Features & Analysis

2018

  
People take souvenir photos along the Bosphorus in Istanbul, Turkey in February 2018. Turkey continues to crackdown on the press; a Turkish court sentenced four journalists to life without parole on February 16, 2018, on charges relating to their journalistic activity. (Reuters/Osman Orsal)

Turkey Crackdown Chronicle: Week of February 19, 2018

Journalists acquitted, released Turkish authorities on February 17 released from jail Deniz Yücel, Turkey correspondent for the German newspaper Die Welt, who had been imprisoned for a year pending investigation, according to Reuters. A Turkish court on the same day also indicted Yücel on charges of “propagandizing for a [terrorist] organization” and “provoking the people…

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Facebook's head of global policy management, Monika Bickert, testifies at a Senate hearing in January on monitoring extremist content online. Companies like Facebook and Google are at the forefront of how much of the world receives its news. (AFP/Getty Images/Tasos Katopodis)

Tweaking a global source of news

The only way Abdalaziz Alhamza and his fellow citizen journalists could get out news from the Islamic State’s self-declared capital in Syria to a global audience was by posting materials on Facebook and YouTube. “They were the only way to spread news since many militias and governments prevented most, if not all, the independent media…

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Relatives of Nahed Hattar carry signs condemning his murder during a protest in Amman in September 2016. The Jordanian commentator and writer was shot dead outside a court while on trial for blasphemy over a Facebook cartoon. (AP/Raad Adayleh)

Changes to Jordan’s hate speech law could further stifle press freedom

Recently proposed amendments to Jordan’s 2015 cybercrime law, including a vague and broad definition of hate speech, will further stifle press freedom on the pretext of protecting the country’s citizens, and could result in further self-censorship, several Jordanian journalists told CPJ.

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Christiane Amanpour speaks at CPJ's International Press Freedom Awards in November 2017. (AFP/Getty Images/Kevin Hagen)

Dangers from inside the newsroom

By Christiane Amanpour/chief international correspondent for CNN and CPJ senior advisor In November, I stood before top news media executives in the United States and called on them to stamp out sexual harassment in their organizations. “The floodgates are open,” I told the audience at the annual International Press Freedom Awards gala of the Committee…

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US Attorney General Jeff Sessions, pictured at a meeting in January 2018, has indicated he intends to pursue leak investigations. (AFP/Saul Loeb)

The president’s phantom threats

During his tumultuous campaign, Donald Trump declared war on the press, pledging to “open up our libel laws” and impose fines on critical journalists if elected. Within a month of taking office, he vowed to go after leakers, comparing them to Nazis, and urged then-FBI director James Comey to jail reporters who published classified information.…

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The flag-wrapped coffin of a Turkish soldier who was killed during the operation against Syria's Afrin region, is carried by guard of honor members during his funeral ceremony in Istanbul, Turkey in February 2018. Yusuf Ozan, a morning news host for the Islamist Akit TV channel, said journalists with the daily Cumhuriyet should be

Turkey Crackdown Chronicle: Week of February 12, 2018

Journalist released, said he was sexually abused in custody Turkish authorities on February 14 released from prison photojournalist Çağdaş Erdoğan after an Istanbul court decided he should be tried without arrest, the online newspaper Artı Gerçek reported.

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Rights groups call for an investigation into claims jailed journalists Hayot Nasriddinov, left, and Bobomurod Abdullaev, were tortured and mistreated in Uzbekistan. (AsiaTerra/Fergananews)

CPJ joins call for Uzbekistan to investigate claims jailed journalists were tortured

The Committee to Protect Journalists today joined a coalition of 11 other international press freedom and human rights advocacy groups, in calling on Uzbek authorities to conduct an investigation into allegations of torture and ill-treatment of jailed journalists Bobomurod Abdullaev and Hayot Nasriddinov. The coalition, led by Human Rights Watch, called for the journalists to…

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A man reads a newspaper outside a Dhaka flower stall in 2015. Bangladesh's press say a climate of fear amid legal action, attacks, and threats makes covering sensitive issues difficult. (AP)

Bangladesh’s press say they are losing the courage to report amid threats from all sides

Nazmul Huda pointed his TV camera at garment workers demonstrating for higher wages in Savar, on the outskirts of Dhaka, and at the police firing tear gas and rubber bullets at them. It took a while for police to notice the ETV reporter, and they were furious. After all, they had ordered him to leave…

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A Myanmar border guard stands next to fencing near Maungdaw, Rakhine state, where structures to process Rohingya refugees are being built. Local and international journalists face challenges reporting on the crisis and other politically sensitive issues. (AFP/Cape Diamond)

Threats, arrests, and access denied as Myanmar backtracks on press freedom

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Esther Htusan is no longer safe to report from her home country, Myanmar. The Associated Press reporter fled the country late last year after being threatened for her critical reporting on various topics that authorities deem sensitive, from the ethnic Rohingya refugee exodus, the military’s controversial counterinsurgency operations in Rakhine State, to…

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A view of Tegucigalpa in November 2017. Honduras lawmakers are considering a draft law that would regulate online speech. (AFP/Orlando Sierra)

CPJ calls on Honduras to reject law regulating online speech

The Committee to Protect Journalists, along with more than 50 international and local digital rights organizations and media outlets, joined calls on Honduran lawmakers this week to reject a proposed law that would regulate online speech.

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2018