Underground Zimbabwe: Interview with Robyn Kriel
Filmmaker Robyn Kriel, 25, from Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, spoke to PBS’ Wide Angle last week about the risks she took reporting from Zimbabwe in the lead-up to the country’s 2008 presidential election. Last April, CPJ closely followed the case of Kriel’s mother, Margaret Kriel, who was imprisoned for four days on accusations of “practicing journalism without accreditation.” You…
Remembering Said Tahlil
Falastiin Iman, a former producer for the independent Somali broadcaster HornAfrik, was talking by phone on Sunday with the station’s director, Said Tahlil, left. He was upbeat, she said, a mood that is not easy to come by in Mogadishu. “He was so happy that peace was finally coming to Somalia and that, miraculously, HornAfrik…
Q & A: Reporting in a ‘culture of fear’
Freelance journalist Frank Chikowore visited CPJ this week after receiving the Tully Center Free Speech Award at Syracuse University. Chikowore received the award for his brave, ongoing reporting on the crisis in Zimbabwe. He has worked for two newspapers in Zimbabwe, including The Nation and the Weekly Times, which was closed down in 2005.
How diamond rings silence Zimbabwe’s foreign press
The Hong Kong police announced on Monday they would investigate the alleged assault on photographer Richard Jones by Zimbabwe’s first lady, Grace Mugabe, while she was on vacation. On January 15, Jones claimed Mugabe ordered her bodyguard to hold the photographer down while she punched him repeatedly in the face near Hong Kong’s exclusive Shangri-la…
Press freedom in the news 1/21/2009
Agence France-Presse has coverage of our letter sent to Cameroonian President Paul Biya on January 16. The letter protested the jailing of four Cameroonian journalists, which makes the country Africa’s second-leading jailer of journalists. The reporters have been held since September on charges of criminal defamation. AFP quotes CPJ Executive Director Joel Simon: “The journalists…
Letter from Mogadishu: Working where violence is normal
On Friday, as we welcomed the release of a journalist kidnapped in Somalia, we received a compelling account from a freelance reporter working in the capital, Mogadishu. Our colleague describes the perils of working in a city where journalists operate at the mercy of warring insurgents and government troops, and throughout Somalia, one of the world’s…
In Kenya, a flawed U.S. comparison to bolster a faulty law
Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki says he will reconsider the deeply flawed communications legislation that he signed into law at the beginning of the year. Kibaki said he would direct the Information Ministry and attorney general to consider the concerns of Kenya’s media and present them to the cabinet for possible legislative revision. CPJ and other…
Carole Gombakomba: A unique Zimbabwean voice is lost
Zimbabwe’s media has suffered much from repression, exile, and worse, and on December 18 it lost one of its most beloved and compassionate voices. Caroline Gombakomba, a reporter and radio host since 2003 for the Voice of America’s Studio 7 broadcasts to the Southern African country, died in Silver Spring, Maryland. Gombakomba, 40, had been fighting breast cancer…
Guinean media at near-standstill after president’s death
With the death on Monday of Guinean President Lansana Conté, uncertainty hangs over what–or who–is to follow. Yet, as recently as last week, coverage of the poor health of the reclusive autocrat, who ruled this mineral-rich but poor West African nation since 1984, proved risky for the Guinean independent media.