On International Women’s Day, CPJ highlights jailed female journalists
On International Women’s Day, CPJ has highlighted the cases of female journalists jailed around the world in retaliation for their work. At least 33 of the 251 journalists in jail at the time of CPJ’s prison census are women. At least one of those–Turkish reporter and artist Zehra Dogan–was released in February after serving a…
Sudan responds to anti-Bashir coverage with censorship and arrests
“We were all journalists, so we went to work. We wrote about what happened to us that day,” Ashraf Abdelaziz, editor-in-chief of the privately owned al-Jarida daily told me over the phone this week, while recounting how he and his colleagues reported on their own arrest while still in detention.
Damascus journalist has a million stories but none she can safely report
Joudy Boulos has a million stories she wants to write. But as a Syrian freelance journalist living in Damascus, her ability to report is severely limited by the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. It is so dangerous that “Joudy Boulos” is a pseudonym the journalist sometimes uses when reporting and to protect her safety.…
How the Saudis may have spied on Jamal Khashoggi
Omar Abdulaziz, a 27-year-old Saudi Arabian dissident, can still remember the time Jamal Khashoggi, the storied Saudi journalist, unfollowed him on Twitter. It was in 2015, and Khashoggi had been tapped to head a new TV network called Al-Arab, a partnership between a member of the royal family and Bloomberg. Abdulaziz started haranguing Khashoggi online,…
Saudi control of Arab media, lamented by Khashoggi, shapes coverage of his death
It is a cruel irony that Jamal Khashoggi’s last unpublished column for The Washington Post was a call for press freedom in the Arab world. His homeland, Saudi Arabia, has spent the last three decades and hundreds of millions of dollars to ensure that never happens.
The path(s) to justice in Jamal Khashoggi’s murder
In an emotional address to Turkey’s parliament today, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan described the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi as a savage and premeditated act and demanded that Saudi officials be brought to Turkey to stand trial. Most of the information about the investigation that has emerged has come through leaks to the Turkish…
Live Stream – Press Behind Bars: Undermining Justice and Democracy
Event scheduled to begin at 11 a.m. EDT on Friday, September 28, 2018. Committee to Protect Journalists Executive Director Joel Simon, Reuters President and CPJ board member Stephen J. Adler, and human rights lawyer Amal Clooney, who represents the imprisoned Reuters journalists Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, speak on a panel at the 73rd…
‘New’ Saudi Arabia ushers in even more repressive climate for journalists
Marwan al-Mureisi knew the rules: even in Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s “new” Saudi Arabia, issues touching on politics, religion, or the royal family were out of bounds. So in his reporting for the privately owned website Sabq and other outlets, al-Mureisi wrote about science, technology, and the need to embrace creativity and innovation–all hallmarks…
Undiscoverable: How Al-Jazeera’s Snapchat channel disappeared from three Gulf nations
Search for “Al-Jazeera” on Snapchat, and the first result that comes up is a ubiquitous publisher channel in the app’s famed vertical layout. That is, unless you are in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), or Bahrain. Users in these counties are instead offered a list of stores and restaurants that bear a similar…