Americas

2018

  
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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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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Harvey Weinstein speaks at a New York conference in December 2012. Allegations that Weinstein hired private investigators to try to kill negative stories highlight the methods some people use to try to censor the press. (Reuters/Carlo Allegri)

Weinstein-BlackCube surveillance claim exposes aggressive tactics to kill a story

Those with deep pockets can go to great lengths to push back against journalism they find objectionable. Billionaire Peter Thiel deployed a team of lawyers in a move that bankrupted the news site Gawker in 2016–and last month President Donald Trump’s lawyers tried to block the publication of an unflattering book. But there’s another, much…

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President Nicolás Maduro greets supporters at a February 2018 rally in Caracas. Venezuela's journalists say they fear a new anti-hate law will be a new tool for the government to suppress critical reporting. (AFP/Frederico Parr)

Venezuela’s anti-hate law provides Maduro with another tool to intimidate the press

In what journalists fear could be a taste of things to come, Venezuela’s new anti-hate law was enforced for the first time against a news organization on January 30, when Yndira Lugo, the editor of Diario Región, was called before government agents for questioning.

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A cell phone is used to film a homelessness protest in Sao Paulo in December 2017. Ahead of October elections, police are tasked with combating the spread of fake news. (Reuters/Nacho Doce)

Ahead of elections, Brazil’s police announce plan to crackdown on ‘fake news’

In November last year, Brazilian police stopped a truck on a highway in the center of the country and, after a thorough search, discovered more than six tons of marijuana stashed in false compartments. The truck had the name Romanelli on the side, but police said it was a label designed to confuse and that…

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A mural in Monterrey of murdered Mexican journalist Javier Valdez Cárdenas. Mexico is the most deadly country in the Western hemisphere for journalists. (AFP/Julio Aguilar)

Mexico’s special prosecutor says FEADLE is improving, but impunity continues

For approximately two months, Mexico’s office of the Special Prosecutor for Attention for Crimes Against Freedom of Expression (FEADLE) led a nomadic existence after its building was damaged in a September 19 earthquake that killed almost 400 people in and around Mexico City. The agency now has a new home, but the natural disaster served…

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Senators talk together in the the Russell Senate Office Building after leaving a January 16 news conference about proposed reforms to FISA. The Senate has reauthorized Section 702 of the act in a move that could put journalists at risk. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images/AFP)

How US vote to extend NSA program could expose journalists to surveillance

The U.S. Senate last week approved a six-year extension to Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Amendments Act (FISA), in a move that could put journalists at risk. Because people targeted by Section 702 are often of interest to the press as well as the NSA, journalists are more likely than most to have…

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Former Gambia President Yahya Jammeh, pictured in November 2016, is among the suspected human rights abusers to be penalized under the U.S. Magnitsky Act. (Reuters/Thierry Gouegnon)

Mixed first year, but Global Magnitsky Act could be strong tool in fight for justice

In December, the U.S. government announced the names of those it will penalize under the Global Magnitsky Human Rights and Accountability Act.

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Press freedom oppressors, clockwise from left: Aung San Suu Kyi of Myanmar, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey, and Donald Trump of the U.S. (Reuters/AFP/AFP/AP)

In response to Trump’s fake news awards, CPJ announces Press Oppressors awards

Amid the public discourse of fake news and President Trump’s announcement via Twitter about his planned “fake news” awards ceremony, CPJ is recognizing world leaders who have gone out of their way to attack the press and undermine the norms that support freedom of the media. From an unparalleled fear of their critics and the…

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2018