Press Uncuffed is a campaign CPJ ran in partnership with students from the University of Maryland’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism in 2015 and early 2016 to raise awareness of imprisoned journalists and to call for their release. The students, led by Knight chair in public affairs journalism and Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post reporter Dana Priest, won the Do Good Challenge for their work on the campaign, which including them designing, producing, and selling bracelets bearing the names of imprisoned journalists. The students also ran an Indiegogo crowd-funding campaign to raise money to produce the bracelets.
Over the course of the campaign, seven of the 13 journalists featured in it were released from prison. You can read their stories below.
Learn more at Press Uncuffed or view this video discussion about the campaign, which was held at the Newseum.
For information on journalists imprisoned around the world, see CPJ’s annual prison census. If you’d like to stay involved in our efforts to free journalists behind bars, please sign up here and follow us on Facebook.