Jonathan Rozen
Jonathan Rozen is CPJ's senior Africa researcher. Previously, he worked in South Africa, Mozambique, and Canada with the Institute for Security Studies, assessing Mozambican peace-building processes. Rozen was a U.N. correspondent for IPS News and has written for Al-Jazeera English and the International Peace Institute. He speaks English and French.
How U.S. copyright law and fake Gmail accounts were used to censor a report on gambling in Kenya
On February 4, Emmanuel Dogbevi turned to Twitter with a plea for help. He tagged press freedom groups and colleagues in a series of tweets, lamenting how allegations that he violated U.S. copyright law had prompted his news website to be taken offline. Dogbevi told CPJ via phone that Ghana Business News, the Ghana-based website he edits,…
CPJ joins call to revise Nigeria’s draft data protection bill
The Committee to Protect Journalists has joined Paradigm Initiative, a Nigeria-based digital rights group, and the NetRights Coalition of over 100 global civil society groups to submit comments on Nigeria’s draft data protection bill, which is undergoing a public consultation process. The submission said that the bill should “protect those fulfilling their duty as journalists”…
US, UK, Interpol give Ghana phone hacking tools, raising journalist concerns on safety and confidentiality
In May 2019, senior members of Ghana’s law enforcement posed for photos with the U.S. ambassador to their country at a ceremony in the capital, Accra. Between them they held boxes and bags, gifts from the U.S. government to Ghana which, according to one of the recipients, contained Israeli phone hacking technology. That recipient was…
Liberia’s journalists wary as authorities announce new press passes, threaten shutdowns
When the coronavirus arrived in Liberia, local journalists knew what it meant to report on a deadly, infectious disease; six years earlier they had donned personal protective equipment (PPE) to report on the Ebola crisis, Musa Kenneh, the Press Union of Liberia’s secretary general, told CPJ. But this time, Kenneh said, threatening comments from government…
‘An attempt to gag the media’: Journalists on Nigeria’s proposed social media bill
At a public hearing on Nigeria’s social media bill held in Abuja last month, the voice of Chris Isiguzo, president of the Nigerian Union of Journalists (NUJ), rang clearly across the room: “This bill…seeks to pigeonhole Nigerians from freely expressing themselves.” The NUJ is “totally opposed” to it, he said.
Nigeria’s communications regulator sued over warrantless access to ‘call data’
Laws and Rights Awareness Initiative, a Nigerian nongovernmental organization, filed a lawsuit on February 25 against the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) over regulations granting warrantless access to telecom subscribers’ information, including “call data.” The suit claims that accessing the information “violates and will likely further violate” Nigerians’ constitutional right to privacy, according to a copy…
How Nigeria’s police used telecom surveillance to lure and arrest journalists
As reporters for Nigeria’s Premium Times newspaper, Samuel Ogundipe and Azeezat Adedigba told CPJ they spoke often over the phone. They had no idea that their regular conversations about work and their personal lives were creating a record of their friendship.
Nigerian military targeted journalists’ phones, computers with “forensic search” for sources
Hamza Idris, an editor with the Nigerian Daily Trust, was at the newspaper’s central office on January 6 when the military arrived looking for him. Soldiers with AK47s walked between the newsroom desks repeating his name, he told CPJ. It was the second raid on the paper that day; the first hit the bureau based…
‘You cannot muzzle the media’: Nigerian journalists on press freedom under Buhari
When Nigeria’s incumbent president Muhammadu Buhari won re-election this year, he campaigned (as he did in 2015) on an image of good governance and anti-corruption. Billboards in the capital, Abuja, bore the smiling faces of the president–who first led Nigeria as military ruler from 1983-1985–and his vice-president Yemi Osinbajo, and called for voters to let…
Ghana won’t have press freedom without accountability
Three bullets, fired at close range by two assassins on a black and blue Boxer motorbike on January 16, 2019, killed investigative journalist Ahmed Hussein-Suale Divela, according to Sammy Darko, a lawyer working on Divela’s case. Darko told CPJ over the phone that bystanders saw it happen. Ghana’s media community, international rights groups (including CPJ),…