Americas

  

In Internet freedom fight, why the ITU matters (for now)

For most of its almost-150-year history, the meetings of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the United Nations’ communications standards body, have been rather predictable affairs.

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A still from the video showing a Sri Lankan soldier about to execute a prisoner. (AFP/Journalists for Democracy in Sri Lanka)

Integrity vs. authenticity in video journalism

Back in November 2010, Britain’s Channel 4 broadcast a leaked video that appears to show men in Sri Lankan military uniforms executing bound prisoners, the camera panning across a series of bodies laid out in a ditch. Family and friends identified one of those bodies as that of Tamil Tiger TV newscaster Shoba, also known…

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Number of jailed journalists sets global record

Worldwide tally reaches highest point since CPJ began surveys in 1990. Governments use charges of terrorism, other anti-state offenses to silence critical voices. Turkey is the world’s worst jailer. A CPJ special report

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CPJ

Video: Campaign to free the press

(CNN) The imprisonment of journalists hit a record high in 2012, driven by the growing use of anti-terrorism charges to silence critical voices. This video, a centerpiece of CPJ’s new Free the Press campaign, details the plight of imprisoned journalists worldwide and describes how international advocacy can make a difference in winning the freedom of…

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Audio: From Cuban prison, reporter speaks out

Cuba, historically one of the world’s worst jailers of journalists, has returned to CPJ’s prison census after a one-year absence. Calixto Ramón Martínez Arias, a reporter for the independent news agency Centro de Información Hablemos Press, was imprisoned in September after he started looking into why an international shipment of medicine was allowed to go…

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On Human Rights Day, make your voice heard on impunity

In 1950, the United Nations General Assembly declared December 10 Human Rights Day in commemoration of the adoption and proclamation two years earlier of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Every year, on this day, the U.N. chooses one right to highlight and advocate. This year, Human Rights Day is focused on the right of…

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Demonstrators clash with the police in Saturday's protest in Mexico City. (AFP/Pedro Pardo)

Photographer arrested during protests in Mexico

Mexico City, December 7, 2012–Mexican authorities must immediately release a freelance Romanian photojournalist who was detained on Saturday while covering a protest related to the presidential inauguration, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.

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CPJ

Speak Justice campaign fights impunity in press murders

The tortured and decapitated body of 39-year-old María Elizabeth Macías Castro was found on a Saturday evening in September 2011. It had been dumped by the side of a road in Nuevo Laredo, a Mexican border town ravaged by the war on drugs. Macías, a freelance journalist, wrote about organized crime on social media under…

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Colombian journalist dies after being in police custody

Bogotá, November 30, 2012–Top Colombian police officials must conduct an intensive investigation into the actions of local police during their arrest of freelance journalist Guillermo Quiroz Delgado, who died Tuesday night, seven days after he was hospitalized for injuries suffered while in custody, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.

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A newspaper stand displays Argentina's largest newspaper, Clarín. President Kirchner's government has given Clarín a December 7 deadline to sell off some of its holdings. (AP/Victor R. Caivano)

In battle with Argentine president, a misstep by Clarín

The debut of the HD version of Grupo Clarín’s cable news station TN could not have come at a worse time for the Argentine media conglomerate. Conspicuously missing from Monday’s premiere was coverage of a new criminal complaint in which Clarín’s lawyers accused the government of President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner of inciting violence against the…

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