Former VOA staffer Al Pessin on VOA’s role amid the Trump-appointee shakeup
At the end of August, journalists with the U.S. Congress-funded Voice of America (VOA) took the extraordinary step of ringing a public alarm bell about moves by the new CEO of the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), which oversees VOA and several other outlets. VOA broadcasts in 47 languages and employs both U.S. citizens…
When police patrol protests in military gear, journalists face a hostile reporting environment
When St. Louis Post-Dispatch photographer David Carson was covering protests against police violence in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014, he said other reporters often asked him what it was like to get teargassed night after night. These days, he told CPJ, he rarely gets asked that question: “Now all of my journalist friends have been teargassed.” Tear gassings, rubber…
Outlawing TikTok may not impede journalists, but U.S. and India bans could set a risky precedent
“Allison, can Trump ban TikTok?” Dave Jorgenson, The Washington Post’s self-described “TikTok Guy” asks in an August 3 video on the app. His colleague Allison Michaels responds: “The answer is yes, but how he can do it is kind of complicated…” It would be a typical exchange between journalists, but for the surreal setup: Jorgenson is standing over a birdbath, asking…
‘We’re scared shitless out here’: Four reporters on covering the federal response to Portland protests
“This was civic combat, but without live fire.” That’s how freelance photographer John Rudoff described the situation in Portland, Oregon, the Pacific Northwest city where demonstrations in support of Black Lives Matter and against police brutality are now in their 13th week. Portland’s protests received global attention when they took a violent turn in July as…
Tech platforms struggle to label state-controlled media
Twitter announced last week that it would start labeling some accounts run by media outlets and their top editors as “state-affiliated,” a descriptor intended to improve transparency about the source of information being shared on the platform. Since disinformation became a flash point in the debate over content moderation on social media, distinguishing propaganda from…
Amicus briefs support CPJ’s appeal in Khashoggi lawsuit
Nearly three dozen media and press freedom organizations, as well as 10 major human rights organizations and experts, have signed on to amicus briefs in support of CPJ’s appeal in its lawsuit seeking documents on whether U.S. intelligence agencies knew of threats to Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi before his murder by the Saudi government….
Prospects bleak for recovery of US media presence in China
The slugfest between China and the U.S. over the treatment of media workers in each country appears to have paused. Rather than expel each other’s journalists, as they did a few months ago, each side in early July imposed registration and reporting requirements on those remaining—still many more Chinese in the U.S. than Americans in…
Data journalists describe challenges of reporting on the true toll of COVID-19
How many people worldwide have been infected by the coronavirus, and how many have died as a result? Finding reliable information on the virus’s toll has proven such a challenging task that it is nearly impossible to answer these basic questions, five data journalists from around the world told CPJ in May and June. In…
US, UK, Interpol give Ghana phone hacking tools, raising journalist concerns on safety and confidentiality
In May 2019, senior members of Ghana’s law enforcement posed for photos with the U.S. ambassador to their country at a ceremony in the capital, Accra. Between them they held boxes and bags, gifts from the U.S. government to Ghana which, according to one of the recipients, contained Israeli phone hacking technology. That recipient was…
US intelligence community should explain document denial in Khashoggi case, CPJ lawsuit argues
The U.S. intelligence community should confirm or deny the existence of documents that may provide information on its awareness of threats to the life of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, the Committee to Protect Journalists argued in a brief submitted yesterday to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. Khashoggi, a Saudi…