Attacks on the Press

  

From Fledgling to Failed

Even as the country collapses, South Sudan’s government will brook no criticism By Jacey Fortin JUBA, South Sudan – The shooting began around 5:15 on a Friday afternoon. Dozens of journalists had gathered in the pressroom at the Presidential Palace–a walled compound also known as “J1”–in the capital city. Following a few days of rising…

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Where I’ve Never Set Foot

Barred from Syria, a journalist must make sense of what she’s told By Alessandria Masi The morning after the attack, my deputy editor and I lit cigarettes as we squatted on the green couch in our closet-size Beirut office, hanging out the window and talking about what we thought had really happened in Syria.

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Introduction: The New Face of Censorship

Governments and non-state actors find innovative ways to suppress the media By Joel Simon In the days when news was printed on paper, censorship was a crude practice involving government officials with black pens, the seizure of printing presses and raids on newsrooms. The complexity and centralization of broadcasting also made radio and television vulnerable…

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Attacks on the Press 2016

Attacks on the Press 2016 Edition | Gender and Media Freedom Worldwide Introduction: Breaking the Silence by Joel Simon Some of the information we need to make sense of a complex world is missing. Read More › The Sadness of May the 25th by Jineth Bedoya Lima A Colombian journalist recounts the rape that led…

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Breaking the Silence

On February 11, 2011, as journalists were documenting the raucous celebration in Cairo’s Tahrir Square following the fall of Hosni Mubarak, the story took a sudden and unexpected turn. CBS 60 Minutes correspondent Lara Logan, who was reporting from the square, was violently separated from her crew and security detail by a mob of men.…

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Compassion, Strength, Hugs

I am a hugger. Maybe it’s my Texas heritage, but the value of wrapping people in a warm embrace at the right time has stayed with me, like a hint of twang, in the 40 years since I left the state. And hugs have been just the right thing many times during the decades that…

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Males Preferred

In October 2015, when I solicited Chinese readers’ views on gender issues in journalism, one comment spoke volumes about the state of the debate in China: “Women can take advantage of their looks and feminine traits to attract well-known and powerful men to accept their interviews.”

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From High Profile to Exile

Heba Alshibani did not set out to become a journalist. She had expected to become an academic, as many members of her Libyan family had before the February 2011 uprising that led to the overthrow of Muammar Qaddafi. But when the violence did not abate after Qaddafi’s overthrow, Alshibani witnessed events that she felt compelled…

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Harassed and Jailed

It feels strange to be writing about friends in jail. You wonder what kind of a friend you are–free to breathe the air, to walk the streets, to continue to work, while your friends cannot. Why do you deserve this privilege?

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Fighting Words

“When I cried, he slapped me hard and put his hand over my mouth.” That is how a 12-year-old girl in the Central African Republic described an episode in which a man found her hiding in the bathroom of her home in the wee hours of August 2, 2015, dragged her outside, and raped her,…

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