U.S. photographer harassed covering Gulf oil spill
On July 2, 2010, photographer Lance Rosenfeld was detained by police and released only after authorities reviewed his images and collected his personal identification information, which they then shared with BP, the company responsible for the massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Rosenfeld was on assignment for the non-profit media outlet ProPublica and the PBS…
Global Media Forum cites risks of environmental reporting
He’s young, unemployed and carries himself with the innocence of a man who hasn’t spent much time outside his own village. But Egyptian blogger Tamer Mabrouk is the real deal. Appearing at an international media conference in Bonn, Mabrouk’s description of chemical dumping into a brackish lagoon on the northern Nile Delta near the Mediterranean Sea…
Burma campaign hits Grand Central
New York’s Grand Central Station is a gathering point today for people who are coming into town from a little farther away than usual: Burmese dissidents, writers, monks, and musicians are convening to protest the military junta of Senior General Than Shwe. Human Rights Watch has organized a petition and an art and photo installation in Vanderbilt…
Finding success in exile from Sierra Leone
It was just days ago that my daughter had her 11th birthday. She was excited about this birthday as never before, but I understood why. A couple of days prior, she was accepted to the Frederick Douglass Academy in Manhattan for middle school starting next fall. The school is regarded as one of the best…
Freed Sri Lankan journalist Tissainayagam arrives in U.S.
New York, June 19, 2010—The Committee to Protect Journalist welcomes the arrival in the United States of Sri Lankan journalist J.S. Tissainayagam, who arrived at Washington’s Dulles International Airport on Saturday morning. He was met there by friends. According to CPJ representative Kamel Labidi, who was on hand to meet Tissa, “He was all smiles,…
Starting from scratch: A Haitian journalist exiled in the U.S.
I arrived in New York in April 2003. It was cold.The streets of Brooklyn seemed too wide to me and the buildings huge. The number 3 train would pass over and over again like a luminous monster. From the window of my apartment, I would watch this train go by. I would also watch people walk without…
Eritrean journalist attacked at public seminar in Houston
New York, May 27, 2010—The Committee to Protect Journalists calls for a thorough investigation into a May 9 attack on an Eritrean expatriate journalist by supporters of Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki at a public event in eastern Texas. The event was advertised locally in printed fliers, and on the pro-government Dehai.org Web site as a “Public Seminar…
Apple-Gizmodo case takes a bite out of global journalism
Modern technology blurs our definitions of journalism, so it’s no surprise that the first important tests of the new world should take place in the heart of Silicon Valley. But we should take care that arguments in widely publicized cases, such as the Apple-Gizmodo controversy in the United States, do not set precedents that could…