Turkey’s press freedom must be on Obama-Erdoğan agenda

When President Obama meets with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyp Erdoğan today, he needs to deliver the message that Turkey’s failure to improve its record on press freedom is eroding the country’s strategic relationship with the United States and sabotaging its regional leadership ambitions, CPJ’s executive director, Joel Simon, and Reporters Without Borders’ director general,…

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Transparency, accountability at stake in Manning trial

On June 3, when the long-anticipated court-martial of Army Pfc. Bradley Manning begins in Fort Meade, Md., journalists will crowd the courtroom. But at some point the press and the public likely will be ordered out while confidential testimony–including from State Department officials and active military personnel– is heard. If the pre-trial proceedings are any…

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CPJ alarmed by US seizure of AP phone records

New York, May 14, 2013–The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by reports that the United States Justice Department seized two months of telephone records of journalists with The Associated Press.

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So your Twitter account is hacked? Reset, tweet, pray.

That is a bogus @ap tweet.– AP CorpComm (@AP_CorpComm) April 23, 2013 More than a quarter million Twitter accounts have been hacked worldwide, the social media company disclosed in February, but Tuesday’s attack on The Associated Press’s verified account, @AP, had unusual effect. The Dow Jones industrial average fell 143 points after someone hijacked the…

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Tim Hetherington, center, is the subject of a new documentary. (HBO)

Two years after his death, Hetherington studied, celebrated

Two years ago this week, on the central boulevard of the Western Libyan city of Misurata, freelance photographers Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros were killed by mortar rounds from government forces. Hondros lost consciousness almost immediately. Hetherington bled out in the back of a pick-up truck as he clutched the hand of a Spanish photographer. 

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Tibetan blogger Woeser waves from the balcony of her home in Beijing on March 8. She was named an International Woman of Courage by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, but rather than being allowed to accept it, she was placed under house arrest. (Reuters/Petar Kujundzic)

Kerry should press Beijing on press freedom

As John Kerry visits China this weekend in his first trip there as U.S. secretary of state, he should take the opportunity to engage Chinese leaders on their problematic record regarding press freedom. 

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CPJ

Attacks on Knight Center sites reflect digital dangers

The two websites at the University of Texas at Austin, at first blush, seemed to have been unlikely targets for attack. The Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas and its blog cover news about journalism, press freedom and journalist safety throughout the Western hemisphere, with an emphasis on trends in Latin America. The website…

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Foreign Minister of Ecuador Ricardo Patiño speaks about human rights during the Organization of American States general assembly in Washington, D.C., on March 22. (AP/Jacquelyn Martin)

At OAS, a victory for human rights and free expression

By reaffirming the autonomy and independence of the regional human rights system and rejecting attempts to neutralize the work of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) and its special rapporteur for freedom of expression, the Organization of American States (OAS) chose last week to discard proposals that would have made citizens throughout the hemisphere…

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CPJ
Lewis receives a lifetime achievement award in 2009. (CPJ)

Tony Lewis gave CPJ authority, devotion over decades

Back in 1981, when CPJ was being formed and its board of directors assembled, Tony Lewis, who died today at age 85, was one of the first people we approached. As the author of books such as Gideon’s Trumpet, as a widely read columnist for The New York Times, and as an outspoken defender of…

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Obama should press Israel to return Wattan TV property

New York, March 19, 2013–During his trip to the region this week, U.S. President Barack Obama should call on Israeli authorities to return the equipment of an independent broadcaster that was seized more than a year ago, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.

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