The story of Dhondup Wangchen, filmmaker jailed in China
On the same day that historic protests started by monks in Lhasa began and were to sweep all over Tibet in the subsequent months, Dhondup Wangchen was nearly 3,000 kilometers away in Xian, in China’s Shaanxi province. It was the last day of filming for his documentary film project that sought to give voice to…
Philippine groups move quickly to investigate massacre
Four groups in the Philippines released what appears to be the most authoritative account on the murder of 57 people on November 23 in Ampatuan, in Maguindanao province, in the Philippines’ southernmost main island, Mindanao. The report puts the death toll for journalists at 30, with a few others classified as media workers—drivers and other support staff. Some bodies are…
Seen and heard at CPJ benefit: ‘The pen is not broken’
Small in stature but strong in her words, Naziha Réjiba tells a reporter of all the things the Tunisian government does to try to frighten her. But Réjiba said that she will not be scared, that she will never allow such tactics to have power over her. Editor of Kalima, an online news Web site blocked in…
Philippine massacre among worst for journalists
The toll in the brutal, election-related killings in Maguindanao province, Philippines, was still being determined tonight. Several journalists were believed to be among the dead, making the massacre one of the deadliest single events for the press in memory. Here are some other deadly episodes as recorded by CPJ:
Doubling down on playing the spy card
Another foreign journalist was “outed” in Pakistan on Friday. A front-page story in the November 20 edition of the daily newspaper The Nation ran the picture of an unidentified journalist at the scene of a bomb blast in Peshawar, identifying him as a CIA spy. He was actually Daniel Berehulak, who works for the international photography…
International press decries attack on Rosenberg
Twenty-one international news editors have signed on to a letter to the Pakistan government today. It was addressed to Minister for Information and Broadcasting Qamar Zaman Kaira and was drafted by Islamabad’s foreign correspondent community. They were concerned about an article that appeared in Pakistan’s The Nation daily on November 5 accusing Wall Street Journal…
Shakeup at China’s leading investigative magazine
You wouldn’t have heard it from her, but Hu Shuli resigned from her post as editor of Caijing magazine on Monday. The battle over political coverage and finances at Caijing (cai is “finance” and jing is “economics”) had been reported for about three months, but the missing component in the coverage was Hu herself—she has…
Playing the spy card against WSJ in Pakistan
Last Thursday, Pakistan’s The Nation newspaper published a reckless and unsubstantiated story accusing Wall Street Journal South Asia correspondent Matthew Rosenberg of being a spy. It’s an accusation that gravely endangers Rosenberg’s safety. Wall Street Journal Managing Editor Robert Thomson responded with a scathing letter to The Nation’s editor, Shireen Mazari, expressing his disgust at the publication…
Toronto’s Citizen Lab uses forensics to fight online censors
A basement in the gray, Gothic heart of the University of Toronto is home to the CSI of cyberspace. “We are doing free expression forensics,” says Ronald Deibert, director of the Citizen Lab, based at the Munk Centre for International Studies. Deibert and his team of academics and students investigate in real time governments and…