Middle East & North Africa

Contact CPJ Middle East & North Africa

Twitter: @CPJMena
Facebook: لجنة حماية الصحفيين بالعربية
Interim Program Coordinator:
Yeganeh Rezaian

Tel: +1 212-300-9018, +1 212-300-9017
Fax: +1 212-214-0640

Knight Foundation Press Freedom Center
P.O. Box 2675
New York, NY 10108 USA

  

Attacks, arrests, threats, censorship: The high risks of reporting the Israel-Gaza war

Since the Israel-Gaza war began on October 7, 2023, journalists and media across the region have faced a hostile environment that has made reporting on the war exceptionally challenging.   In addition to documenting the growing tally of journalists killed and injured, CPJ’s research has found multiple kinds of incidents of journalists being targeted while carrying…

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Arrests of Palestinian journalists since start of Israel-Gaza war

Since the start of the Israel-Gaza war, an unprecedented number of journalists and media workers have been arrested — often without charge — in what they and their attorneys say is retaliation for their journalism and commentary. As of December 20, 2024, CPJ has documented a total of 75 arrests of journalists in the Palestinian…

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Journalists film while standing before destroyed buildings in the Jabalia camp for Palestinian refugees in the northern Gaza on October 9, 2024. (Photo: AFP/Omar Al-Qattaa)

‘Catastrophic’: Journalists say ethnic cleansing taking place in a news void in northern Gaza

On Wednesday, November 6, an Israeli strike killed at least 15 people in a house in Beit Lahia, northern Gaza. But communications difficulties meant that the Gaza health ministry struggled to determine the death toll. This is just one example among countless others where local reporters were able to help verify information about potential atrocities…

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Journalists face Israeli strikes, displacement, attacks as war escalates in Lebanon

The recent escalation of Israel’s war in Lebanon has imperiled the press as they face Israeli strikes that have destroyed news outlet offices and killed at least three journalists, in addition to being assaulted, obstructed, threatened, and detained while reporting.   At about 3 a.m. on October 25, an Israeli airstrike hit a compound housing 18 journalists from multiple…

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Morocco’s pardoned journalists face smears, threats after prison

When Moroccan authorities released three prominent journalists in July as part of a mass pardon marking King Mohamed VI’s 25 years on the throne, their friends and families celebrated. But the excitement was short-lived. Taoufik Bouachrine, Soulaiman Raissouni, and Omar Radi have been shamed in the media, stalked, and harassed since their release as they…

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A journalist and others rush toward the scene of an explosion following an Israeli strike on the outskirts of Gaza City, on September 1, 2024. (Photo: AFP/Omar Al-Qattaa)

One year and climbing: Israel responsible for record journalist death toll

One year in, Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza has exacted an unprecedented and horrific toll on Palestinian journalists and the region’s media landscape. At least 128 journalists and media workers, all but five of them Palestinian, have been killed – more journalists than have died in the course of any year since CPJ…

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Protesters lift portraits of slain journalists Hero Bahadin (left) and Gulistan Tara in Sulaimaniya, Iraqi Kurdistan, on August 24, 2024.

CPJ submits report on Iraq to UN’s human rights review

The Committee to Protect Journalists has submitted a report on the state of press freedom and journalist safety in Iraq and semi-autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan to the United Nations Human Rights Council ahead of its January to February 2025 Universal Periodic Review (UPR) session. The U.N. mechanism is a peer review of each member state’s human…

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Cyberattackers are knocking out media sites around the world with an emerging censorship strategy that uses inexpensive tools, masks attackers' identities, and is very difficult to defend against. (Photo illustration: CPJ; source image: Reuters/Heinz-Peter Bader)

Cyberattackers use easily available tools to target media sites, threaten press freedom

When exiled Russian news website Meduza was hit with a flood of internet traffic in mid-April, it set off alarm bells among the staff as the deluge blocked publishing for more than four hours and briefly rendered the site inaccessible for some readers. It was the largest distributed denial of service attack (DDoS) attack in…

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Al-Jazeera journalist Wael Al Dahdouh holds the hand of his son Hamza, who also worked for Al-Jazeera and who was killed in an Israeli strike in southern Gaza on January 7, 2024.

Photos: Israel-Gaza war takes unprecedented toll on journalists

The Israel-Gaza war has been devastating for civilians, including journalists covering the conflict. While a few conflicts have taken the lives of hundreds of journalists over a period of years, no other war has taken so many journalists’ lives in such a short time span, according to CPJ data that has been gathered since 1992. Here…

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Algerian journalist Mustapha Bendjama. (Photo: Mustapha Bendjama)

After prison release, journalist Mustapha Bendjama struggles to rebuild his life in Algeria

After serving a 14-month prison sentence on various charges, Algerian journalist Mustapha Bendjama assumed his life would return to normal as the editor-in-chief of Le Provincial, a local independent newspaper in the northeastern city of Annaba.  “I was wrong,” said Bendjama, who was released April 2024.  In a phone interview with CPJ, Bendjama revealed that his contract at…

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