Europe & Central Asia
2014
Ukraine must clarify status of Russian journalist
New York, August 12, 2014–The Committee to Protect Journalists calls on Ukrainian authorities to clarify the status of Andrei Stenin, the Russian photojournalist for the state news agency Rossiya Segodnya (previously RIA Novosti) who was reported missing on August 5 in eastern Ukraine. According to Russian news reports, Anton Gerashchenko, adviser to the head of…
Russian photojournalist missing in eastern Ukraine
New York, August 11, 2014–The Committee to Protect Journalists is concerned about the safety of Andrei Stenin, Russian photojournalist for the state news agency Rossiya Segodnya (previously RIA Novosti). The agency said it had not heard from Stenin since August 5, when he was reporting on the conflict in eastern Ukraine, including from the cities…
Turkish prime minister publicly chastises Economist correspondent
New York, August 8, 2014–The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by comments made by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan against a journalist on Thursday. At an election rally in southern Turkey, Erdoğan called Amberin Zaman, local correspondent for The Economist, “a shameless militant disguised under the name of a journalist,” and urged her to…
In Azerbaijan, media watchdog raided, equipment confiscated
New York, August 8, 2014–The Committee to Protect Journalists calls on Azerbaijani authorities to stop harassing the Baku-based media freedom group Institute for Reporters’ Freedom and Safety. Detectives with Azerbaijan’s Prosecutor General’s Office raided the IRFS premises today, the local press reported. A journalist who was at the raid told CPJ that the detectives confiscated…
News from the Committee to Protect Journalists, July 2014
CPJ conducts fact-finding mission in Ukraine Muzaffar Suleymanov, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia Research Associate, traveled to Kiev on July 6 on a week-long fact-finding mission and spoke to more than a dozen local and international journalists about press freedom conditions in the country. Suleymanov also met with journalists who had covered or were covering…
No press freedom without Internet freedom
Four years ago, when CPJ launched its Internet Advocacy program, we were met with lots of encouragement, but also some skepticism. “Why do you need a program to defend the Internet?” one supporter asked. “You don’t have a special program to defend television, or radio, or newspapers.” But the Internet is different. Increasingly, when it…
In Ukraine, journalists injured, detained, expelled
New York, July 28, 2014–In recent days in Ukraine, an international journalist was wounded in a car crash caused by separatists’ gunfire, a local journalist was detained by separatists, a Russian reporter for Bloomberg News was briefly detained by a Ukrainian army unit, and a foreign journalist was expelled by Ukrainian authorities, according to press…
Mission Journal: Attacks on journalists in Ukraine lead to information vacuum
“There are no [independent] Ukrainian journalists left in Donetsk,” said Aleksei Matsuka, chief editor of the regional news website Novosti Donbassa (News of Donbass). “They have fled the region since pro-Russia separatists started targeting and kidnapping reporters,” Matsuka told CPJ during our brief meeting in Kiev.
In Ukraine, some updates on this week’s abducted and missing journalist(s)
On Wednesday, we reported that in Ukraine this week, at least two journalists had gone missing, while pro-Russia separatists abducted a fixer and briefly detained a reporter. Also, the self-declared Donetsk People’s Republic said it was banning journalists from the conflict area. We noted that press freedom violations “are happening at dizzying speed in eastern…