false news charges and ordered to pay cash fines. Separately, Iranian journalist Kayvan Samimi begins three-year jail term
- Two Egyptian journalists detained and released
- Turkish journalist Erkan Akkuş arrested after 4 years in hiding
- Russian journalists imprisoned and beaten during arrests and detention
- Arsonists torch office of independent newspaper Canal de Moçambique in Mozambique
- Djibouti journalist Charmarke Saïd Darar held for weeks, two other journalists in hiding
- Ghanaian soldier beats journalist and seizes reporters’ camera and phones
- Nigerian court acquits journalists arrested amid #RevolutionNow protests
Spotlight
CPJ and The Washington Post Press Freedom Partnership published an ad today marking two years since Kashmiri journalist Aasif Sultan was imprisoned on trumped-up anti-terrorism charges. His case has been plagued by repeated court delays, and the threat of COVID-19 makes his situation all the more urgent. CPJ also published an open letter calling for his immediate and unconditional release, signed by over 400 journalists, writers, activists, and civil society members.
A closer look | CPJ’s most-read features in August
- Beirut’s journalists report on the explosion that tore through their lives and city
- Hospitalized Belarusian journalist Alena Scharbinskaya tells of beatings inside Minsk detention center
- Hong Kong journalists struggle to carry on as national security law hits Apple Daily
- Tech platforms struggle to label state-controlled media
- ‘We’re scared shitless out here’: Four reporters on covering the federal response to Portland protests
What we are reading
- The poisoning of Alexei Navalny is a press freedom story — Jon Allsop, Columbia Journalism Review
- With Hacks and Cameras, Beijing’s Electronic Dragnet Closes on Hong Kong — Paul Mozur, The New York Times
- Kashmir’s Internet Siege — Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society
- How racism and discrimination affect Latino journalists — Dagmar Thiel and Frank LaRue, Fundamedios
- Threats, Lies and Videotape: Prigozhin’s Long-Running War on Free Media — Bellingcat
- Is Movement Journalism What’s Needed During this Reckoning over Race and Inequality? – Tina Vasquez, Nieman Reports
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