EIGHTY-ONE JOURNALISTS WERE IN PRISON AROUND THE WORLD at the end of 2000, jailed for practicing their profession. The number is down slightly from the previous year, when 87 were in jail, and represents a significant decline from 1998, when 118 journalists were imprisoned. While jailing journalists can be an effective means of stifling bad…
By Ann CooperIN THE COMMUNITY OF JOURNALISTS WHO HAVE CHRONICLED the past decade’s worst wars, the news last May was devastating. Two of the world’s most dedicated war correspondents, Kurt Schork of Reuters and Miguel Gil Moreno de Mora of The Associated Press, were killed in a rebel ambush in Sierra Leone, a country where…
BY EXPOSING CORRUPTION, POLITICAL INTRIGUE, and massive abuse of power, journalists in Peru helped bring down the regime of President Alberto K. Fujimori last year. Fujimori’s dramatic fall demonstrated that the Latin American press remains a key bulwark against leaders who continue to use subtle and not-so subtle means to control the flow of information.…
In North Korea, listening to a foreign broadcast is a crime punishable by death. In Colombia, right-wing paramilitary forces are suspected in the murders of three journalists in 2000. Meanwhile, paramilitary leader Carlos Castaño was formally charged with the 1999 murder of political satirist Jaime Garzón.
IN A COUNTRY WHERE THE GOVERNMENT DOMINATES THE MEDIA, the year ended with two contradictory developments. After winning a four-year court battle, the island’s first independent radio station was expected to start broadcasting soon. However, the High Court restrained a weekly newspaper from further coverage of a medical benefits scandal that the paper exposed in…
IN A FRUSTRATING YEAR FOR PRESS FREEDOM in Argentina, a proposed bill that would have eliminated criminal penalties for defamation cases involving public officials foundered after local journalists implicated members of the Senate in a major bribery scandal. Senators who had supported the proposed bill quickly withdrew their support. The long battle to reform Argentina’s…
ALTHOUGH THE BOLIVIAN PRESS IS PLURALISTIC and freedom of the press is generally respected, structural barriers as well as a tense political situation continued to impede independent reporting. In April, President Hugo Banzer imposed a state of emergency that lasted for nearly two weeks after violent protests against an increase in water rates broke out…
WHILE REPORTERS IN BRAZIL’S MAJOR CITIES UNEARTHED various political scandals, their colleagues in the provinces faced violent reprisal from politicians and local landowners because of their reporting. One provincial journalist was murdered. In July, the aggressive urban press reignited a lingering scandal involving a 169 million real (US$90 million) embezzlement scheme tied to the construction…
PRESS FREEDOM IS GENERALLY RESPECTED IN CANADA, and CPJ does not routinely monitor press conditions in the country. However, CPJ was greatly alarmed by the September 13 shooting of Michel Auger, a veteran crime reporter with the French-language daily Le Journal de Montréal, and sent a letter to Florent Gagné, general director of the Quebec…
THE CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION OF FORMER DICTATOR GEN. AUGUSTO PINOCHET and other military officers severely tested the independence of the Chilean judiciary at a time when the courts were being used to harass journalists investigating official corruption. After narrowly defeating rightist candidate Joaquín Lavín in a January 16 run-off election, Ricardo Lagos took office on March…