Features & Analysis

  
The letter "Z," painted on a hill in the state of Coahuila, refers to the Zetas drug cartel. (Reuters/Tomas Bravo)

What’s risky? In Mexico’s twin cities, journalists don’t know

The Durango state governor was on his way to meet with reporters. Before he arrived, the reporters huddled to decide the question of the moment. It seemed obvious: Why had a former mayor been arrested the day before in what clearly seemed to be a political move? “That was the only question,” a reporter said…

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Jon Stewart, Maziar Bahari, and #FreeIranPress

CPJ joined with the PEN American Center and the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran on Wednesday night to host a film screening and panel discussion on the deterioration of press freedom in Iran. Moderated by political satirist Jon Stewart, the panel featured Iranian journalist Maziar Bahari and CPJ Executive Director Joel Simon. CPJ and…

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Slideshow: Iran’s journalists in chains

Editorial cartoons play a principal role in every newspaper and magazine in Iran, providing news, analysis, and satire in visual form. Since the presidential elections in 2009, when Iranian authorities launched an intense crackdown against journalists, civil society activists, and lawyers, many political cartoonists began to leave Iran. Those who stayed have adjusted their work…

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CPJ, others urge John Kerry to raise rights in Russia

In advance of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s visit to Moscow this week, Freedom House, the National Endowment for Democracy, and the Committee to Protect Journalists sent him a letter to call attention to the ongoing crackdown in Russia on non-governmental organizations–including those that support press freedom and freedom of expression. 

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Nigeria’s impunity ranking: The facts don’t lie

Nigeria’s press freedom record is on the decline. For the first time since 2008, when CPJ began publishing its annual Impunity Index, Nigeria has made the list of the “worst nations in the world for deadly, unpunished violence against the press.”

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Patrick Paggio Niyonkuru is recovering from a bullet wound to the arm. (Courtesy Patrick Paggio Niyonkuru)

Burundi reporter shot by police for seeking information

Burundi’s government took unusually swift action last week in response to the police shooting of a radio reporter, after the journalist sought information at a roadblock in the capital Bujumbura where market vendors were allegedly being “taxed” for passage. Perhaps the shooting could have been averted if authorities had bothered to discipline officers involved in…

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Rodrigo Neto was killed after investigating possible police involvement in a series of local murders. (Diário Popular)

In Brazil, awakening ‘Rodrigo Neto in each of us’

One month after their colleague Rodrigo Neto was gunned down on the street after eating at a popular outdoor barbecue restaurant, the journalists of Vale do Aço, Brazil, were indignant. Denouncing a sluggish investigation and the possibility of police involvement in the murder, they strapped black bands to their wrists in a sign of solidarity,…

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Activists protest impunity in journalist murders in the Philippines. (AFP/Noel Celis)

In Index, a pattern of death, a roadmap for solutions

Gerardo Ortega’s news and talk show on DWAR in Puerto Princesa, Philippines, went off as usual on the morning of January 24, 2011. Ortega, like many radio journalists in the Philippines, was outspoken about government corruption, particularly as it concerned local mining issues. His show over, Ortega left the studios and headed to a local…

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Six patients, front, who have recovered from the H7N9 strain of bird flu pose for photographs with doctors and nurses before being discharged from a hospital in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province on April 27. (Reuters/China Daily)

Business as usual under new Chinese leadership

Almost two months have passed since President Xi Jinping took office. Despite expectations for greater transparency, Beijing continues to try to suppress information on a broad range of issues from human rights to public health.

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Responding to Hacked Off

Some years back during a visit to the Gambia–the West African nation ruled by a thin-skinned and mercurial president, Yahya Jammeh–I holed up in the sweltering Interior Ministry and pressed officials to release imprisoned journalists and ease up on the country’s brutal media crackdown. The officials resisted, arguing that the press in Gambia was “reckless…

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