Dear Secretary Rumsfeld: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is encouraged that the administration is making efforts to accommodate journalists who are seeking to cover a possible U.S. military action in the Gulf. We welcome the Pentagon’s plan to embed as many as 500 journalists with U.S. forces as a positive step that will improve…
New York, February 28, 2003—Three Argentine journalists were attacked by police in two separate incidents earlier this week while covering street protests in the city of Buenos Aires, according to CPJ sources. At around noon on Tuesday, February 25, Federal Police agents attacked producer Maximiliano García Solla and cameraman Julián Sequeira, of the biweekly television…
New York, February 28, 2003—Offended by allegations of corruption, a Panamanian judge has ordered investigative journalist Carlos Zavala to serve six days in jail. Zavala, who hosts the weekly talk show “Cuentas Claras” (Clear Accounts) on RCM Televisión in Panama City, told the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) that the order stems from his criticisms…
CPJ RELEASES JOURNALIST SECURITY HANDBOOK New York, February 27, 2003–In an effort to prepare journalists for potentially hazardous reporting duties in conflict zones, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) today released an online journalist security handbook, titled “On Assignment: Covering Conflict Safely” (click here). The handbook, which is geared toward editors and journalists covering conflict,…
New York, February 26, 2003—The Inter-American Court of Human Rights said last week that it will hear the case of Costa Rican journalist Mauricio Herrera Ulloa, who was convicted of criminal defamation in 1999. A ruling could set a precedent to determine whether criminal defamation is permissible under international law. On February 3, the Washington,…
Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is deeply troubled by a recent attack against Radio Métropole political reporter Jean-Numa Goudou, the latest in a series of attacks against Haitian journalists that remain unpunished. On February 14, a group of people went to Goudou’s house in Carrefour, a southwestern suburb of Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince,…
New York, February 14, 2003—The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) condemns the violent attacks against Bolivian journalists that occurred while they were covering two days of deadly street protests in the capital, La Paz. The violence erupted when a crowd of civilians, angry over an attempt by President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada to introduce a…
New York, February 14, 2003—Cuban authorities detained Argentine journalism professor Fernando Ruiz Parra, who was researching a book about Cuba’s independent journalism movement, on February 11 and held him incommunicado. He was released on February 12 and was deported the following day. Ruiz Parra, who arrived in Cuba on February 3 on a tourist visa,…