Ann Cooper

Ann Cooper is Professor Emerita, Columbia Journalism School and a former executive director of CPJ. Before joining CPJ she was a foreign correspondent for NPR, including serving as Moscow bureau chief from 1987 to 1991.

Features & Analysis

Ukraine editor Olga Rudenko on starting Kyiv Independent as Russia amasses troops on border

Olga Rudenko was half a world away from Ukraine on the day that Ukrainian construction tycoon Adnan Kivan abruptly fired the entire staff of the Kyiv Post, the 26-year-old English-language print-to-digital publication known for its tough-minded, corruption-exposing journalism. Rudenko, then deputy chief editor of the Post and in the United States on a fellowship at…

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Attacks On The Press
Russian opposition leader and anti-corruption blogger Alexei Navalny, right, talks with his brother and co-defendant Oleg inside a defendants' cage during a court hearing in Moscow on December 30, 2014. (Reuters/Sergei Karpukhin)

The death of glasnost: How Russia’s attempt at openness failed

Before Maidan, before Tahrir Square, before the “color revolutions” that overthrew entrenched autocrats, there was the Soviet revolution of the late 1980s.

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China’s jailed e-journalists

Hu Jintao and Bill Gates will have had a lot to talk about Tuesday, when the Chinese president visited Microsoft’s Redmond campus. With the mainstream Chinese media heavily censored, the Internet has become a vital outlet for independent journalism, critical writing and information. The authorities are ruthless in their suppression of criticism of their rule in any medium. China has jailed more writers and journalists than any other country, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

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