Scandal mongering and mudslinging blackened the images of both politicians and the press in 2001, particularly during the run-up to September’s parliamentary elections. The first scandal erupted in January after Rzeczpospolita, a leading Warsaw daily, published a series of investigative pieces on official corruption. Justice Minister Lech Kaczynski accused the paper of conspiring with the…
Widespread poverty, faltering political and economic reforms, and slowing progress toward European Union membership continue to inhibit the expansion of press freedom in Romania, where Ion Iliescu and his leftist coalition won presidential and parliamentary elections held in late 2000.
A decade after the demise of the Soviet Union, Russia still struggled to define the limits of free expression. Nowhere was the struggle more intense than in the media. President Vladimir Putin’s administration was either directly involved in or held responsible for a broad range of abuses, including the selective use of tax audits, prosecutions,…
As Slovakia adopts political reforms aimed at European Union membership, the government remains slow to change press laws and revamp the state-run media. Criminal libel cases against journalists and political influence over media outlets also hindered the Slovak press in 2001.
While press freedom is generally respected in Slovenia, a brutal attack against one journalist and the potential prosecution of another have raised some concerns about the government’s commitment to protecting the press. Miro Petek, a journalist for the Maribor daily Vecer, Slovenia’s second-largest newspaper, was attacked outside his home in the small town of Mezica…
While press freedom is generally respected in Spain, CPJ has been extremely concerned about a series of violent attacks against journalists and media professionals carried out by the Basque separatist group ETA during the last several years. In 2001, ETA continued its terrorist campaign against the press, maiming Basque journalist Gorka Landaburu with a letter…
Although Tajikistan’s civil war ended in 1997, its devastating effects endure. Journalists work in dire, impoverished conditions, exacerbated by the stifling restrictions imposed under President Imomali Rakhmonov. Investigative reporting is rare, especially on sensitive issues such as trafficking in weapons and drugs, border tensions, and power struggles among the political and military elite.
In an effort to improve its chances to join the European Union, the Turkish Parliament in October approved more than 30 amendments to the country’s restrictive constitution, which was passed in 1982 after a military coup two years before. Lawmakers are currently considering a proposal that would bring some of the nation’s repressive laws used…
In a region where freedom of the press and free expression are endangered concepts, the authoritarian regime of President Saparmurat Niyazov still manages to set a horrible example. Niyazov often takes his repression to absurd extremes. In April, for example, he banned opera and ballet from his country on the grounds that they are “alien”…
Legal harassment, violence, and death continued to stalk Ukrainian journalists in 2001. Two murders underscored the continuing dangers, as did the stalled investigation into the murder of Internet journalist Georgy Gongadze. More than a year after Gongadze’s headless corpse was discovered in November 2000, and after months of allegations about possible presidential involvement in his…