IN THE WAKE of September 11, 2001, journalists around the world faced a press freedom crisis that was truly global in scope. In the first days and weeks after the terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C., governments across the globe–in China, Benin, the Palestinian Authority Territories, and the United States–took actions to…
Journalists across Asia faced extraordinary pressures in 2001. Risks included reporting on war and insurgency, covering crime and corruption, or simply expressing a dissenting view in an authoritarian state. CPJ’s two most striking indices of press freedom are the annual toll of journalists killed around the world and our list of journalists imprisoned at the…
The exhilarating prospect of broad press freedoms that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union a decade ago has faded dramatically in much of the post-communist world. A considerable decline in press freedom conditions in Russia during the last year, along with the stranglehold authoritarian leaders have imposed on media in Central Asia, the Caucasus,…
Bucking a worldwide trend toward democracy in the post-Cold War era, the political landscape of the Middle East and North Africa remained dominated by an assortment of military-backed regimes, police states, autocracies, and oligarchies. A new, younger generation of leaders has emerged in some countries in recent years, inheriting power and bringing hope for political…
Independent journalists in Albania continue to struggle with economic underdevelopment, highly partisan politics, and security risks. Low professional standards and stalled government reforms of media laws further compounded journalists’ problems in 2001. High taxes and printing costs, poor distribution networks, low advertising revenues, limited business skills, and endemic corruption keep editors and publishers dependent on…
ARMENIA Widespread poverty, polarized politics, and flawed legislation kept the media at the mercy of government officials and wealthy sponsors during 2001. Libel remained a criminal offense punishable by imprisonment, though it was not used against journalists during the year.
Although President Heydar Aliyev claimed to be the “guarantor of freedom of speech and the press in Azerbaijan,” his government continued to crack down on independent and opposition media while suppressing public criticism. Journalists who dared to criticize officials suffered harassment, defamation lawsuits, imprisonment, and physical assaults. Publications faced financial pressure and closures, as well…
President Aleksandr Lukashenko continued his assault on the independent and opposition press in 2001, and he managed to cling to power in September 9 presidential elections amid charges of human rights violations and extensive electoral fraud. Throughout the year, independent publications faced harassment, censorship, seizures, and closures for criticizing the regime. Little progress was made…
While Bosnia’s ethnically fragmented media showed modest signs of integration in 2001, independent journalists endured threats, harassment, and violence from political parties and government officials. Nationalist and reformist parties battled in the November 2000 elections, with mixed results. The Bosnian Serb nationalist SDS party, formerly led by indicted war criminal Radovan Karadzic, handily won in…