Africa
2009
The Malawian who harnessed the airwaves
After The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, the autobiography of ingenious 22-year-old William Kamkwamba’s homemade electric windmill in Malawi, comes “the boy who harnessed the airwaves” by building a radio station with rudimentary materials. The tale of 21-year-old Malawian Gabriel Kondesi also showcases the inventiveness spawned by life in this impoverished, landlocked nation in southeastern…
CPJ pleased by Kabwela acquittal in Zambia
We issued the following statement after the Lusaka Magistrate Court acquitted Zambian journalist Chansa Kabwela today on pornography charges. The independent daily Post editor was charged with pornography for disseminating photos to several government officials of a woman giving birth in a hospital car park during a nurses strike in June…
CPJ condemns suspension of six newspapers in Gabon
New York, November 12, 2009—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the suspension of six private newspapers by the government-controlled media-monitoring body, the National Communications Council, in Gabon. The council announced the suspensions, which range from one to three months, on Tuesday evening on state-run TV. The papers have been suspended for “violating the ethics of journalism”…
Sierra Leone’s criminal libel law sparks barber boycott
My looks have completely changed in recent months. Long hair now colonizes my chin and my head. Never in my adult life have I waited longer than a week without a shave or a haircut, let alone for four months. One ends up doing the strangest things for press freedom in Sierra Leone.
Toronto’s Citizen Lab uses forensics to fight online censors
A basement in the gray, Gothic heart of the University of Toronto is home to the CSI of cyberspace. “We are doing free expression forensics,” says Ronald Deibert, director of the Citizen Lab, based at the Munk Centre for International Studies. Deibert and his team of academics and students investigate in real time governments and…
Senegalese president responds to CPJ
Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade has written a response to a recent CPJ protest letter. While we welcome his attention to the issues we raised about press freedom last month, we note with great concern the president’s comments about the ongoing criminal case of two journalists assaulted by police in 2008.
Video Report: Portraits of the Fallen
In “Portraits of the Fallen,” a video introduction to CPJ’s database of killed journalists, María Salazar-Ferro examines the circumstances in which reporters, photographers, editors, and other journalists have died on duty. Because hundreds of journalists have been murdered in reprisal for their work, CPJ is leading a Global Campaign Against Impunity. (4:11) Visit our database of…
When the sun set in Nigeria: Dele Giwa’s awful murder
Twenty-three years ago, on October 19, 1986, the sun quite suddenly set at noon. In the brutal darkness, we lost Dele Giwa, just two short years after he and I, along with two other professional journalists, launched Nigeria’s first newsmagazine, Newswatch.
A memorial to killed journalists, a call to action
We’ve launched a new section of our Web site, and we hope you take a few minutes to read some of its pages. There is one, for example, on Russian reporter Natalya Estemirova, who dared to examine human rights crimes in Chechnya. Another is devoted to Francisco Javier Ortiz Franco, a Tijuana newspaper editor who…