‘Murder weapon’: Hunger ravages Gaza journalists under Israeli siege
New York, May 28, 2025—After 19 months of war and Israel’s 11-week total blockade on food, water, fuel, cooking gas, medical supplies, and emergency aid into Gaza, hunger and famine threaten not just lives, but the media’s very ability to bear witness, six journalists told CPJ this month. Starvation, dizziness, brain fog, and sickness all…
Gaza journalists speak out about Hamas intimidation, threats, assaults
New York, May 15, 2025—When Gazan journalist Tawfiq Abu Jarad received a phone call from a Hamas security agent warning him not to cover a protest, he readily complied, having been assaulted by Hamas-affiliated forces once before. The April 27 women’s anti-war demonstration in northern Gaza’s Beit Lahia was small but significant — one of…
‘Nightmares’: Syrian journalist Tal al-Mallohi on surviving 15 years in Assad’s jails
When Syria’s Bashar al-Assad was ousted from power last December, Syrian journalist Tal al-Mallohi was among the thousands who poured out of the country’s jails. Mallohi was 18 when security police detained her in 2009 after posting on the then-popular Blogger platform poems and articles about Palestinian rights and other political issues. She spent 15…
Tunisia uses new cybercrime law to jail record number of journalists
Tunisia has reached a troubling milestone, with at least five journalists behind bars in CPJ’s December 1, 2024, prison census, the highest number since the organization began keeping track in 1992. Once hailed as a beacon of freedom in the Arab world after the 2011 revolution that sparked the Arab Spring, Tunisia is now erasing…
VPNs, training, and mental health workshops: How CPJ helped journalist safety in 2024
Haitian journalist Jean Marc Jean was covering an anti-government protest in Port-au-Prince in February 2024 when he was struck in the face by a gas canister fired by police into the crowd. One of at least five journalists injured while covering civil unrest in the country that month, Jean arrived at the hospital with a…
‘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…
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…
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…
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…
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…