RECCOMENDATIONS TO THE ETHIOPIAN AND U.S GOVERNMENT CPJ is encouraged that, while at the end of last year 31 journalists were in prison in Ethiopia, only nine journalists remain in detention as this report is going to press. Of those nine journalists, one is nearing completion of an 18-month prison term, and the rest were…
After centuries of feudal rule, 17 years of communist dictatorship, almost three decades of civil war, and no tradition of an independent press before 1992, Ethiopia is at a crossroads. As one of the African continent’s youngest exercises in democracy, Ethiopia can serve as an example of a true democracy–one that does not sacrifice freedom…
Distribution of Print Media INDEPENDENT PUBLICATIONS Sales of private publications are concentrated in the capital, Addis Ababa. There is no organized distribution system in place. Newspapers and magazines are primarily sold on the streets by children who earn a subsistence living for their work, and, to a lesser extent, by independent contractors and newsstands. The…
Art. 8, Sec. 1 of the Press Proclamation grants the press “the right to seek, obtain and report news and information from any government source of news and information,” yet the private press continues to be denied access to government officials and their agencies. Moreover, independent journalists have been refused confirmation of information, or answers…
IN OCTOBER 1995, TESFAYE TEGEN, the editor of a weekly newspaper in Addis Ababa, made a very costly editorial decision. U.S.-backed insurgents who had toppled Soviet-backed dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam four years before had just held elections to legitimize their rule. Tesfaye’s* paper, Beza, ran cartoons lampooning members of the new government as a submissive…
Ethiopia’s independent journalists currently work under threat of prosecution from three separate areas of government: a poorly trained police force that sometimes operates independently of the public prosecutor’s office; an inexperienced, partisan judiciary operating in a severely backlogged court system; and overly sensitive government officials who are offended by public criticism of their actions. Journalists…
The Ethiopian government currently publishes four major newspapers and owns and controls all broadcast media. The primary challenge facing the state-run news outlets is a public perception of irrelevance and lack of objectivity. As one journalist who has worked for both the private press and the state media told CPJ, “The government press is not…
NEW YORK –The leaders of China, Nigeria, and Turkey are among 10 world figures identified by the U.S. based Committee to Protect Journalists as “Enemies of the Press.” All are responsible for brutal campaigns against journalists and press freedom, as documented by CPJ in its ongoing monitoring of press freedom violations worldwide. The Enemies of…
Abidjan, Ivory Coast, Jan. 13–When this country opened the way for an independent press at the turn of the decade, the blossoming of newspapers of nearly every political persuasion was widely hailed as a critical stepping stone toward true multiparty democracy. But here, as elsewhere in Africa, rather than marking a clean break with an…