Robert Mahoney

Robert Mahoney is CPJ’s director of special projects and a former executive director of the organization. He writes and speaks on press freedom, and has led CPJ missions to global hot spots from Iraq to Sri Lanka. He worked as a reporter, bureau chief and editor for Reuters around the world. Follow him on Twitter @RobertMMahoney.

Police officers are seen in Wuhan, China, on April 4, 2020. (AP/Ng Han Guan)

Mahoney: The lingering legacy of China’s COVID-19 censorship

One time she drew flowers on a letter to her ailing mother from her Chinese prison cell. Another time it was pictures of penguins. The drawings were a good sign. Zhang Zhan, the journalist jailed for her COVID-19 reporting from Wuhan, is maybe doing better. The 39-year-old Shanghai lawyer-turned social media reporter was one of…

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Mahoney: UN can help journalists beyond World Press Freedom Day

New York, May 1, 2023–Evan Gershkovich and Jimmy Lai are about to spend World Press Freedom Day behind bars. Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal Moscow correspondent, and Lai, a pro-democracy Hong Kong media magnate, are among record numbers of journalists in prison as the United Nations marks the 30th anniversary of its special day for…

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Chinese journalist held for reporting on Wuhan COVID outbreak wishes he’d done more

When reports of a novel respiratory virus spreading through Wuhan began to surface in early 2020, a few independent video journalists rushed to the city. Among them was Li Zehua, a former journalist for state broadcaster CCTV, who goes by the name Kcriss Li. Giving the slip to officials chasing down reporters who challenged the…

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Opinion: Pompeo’s attack on Khashoggi’s reputation is a gift to enemies of press freedom

In the week that CPJ reported a near-50% surge in the killings of journalists worldwide, the former head of the CIA and the U.S. State Department dismissed the reaction to one of the most brazen murders of journalists in the past half century as “faux outrage…fueled by the media.” In his memoir “Never Give an…

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Opinion: How the West can help the media victims of Putin’s war

Russia’s independent journalists are fleeing. That’s not only a tragedy for Russians but also for the rest of us who need to know what the increasingly isolated leader of a nuclear superpower is doing.  Since sending tanks into Ukraine on February 24, President Vladimir Putin has threatened to jail anyone who dares question the invasion…

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US plans to restrict foreign journalist visas would be chilling, must be scrapped

We hadn’t even finished unpacking our belongings from my assignment in Africa when the phone rang. It was a fellow journalist warning me that the director of Israel’s Government Press Office had just gone on national radio to say he intended to summon me to complain about a story. My wife looked at me anxiously….

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A demonstrator dressed as a whistle protests outside of a London court holding a hearing on the U.S. extradition case of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in October 2019. (Reuters/Henry Nicholls)

For the sake of press freedom, Julian Assange must be defended

Nine years ago this month, the Committee to Protect Journalists took a stand on one of the most polarizing figures in journalism. We wrote President Barack Obama and his attorney general, Eric Holder, urging them not to prosecute Julian Assange.

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Journalists hold press cards during a protest at the Assembly of the Representatives of the People in Tunis in April 2019. Tunisia has greater press freedom but challenges remain. (AFP/Fethi Belaid)

Upcoming elections could make or break Tunisia’s fledgling free press

Tunisia’s progression to a freer society took center stage this month, as journalists, digital rights activists, and tech companies gathered in Tunis for RightsCon and the IFJ congress. Tunisia has secured greater press freedom than many of the Arab Spring countries, but local journalists told CPJ that with elections slated for this year, challenges including…

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A protester wears a mask depicting Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman with painted hands next to people holding posters of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi during the demonstration outside the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul on October 25, 2018. (AFP/Yasin Akgul)

Saudi control of Arab media, lamented by Khashoggi, shapes coverage of his death

It is a cruel irony that Jamal Khashoggi’s last unpublished column for The Washington Post was a call for press freedom in the Arab world. His homeland, Saudi Arabia, has spent the last three decades and hundreds of millions of dollars to ensure that never happens.

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A journalist holds a phone with a sticker commemorating the assassinated Slovakian journalist Jan Kuciak, as Slovak deputy Prime Minister Peter Pellegrini talks to the media after a meeting at the presidential palace in Bratislava on March 15, 2018. (REUTERS/David W. Cerny)

After murders of Kuciak and Caruana Galizia, investigative journalists band together for justice

The assassinations of Daphne Caruana Galizia in Malta in October and of Ján Kuciak in Slovakia last month have elicited an outpouring of support from journalists determined to honor the memory of their colleagues by fighting back with the weapon they wield best: journalism.

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