Journalist Jay Torres murdered in Garland, Texas
New York, June 16, 2016–The Committee to Protect journalists is alarmed by the killing of Texas journalist Jacinto Hernández Torres, whose body was found on Monday night in Garland, a northeast suburb in the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area. The journalist, who went by the name Jay Torres, was a freelance contributor for nearly 20 years…
Time for justice in the killing of Vietnamese-American journalists
New York, May 27, 2016–The Committee to Protect Journalists will call for the cases of five Vietnamese-American journalists who were killed between 1981 and 1990 to be reopened, based on information uncovered by ProPublica and Frontline. The suspected assassinations were the subject of CPJ’s 1994 report, “Silenced, The Unsolved Murders of Immigrant Journalists in the…
CPJ reacts to reports that Peter Thiel has funded lawsuits against Gawker
New York, May 25, 2016–The Committee to Protect Journalists today released the following statement from Executive Director Joel Simon regarding reports that entrepreneur Peter Thiel has been secretly covering the expenses for Hulk Hogan’s lawsuits against online news organization Gawker Media:
Global Magnitsky Act could be powerful weapon against impunity in journalist murders
Last week, the proposed Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act emerged from the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee with approval. The bill was passed by the Senate last year. If passed by the full House of Representatives and signed into law by the president, it has the potential to offer partial redress to one of…
Why Trump’s insults of journalists must be taken seriously
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has called the mainstream media “crooked” “unfair” “troublemakers” and The New York Times a failing, “SAD!” newspaper “full of boring lies.” Individual reporters are “liars” and “bimbos,” according to his tweets.
Why a Troll Trolls
“Yeah… I went too far,” he said, which by most accounts would be an understatement. Among the Twitter comments this Internet troll posted to or about a female writer and activist were: “Rape her nice ass.” “I will find you.” “The police will do nothing.” The man, who agreed to be interviewed only under a…
China’s overseas critics under pressure from smear campaigns, cyber attacks
“I think my actions … have harmed the national interest. What I have done was very wrong. I seriously and earnestly accept to learn a lesson and plead guilty,” said Chinese journalist Gao Yu during a televised confession on the state-run channel CCTV in May 2014.